From 27th May to 20th June 2024, the Education & Outreach Department ran primary schools’ workshops in the we make our own histories exhibition, entitled Museum Changemakers. The programme was conducted in partnership with GOAL, a non-profit organisation promoting global citizenship.
By Courtney McKee
In this 1.5 hour long workshop, students learned about the work of four people from the past who fought to make Ireland and the wider world a better, fairer place. Featured figures were Kathleen Clarke, Roger Casement, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, and James Larkin. The students also explored how the historical advocacy of these changemakers relates to the 17 modern-day sustainable development goals (SDG) as set out by the United Nations. For example, Sheehy-Skeffington's campaigning for women’s suffrage connects to the 5th SDG of Gender Equality, while Larkin’s work in Irish trade unionism and the Dublin Lock-out correlates with the 8th SDG of Decent Work and Economic Growth.
With these historical associations in mind, students were introduced to some societal problems facing Ireland today, from inadequate healthcare to lack of housing. They then searched the Young People’s Assembly Table in the exhibition we make our own histories, on which secondary school students had written their thoughts on a variety of contemporary issues, for words and phrases related to the SDGs. Afterwards, they engaged in a walking debate in which they are asked to give their opinions on what should be done to combat these issues. Finally, to reflect on all they have learned, students wrote down and shared their thoughts on what actions they themselves could take to improve their communities and safeguard Ireland’s healthy and happy future.
Assistant Education Officer Niamh Keating collaborated with Darragh Wynne, Global Citizenship Education Coordinator of GOAL, on the planning of the programme. After the final workshop, I (CM) sat down with Niamh (NK) and Darragh (DW) to discuss the process of creating Museum Changemakers and their impressions on the past four weeks.
CM: First off, can you tell me a little bit about GOAL, Darragh?
DW: GOAL is a humanitarian aid agency that works in 14 countries around the world, supporting some of the world's poorest communities. A lot of the work that we do would be around the areas of health, nutrition, zero hunger and poverty. We have a global citizenship department that receives funding directly from Irish Aid, who are part of the Department of Foreign Affairs, to engage the Irish public in global justice events. We also have a primary schools programme where we deliver a range of workshops, related to things like the Sustainable Development Goals.
CM: Just adding to that, can you talk a little bit about your specific role?
DW: I'm the Global Citizenship Education Coordinator, so my role is to coordinate our formal education programming. In the main part, that is running our primary schools program. That involves delivering workshops in primary schools as well as coordinating a team of facilitators that we have based all around the country to deliver workshops.
I would also do some workshops with student teachers in the teacher training colleges and occasionally workshops with qualified teachers. I also develop resources for facilitators to use which are also available for teachers to download. We have a resource called Changemakers, linked to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which formed the basis of these workshops.
CM: How did this collaboration between the Museum and GOAL come about?
NK: Before I took up this role as Assistant Education Officer with the National Museum, I worked as a teacher. I had taught my children and my class previously about the Sustainable Development Goals, and I'd actually used those brilliant child-appropriate videos that GOAL had created to introduce the SDGs to my class.
So I had known about GOAL from that. Then, when I wanted to create the Changemakers workshop based around we make our own histories, it seemed like a natural collaboration to get in touch with them and see if they wanted to partner with us. That’s why I reached out.
DW: It was lovely on our part because it started with that email from Niamh in the Museum, saying that they had an exhibition, the we make our own histories exhibition, and they were looking at doing some workshops there so would we be interested.
I shared it with the wider global citizenship team here and everyone thought that sounds brilliant, that sounds like a project that could be amazing. Then we had an initial chat with Niamh to see how we could make it work. From the first conversation, it was clear that there was a lot of overlap and common interest, and two very distinct sets of knowledge and expertise that we could try to bring together for these workshops.
CM: Why was it decided to hold the workshops in the we make our own histories exhibition?
NK: When I first started thinking about creating a primary schools workshop around we make our own histories, I was immediately drawn to the Young People's Assembly project because the young people involved in that project had each taken an issue in society that they wanted to reform or change. And their speeches were incredibly passionate and convincing and well thought through. Each of those issues linked perfectly with many of the UN sustainable goals.
What I wanted out of the workshops in the exhibition itself was a chance to get over 500 primary school children going into the space and engaging with the art installations and feeling inspired. A lot of the children had never been to the exhibition before, so it was great that they came in for that hour and a half and were able to leave with an exhibition booklet all about the exhibition, go home to their families to hopefully come back and revisit the museum.
DW: From my perspective, it was something really unique and different for us to run the workshops in the museum. Normally we go to schools and do stuff on site, so it was really unique to have something in a museum and to have that kind of environment as a jumping off point, as a source of different types of inspiration, and as a way for the children to make different connections.
Specifically, with the we make our own histories exhibition, that whole project was quite activated with and by and for the public. So it made sense to use that exhibition as a way to continue the engagement, as a way to continue that dialogue. Particularly because there was a Young People's Assembly, which was a really lovely thing to be able to bring to a few 100 primary school children over the course of our workshops. They could see what children and young people a few years older than them were thinking and start to think themselves about what they would like a future Ireland to look like, and how we can all work together to get us there.
CM: Why did you choose those historical changemakers: Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, Roger Casement, Kathleen Clarke, and James Larkin?
NK: I chose them because those four people are featured on the timeline, which relates to the Decade of Centenaries as it records important events in Ireland from 1912 to 1924, that is positioned in the entrance of we make our own histories. When I was constructing the workshop, I thought about choosing four inspirational people, but also I thought about what objects we had both in our handling collection and in the National Museum of Ireland’s collection that I could draw upon to make the boxes that we used to introduce those changemakers to the children.
CM: What did you want the students to take away from Museum Changemakers?
DW: Because it was in a museum, we wanted the engagement with history. Our whole global citizenship approach is about making children understand how interconnected all people and all kind of problems and solutions in the world are, and trying to empower them to take action and make a difference. So that's what we're always trying to do, hoping to inspire and empower children.
The dimensions that the Museum brought was that they could draw that inspiration from the Young People's Assembly, and then some amazing changemakers that we have from Irish history and particularly from the time of the 1916 rising. We were trying to empower children to be global citizens with links to the Irish context and Irish history.
NK: It was an important opportunity to get lots of primary school children in engaging with the we make our own histories exhibition. That was the starting point.
What I wanted them to take away from the workshop, to echo what Darragh said, was to empower young children to see that they themselves are active citizens and the part they can play in creating a better Ireland. So it seemed natural to use the Young People's Assembly as a kind of inspirational point for young people. In my experience, children are inspired by listening to the difference that other young people can make. I wanted them to leave the workshop both learning about past changemakers in our society, but also feeling that they themselves can go on to make a difference through their own actions.
CM: What was your biggest challenge in running the programme?
DW: Probably the biggest challenge, and it's going to sound very corny and cheesy and really positive, but the biggest challenge was fitting all the content into the session. The session was initially planned to be an hour, and then we realised with everything that we want to do, we actually need an hour and a half. And even with an hour and a half, it was still quite jam-packed.
But you know that's a lovely problem to have, because we did few different activities in the workshop. The children got to learn about historical changemakers from the time of the 1916 rising; they got to engage with the exhibition; they got to learn about the UN Sustainable Development Goals; and they got to take part in a future visioning activity where they first debated different opinions, different topics, and then got a chance to think about changes they would like to see. So it was really hard to cram all that in, but as I said, that's a nice problem to have.
NK: The workshops themselves ran over three days, four weeks, so there were 24 sessions to be booked. They were incredibly popular, and so they booked out quickly, but they got booked out quite a lot in advance for schools. For us, I'd say a big challenge was that we did end up having some cancellations that we were able to go back to waiting lists to fill. But inevitably, we did have three very late, last-minute cancellations that we couldn't fill. It’s a shame because obviously there are lots of schools who would have liked to have been part of the workshop that didn't get to avail of it. This is a problem we also see with our family workshops, because everything we offer here at the National Museum of Ireland is free. Sometimes people don't value things as much that are free or perhaps don't think about the fact that if they book something and don't turn up, they are depriving other people of having that spot. So that's difficult, that was a challenge.
CM: Do you have any highlights from the past four weeks?
DW: Something that we would always try to do with the workshops that we deliver, in general, is just give time and space for the children to talk about how they feel and talk about their ideas. For me, all the best parts came from hearing children's ideas. We weren't very prescriptive; we gave children a chance to say whatever they wanted.
One of the points of debate and discussion that we had was around the Irish language and whether there should be less of it in primary schools to make space for mental health activities. One of the boys was really, really animated, calling Irish a useless language and a fourth-class boy, one of the lines he said was ‘I think Morse code is probably even a more useful language than Irish.’ Obviously, I totally disagree with it, but I just found it so funny, and such an articulate way of getting his point across.
But then the flip side of that is we heard some amazing comments from children about wanting to make a difference. We had an activity at the end where they got to write about what positive changes they'd like to see in Ireland by 2124 and actions that they could take to help us get there. I have loads of these worksheets, so maybe I'll just read these out because I love reading them.
One of them was ‘What positive changes would you like to see in Ireland by 2124?’ and this person said “Shorter hospital waitlists, better treatment for disabled people, normal Irish temperature, no inflation, migrant-friendly, no homeless, no hungry, child-friendly homes, and better education and healthcare.”
And then ‘What actions could you do now to help make Ireland a better place in the future?’ “Protests for migrants, boycott inflation, give money to charity, arrest aggressive or violent people, grow more fruit and veg, ride horses, walk and public transport.” Which is just lovely.
And another one is ‘What positive changes would you like to see?’ “I would like to see migrants rights and for migrants to be welcomed into Ireland like a person. I would also like to see more hospital beds and better waiting lists.” And for the question ‘What one thing can you do now to make Ireland a better place in the future?’, they have just written “I can respect and be kind to all, no matter what.” It's just beautiful.
CM: That's lovely because it does start at home.
DW: I sent that on to our team here and everyone was sending back crying emojis. I think it's really unfair that people are like ‘Children are our hope and the next generation are going to fix everything.’ I totally disagree with that and find that totally unfair on younger generations. But the clarity that children have, that they see through the noise. They haven't learned or accepted all these things that adults accept. They can just be so profound with the things that they see and that they say.
NK: Yeah, I'd say the highlight is definitely the positive engagement from the children around the workshop. I think it's easy for us to, and a lot of us, underestimate what primary school children are able to understand about global issues. When actually, children can see homelessness in Dublin from walking around and they are aware of all these issues. Being able to have a workshop that gave children the space to explore and talk about those issues and challenge stereotypes, was really rewarding. It was incredible to see the things that both the children said in the walking debates, and also what they wrote down when it came to the last part of the workshop. Being able to read back some of those responses was definitely a highlight. Also, just seeing the buzz of lots of children in that exhibition space, engaging with the exhibition was a massive highlight too.
CM: In your line of work, Darragh, you deal with global, and it feels like unfixable, issues. Things that go so high up, you think nothing can ever be done about it, climate change being one of them. You see people trying to all pack onto the Luas, and you think ‘If we can’t cooperate on anything, how can we solve this issue?’ So my question is, how do you stay positive with everything that you see happening in the world?
DW: I’ve put less pressure on myself to constantly feel positive or constantly find hope. There are loads of things to be hopeful and positive about I think, but there are also things to be legitimately angry about and legitimately sad about. When it comes to the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis, in particular, there's a lot of things to grieve. There's a lot of things that we have lost and are losing. So I think it's really, really important to give space to acknowledge and feel all those emotions. Once you do that, you're being a bit more real about it all and then from there, I think you do have more space to find the genuine sources of hope and positivity, rather than just blind optimism.
The things that do give me hope and that do help me to stay positive are engaging with other people who care and who are involved. I put the people who give me most sources of hope into two categories. One category is the people who have been around for years and years and years working on these issues, for maybe longer than I've been alive. And when I'm feeling down or sad, I think ‘If they're still going, then I can keep going too.’ The other group is the people at the opposite end of the spectrum, the people who have just come to a cause and have just started to become active. Because there's such a big gap between doing nothing and doing something. That's the biggest gap. But once you start doing something, then you find different ways of doing something. When people come to a movement, they do have that clarity and they do have that outrage. That’s really contagious and helps you to keep going.
And then the last thing, that once again is probably going to sound a bit cheesy and corny, is nature, is engaging with nature and being in nature. Once again, obviously we’ve loads of problems in the world and loads of challenges. But when it comes to climate change, when it comes to the biodiversity crisis, nature is absolutely our best friend and if we just give it a chance, it will help us so, so much.
One example, something I find lovely – I don’t know if you have ever been to the River Dodder – but it’s this river in South Dublin, and you wouldn’t know it’s there and somehow it’s survived through all the development of Dublin. This river that has huge willow trees and other trees lining the banks, and there’s still kingfishers there, and there's otters there. It just feels like such a lovely metaphor that, despite all this urbanisation, this river and this little pocket of nature has held on. I think when you engage with nature, you can find lots of other hopeful examples.
CM: Niamh, what’s next for the primary schools' programme at Collins Barracks?
NK: Following the success of Museum Changemakers, we would love there to be a legacy to that project. We are already thinking of perhaps turning it into an online downloadable teacher's resource or reinventing it slightly because some of the feedback from this workshop was that teachers really loved the link that we had made between 1916 activists and the sustainable goals aspect.
We are very fortunate at the National Museum of Ireland to have the Asgard exhibition, which is an incredible space and obviously an incredible object to talk about. So perhaps we might have a 1916 changemakers activist workshop from the back of this, where we would possibly combine those four important characters with maybe a creative writing or a drama aspect. We also have a very new, exciting tour for primary school children around our Soldiers & Chiefs galleries that's currently under development.
CM: Very exciting!