Attending the ITP workshop at CSMVS Mumbai was a dream come true – all participants were full of energy, talking, getting to know each other and it felt good meeting my ITP friends from 2012, especially reuniting with Sue Giles, Bristol Museum UK Partner. The format was so perfect and our projects ran very smoothly. In my World Stories project group we worked wonderfully as a team and began thinking of a theme and a city to focus on; we decided to work with Bristol as many group members had visited the city during their time on their ITP UK Partner placement. Bristol is a city with a lot of people who have different cultures that migrate from all parts of the world. Our choice of city and theme for the world stories exhibition surprisingly gave us an upper hand; we received the opportunity to attend the UK Museum Association Annual Conference and spend time with Sue Giles at Bristol Museum to transform our exhibition ideas into content for an online exhibition. At the Museum we were given support and access to premises, halls and galleries and completed a three day workshop to develop the exhibition proposal.

We named the exhibition ‘Bristol: The Bigger Picture’, which gave us more focus and the opportunity to think about our audience. We explored the idea of communities, celebrating the co-existence of the different cultures and searching for stories which are hidden in broad view. We created sub-themes for the project, as follows and each group member was given a theme to work on upon their return to their home institution.

The impact of this experience on my home institution is great, because it has given us a foresight to start connecting our National Museums with local museums. The workshop made me a quick thinker and a good decision maker and changed the way that I view object stories. I want to thank my family, National Commission for Museums and Monuments Nigeria, British Museum, Africa Oceania and the Americas department , British Museum Ancient Egypt and Sudan department, the ITP team, and Miles Morland, Fmr Director General NCMM Alhaji Yusuf Abdullahi, Alhaji Inuwa Babantata and Mallam Dikko Idris.