Conference Children with special needs in the Museum

On 25-26 November 2003 the ‘School Center’, a scholarly and methodological section of the State Hermitage, was host to the Russian scientific and practical conference entitled Children with special needs in the Museum. The conference was dedicated to the problems of museums working with children who have psychological or physical development disorders. Museum staff, school teachers and psychologists from rehabilitation institutions delivered statements on their work experience in various directions and applying different methodologies that have been developed at the present time.

Conference participants spoke of the good results obtained from study of art including cure for ailments, widening of horizons, and social rehabilitation for ailing children. It was emphasized that the problem is highly relevant today and that there is a need to further improve work with children suffering from handicaps in different types of museums.

The experience of the Hermitage’s work with sick children was presented in speeches by the director of the scholarly and methodological section ‘School Center’, I. A. Kureeva, by senior researcher L. Y. Shostak, and by research staff member E. I. Babayan.

The reports were illustrated by computer slides/films and videos.

The second day of the conference was held in School N 370, where teachers working with children in the program called Our Hermitage spoke. This program entails close cooperation between the museum, schoolteachers and psychologists from medical institutions treating children. Practical activities to digest the material learned during group visits to the Hermitage were demonstrated. There was also a theatrical program based on motifs from the daily productions in the Hermitage Theater as performed by students of schools N34 and N370.

Among the participants of the conference were research staff from the State Russian Museum, the State Museum of the Political History of Russia, the Military-Medical Museum; also staff from the Tretyakov Gallery, the A.N. Radischev Art Museum of Saratov, the A.I. Hertsen State Pedagogical University, the Center for Creative Rehabilitation of the St Petersburg Association of Societies of Parents of Invalid Children, teachers at boarding schools for blind children (the K.K. Grot School N1 and Mga city school), the directors and teachers from the specialized schools for children with retarded psychological development N370, 34, and 36.

The materials of the conference will be published in a collection in 2004.

I.A. Kureeva, director of the scholarly and methodological section ‘School Center’ speaks to the conference

Performance by students of school 370

An activity of students from the 6th grade -
a quiz game about the Peter and Paul Fortress