Aybuke Doga Aydin - Heritage Experts | Heritage in Schools

Aybuke Doga Aydin

Doğa Aydın 1
Doğa Aydın 2
Doğa Aydın 3
Subject(s):
History, Arts (including Visual Art and Drama, Film and Theatre Studies), Civic, Social, Political Education (including CSPE and Politics and Society)
Counties catered for:
Carlow, Dublin, Kildare, Laois, Wicklow
Classes catered for:
1st year, 2nd year, 3rd year, TY

My workshops introduce students to how the past is discovered, interpreted, and represented through archaeological evidence, museum objects, local places, and community stories. Sessions combine object-based learning, group discussion, creative tasks, and reflective activities, helping students think critically about heritage, identity, and whose stories are included or left out.

Students are introduced to the basic methods archaeologist use to understand past societies, including excavation, observation, recording, and interpretation. Through hands-on activities, such as a classroom-based mini excavation workshop, they practice identifying finds, recording evidence, and thinking about what objects might have been used for. After the excavation, students may work with broken pottery pieces or object fragments, reconstruct them, and discuss what the original object might have been.

Students explore how museums in Ireland, from the National Museum of Ireland to local and county museums, decide what to collect, display and leave out. Working in small groups with a set of object cards and images drawn from Irish heritage or the school's locality, they select objects, group them around a theme, and plan the layout of a small classroom display. Each group must also decide what to leave out, and discuss how their choices change the story the display tells. Groups finish by giving their display a title and presenting it to the class. The workshop introduces curation as a series of choices, and encourages students to think about how displays shape what visitors notice, remember and question.

Students take a close look at a single object and the words used to describe it. Starting with a real or adapted label for an object from an Irish museum collection, such as a tool, an item of clothing, a household object, a photograph or a document, they discuss what the label tells us and what it leaves unsaid. They then consider the object from other perspectives: its maker, a user, a child, a worker, an emigrant or newcomer, a woman, or a member of the local community. Finally, students rewrite the label to make one of these less-heard voices visible. The activity helps students read heritage critically and understand how interpretation can change what Ireland's heritage means and who it belongs to.

Additional Information

  • Post-Primary school visits
  • Caters for special needs
  • Provides practical/hands-on activities

Contact Details

Mobile:
0894310288
Email:
a.doga.aydin@gmail.com