Innovative Educational Programmes in Museums: Museum of Cycladic Art, Piraeus Bank Group Cultural Foundation, and Onassis Stegi

This session, given in Greek as part of a conference on educational programmes in museums, research institutions, and cultural organisations, presents three papers on museum education and outreach in Greece.

Marina Plati of the Museum of Cycladic Art reviews the museum's educational exhibitions and interactive displays, including interactive tables on Mediterranean trade in the Cypriot gallery and low-tech drawers and cubes explaining ancient pottery and metalwork. She outlines programmes designed to be accessible to all groups, including children and teenagers with disabilities, the Children's Hospital school, and visually impaired students through an Erasmus tactile project on Cycladic figurines and island geography. She also describes intercultural workshops uniting local pupils and teenage refugees around the Cypriot Syllabary as a shared code of communication, live demonstrations of ancient marble carving, metallurgy, and potting organised with Nikos Papadimitriou, travelling museum kits, and animation and comics workshops for teachers on Syros and Tinos.

Andreas Lapourtas, head of the Museums Service of the Piraeus Bank Group Cultural Foundation, introduces the foundation's network of nine thematic museums across regional Greece, dedicated to silk in Soufli, water power in Dimitsana, the olive in Sparta and Lesvos, brick and tile in Volos, marble crafts in Tinos, the environment at Stymphalia, mastic in Chios, and silversmithing in Ioannina. Using visitor statistics and music clips, he discusses collaborations with the National Theatre and the Athens State Orchestra, intergenerational craft workshops, and an urban history programme in Plaka and central Athens that connects classical, Byzantine, Ottoman, and modern monuments with the history of Asia Minor refugees in the area of the Ancient Agora.

Myrto Lavda, head of educational programmes at the Onassis Stegi, outlines the centre's mission in contemporary theatre, dance, music, and digital culture since 2010. She focuses on multi-session programmes for teenagers and schools, presenting three case studies with short films: Dancing to Connect, a contemporary dance project developed with New York's Battery Dance Company for secondary schools in Attica and regional Greek cities; Zoom Backstage, an after-school journalism and photography workshop in which teenagers interview artists, photograph rehearsals, and produce a magazine; and the European Erasmus+ iDance programme, which trains mixed groups of dancers with and without disabilities to lead inclusive dance workshops.