EMKP is very happy to report on the 2021 Grantee Training which ran online for the two first weeks of February 2021. Sadly, due to Covid-19 restrictions, we couldn’t welcome our grantees to the British Museum this year, instead, we decided to host the training online, with a series of live events including demonstrations, presentations, and seminars, and we must say, we are very happy with the final results!
The training kicked off on Monday the 1st of February with two welcome sessions, one in the morning and another one in the afternoon (due to the grantees’ different time zones) chaired by Dr. Lissant Bolton (Director of EMKP), Dr. Ceri Ashley (Head of EKMP) and the rest of the EMKP team (project curators Nik and Paula).
Screenshot of the morning welcome session with the first cohort of grantees.
Screenshot of the afternoon welcome session with the second cohort of grantees.
It was a great opportunity to e-meet our grantees, welcome them to the training and finally put some faces to the names we have had been dealing with in the past months. If you haven’t still been able to check this year’s grantees and their projects, you can find more about them in this post.
The introductory events also included a video from the EMKP Director Lissant Bolton which you can also see on the EMKP front page. One advantage of hosting the training online this year was that it allowed more people to access the training resources and attend sessions – usually, only one person per project attends – and we ended up with a very nice group of committed attendees that enthusiastically participated in seminars, turning them into very interesting discussions.
In addition to this, the decision to host the training in a virtual learning environment allowed the team to create an online shared space for discussions, chats, and dialogue. In total, nine new teaching modules were presented, each specially prepared for an EMKP grantee audience, including subjects like ethics and consent, ethnographic research methods, metadata, and equipment. These modules were put together by EMKP staff, British Museum colleagues, and external colleagues – many of whom come from the first cohort of EMKP grantees and so have been able to share their direct and relevant experience.
EMKP Training Canvas Homepage with different modules
Equipment and Documentation single module page
The aim of the training is to help the grantees prepare for their fieldwork and documentation and familiarise themselves with EMKP methods. We consider that we have achieved our mission and we can’t wait to see the final results of the grantees’ fieldwork.
We hope that this training does not mark an end but rather the start of a new period of practice and learning and that all the materials and the virtual learning environment that we have put together for this purpose remain as a space for sharing experiences and stories from the field.
Thank you, all the grantees and their teams, for such a wonderful experience!
EMKP is looking forward to sharing the grantees’ future accomplishments