Chester Beatty - Creative Ireland Programme

Building Ireland’s first Intercultural Museum programme for schools

Described by Lonely Planet as ‘not just the best museum in Ireland but one of the best in Europe’, the Chester Beatty is the pre-eminent Irish museum promoting the appreciation and understanding of world cultures through its extraordinary collection of manuscripts, rare books, and other treasures from Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and Asia.

Intercultural dialogue and learning plays a key role in the museum’s mission and fosters dialogue with the communities as represented in the collections.

The Creative Ireland Programme in collaboration with the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission have supported an 18 month project to research, develop and build its first Intercultural Museum programme for schools (2018-2020). The Chester Beatty invited Mary Immaculate, Limerick, Maynooth University, the Intercultural Education Service (Education Authority of Northern Ireland) and UK Heritec Education Consultancy to partner and develop the programme.

New school tours were designed to promote exploration and understanding, using key themes inspired by the Chester Beatty’s extraordinary collections. These tours were road tested by Community National Schools Lecarrow, Co. Roscommon, Faughart CNS, Scoil Chormaic CNS Ballbriggan, City West & Saggart CNS and Ashbourne CNS.

Guides and facilitators were trained in visual thinking strategies and object-based learning. Continuous professional development for teachers was designed and delivered with two training sessions in Northern Ireland and Chester Beatty during the project.

The schools programme was launched in March 2020.

- Teachers and students can access online learning resources to help them understand the collections and compliment a number of school subjects such as art, history and world faiths.

- School tours of the collections will be available on designated days of the school week, free of charge.

- Gallery trails will be available online in addition to online access to the museum’s collections https://chesterbeatty.ie/explore/places/

- The Chester Beatty will work with the Junior Cert Religious Education programme and plans to offer continuous professional development in the future

To find out more about this project please click here.

For more details please contact https://chesterbeatty.ie/contact/

See https://chesterbeatty.ie/learning/ for resources and further information.