Knowledge transfer and learning from the Hunterian Museum (more from #kmuk10) (for @BFchirpy and @NickSherrard)
I intrigued @BFchirpy with my tweets from KMUK 2010 referring to a particularly thought-provoking session presented by Jane Hughes and Stefania Riccini of the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons.
Intriguing to hear about the use of museum collections as support for learning about a range of business skills. #kmuk10
Mark Gould
markgould13
Jane and Stefania were talking about their part of a project run by the Museums, Libraries and Archive Council on Knowledge Transfer. There is a blog post about the project on Sparknow's site (they helped on the project). Coincidentally, last week I also attended a webinar led by Victoria Ward and Julie Reynolds of Sparknow which drew more widely on the project, and Paul Corney of Sparknow chaired the KMUK conference, so it was quite a Sparknow week.)
What Jane and Stefania have done as part of the Knowledge Transfer Project is to develop a set of modules aimed at developing business skills, using exhibits from the museum. Some of these are quite intriguing (to say the least). They showed us images of two exhibits they use on the 'building confidence' module: a set of dentures made for Winston Churchill (designed to maintain his slight speech impediment so that no-one would notice the change) and "a painted silver prosthetic nose, mounted on a spectacle frame, from the mid-1800s. The nose was worn by a woman who had lost her own as a result of syphilis." (Quoted from a Hunterian volunteers' newsletter, in which there is also a picture of the nose.) She later presented it to her physician stating that she had remarried and that her new husband preferred her without it. It is easy to see how these items could spark a valuable learning conversation about confidence in a business or personal context.
The other modules offered by the Museum include:
- Customer Service Training
- Diversity, Prejudice and Social Inclusion
- Identity and Self-Awareness
- Managing Loss and Transition
- Presentation Skills and Public Speaking
- Problem Solving
- Team Building and Group Dynamics
In addition, they encourage the use of their rooms for business meetings and other events where the exhibits may prompt conversations about topics wider than the agenda -- another excellent example of lateral thinking. In all, the session was very stimulating -- I have passed the information to my L&D colleagues, and I am thinking of exploring similar activities in museums outside London.
