Educational activities
One of the Educational Programmes Office’s main areas of activity is the design and implementation of educational programmes in the context of the Museum’s permanent and temporary exhibitions.
The thematically organized activities actively engage the participants in an effort to invest the artefacts with meaning, and help the viewer translate disparate shards of information into knowledge.
Educational programmes are a special form of interpretative exercise which can be adapted to the needs and level (age, educational or otherwise) of different visitor groups. Since the EPO’s work is primarily aimed at schoolchildren, the activities it produces take into account the Greek school reality but –importantly– they do so without being determined by it. In other words, even those educational programmes which are aimed exclusively at school groups remain relatively independent of Greek educational praxis and comprise stand-alone educational/interpretational proposals. In the case of school groups, it is largely up to the accompanying teacher(s) to exploit the Museum’s educational programmes on multiple levels.
The following educational programmes reference –and are physically based in– the Byzantine and Christian Museum’s permanent exhibition:
• “From Antiquity to Byzantium” utilizes the first part of the Museum’s permanent exhibition and seeks to showcase its exhibits / artefacts as products of a world moulded by Graeco-Roman features in which Christianity gradually came to hold sway.
• “In Byzantine times” utilizes the second part of the Museum’s permanent exhibition and deals with aspects of the Byzantine world with a focus on Byzantine political ideology and the role played by the emperor.
• “From daily life in Byzantium” utilizes selected exhibits from the permanent exhibition (ïbjects for daily use made from clay, metal, glass). The target groups are children from 5 to 8 years old.
• Christmas workshops use selected artefacts from the Museum’s collections which illustrate different episodes from the biblical narration of the Nativity. The programme is aimed at pre-school and kindergarten children.
Places can be booked on the Museum’s educational programmes by phone on [+30] 213 213 9507: (Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 15:00).