On the initiative of Prof. Pavel Stoev, director of the National Museum of Natural History in Sofia, museum educators from 20 national, regional, and local museums in the country gathered together in the Leventis hall at 13.30 on the 1st of March 2024, where they shared their experience in the development and application of educational programmes for visitors on the subjects of biology, archaeology, anthropology, history, and ethnography.
Prof. Stoev welcomed the participants, and the meeting commenced with three consecutive panels on the following topics:
Panel 1: The role of museums in providing a contemporary educational environment in the context of informal education;
Panel 2: Presenting good pedagogical models and practices in support of the general education in the relevant scientific disciplines;
Panel 3: New opportunities for cooperation between museums and educational institutions.
Each of the institutions presented different aspects of its educational programme as well as interesting and innovative approaches towards work with children and adults.
In the following discussion, the participants united around the idea of building a museum network in which they can offer mutual support and share resources for the exchange of informal museum education programmes, travelling exhibitions, the development of shared projects, and the application of good practical skills from Bulgaria and Europe.
A special guest for the meeting was Dr Todor Petev, Assistant Professor at the New Bulgarian University, who welcomed the initiative and stated his support for the development of such a museum network, for which he also provided digital materials from his own library.
On the 2nd of March, the meeting continued with a presentation of the exhibited and scientific collections at NMNHS and a demonstration of the digitisation of museum specimens, which has been an active venture at the museum over the last 3 years as part of the DiSSCo project with financing from the project “Upgrading distributed scientific infrastructure in the Distributed System of Scientific Collections — Bulgaria (DiSSCo-BG): Stage 1”.