Innovative Educational Programmes in Museums: Educational Activities of the Acropolis Restoration Service

Delivered in Greek at a conference on innovative educational programmes in museums, research institutions and cultural organisations, this paper presents the thirty-year educational work of the Department of Information and Education of the Acropolis Restoration Service, staffed by three archaeologists and operating across both the Athenian Acropolis and the Acropolis Museum.

The speaker outlines the department's main activities: school programmes for primary and secondary students, printed and digital material, museum kits (μουσειοσκευές), teacher seminars reaching roughly 600 educators a year, and self-guided family visits using activity sheets and lending backpacks borrowed by about 3,000 families annually. Among the museum kits reproduced in 2001 with support from the Niarchos and Bodossaki Foundations, thirty-two were donated to schools in Cyprus with the Ministry of Education and Culture; Cypriot primary pupils later used the Parthenon frieze kit as a model to design a procession for the ancient Cypriot festivals of the Adonia and Aphrodisia.

Two case studies show how a theme is adapted across site visits, publications, family backpacks and online applications. The first centres on the restoration of the Acropolis monuments, from a biennial on-site workshop for 600 high-school students inside the work sites to the digital game 'Glauka', alongside the museum's 'Archaic Colours' backpack and online activity for colouring the Peplos Kore. The second follows the cult of Athena through school workshops, a virtual tour drawing on Pausanias, and a backpack used by roughly 20,000 families. After presenting the open-access repository built with the National Documentation Centre, the speaker takes questions on backpack lending times, how the State Gallery of Contemporary Cypriot Art adopted family backpacks, motivating secondary schools, and reaching digital visitors.