The Nostalgic Women : The Blog That Was Awarded with the Annual Award in Museum Pedagogy 2016

Abstract

In this paper we present the Nostalgic Women project, a participative project which was given the Annual Award in Museum Pedagogy 2016. In autumn 2015, 45 students from the Bachelor of Beauty and Cosmetics Degree launched a cooperative project with The Lotta Museum and Keuda Vocational College beautician students as part of their studies. The project was based on Learning by Developing (LbD) pedagogy where students' learning is connected to authentic development projects that are rooted in the world of work. The Lotta Museum is a professionally run specialist museum that records and documents the history of the Lotta Svärd organization and studies the volunteer work of women as part of the history of Finland. The project included workshop activities, on the basis of which the students were able to participate in the Museum's content and event production. The main output of the project was a blog ‘Nostalgic Women’. Beauty and Cosmetics students produced 25 blog posts which combined cosmetic chemistry, wellbeing and culture during the 1930s and 1940s. The blog posts were published in 2016.

The special feature of the project was that an atypical target group, the students, started to create content based on their own vocational know-how for the already existing target group of the Museum. Through the content production, the Beauty and Cosmetics students were able to present their professional skills to the general public and popularize the science behind cosmetics and cosmetic products. The content generated by the students has, without exception, received plenty of positive feedback. The blog has a well-established readership. According to the students’ feedback, the participative way of working and multi-professional collaboration was very useful and gave them more knowledge and experience of working life.

The Finnish Association for Museum Education, Pedaali, granted the Annual Award in Museum Pedagogy 2016 to the Nostalgic Women project. Pedaali's board viewed the project as representing a new approach of engaging audiences and a new way of making museums more accessible. Collaboration with educational institutions has helped to make the Lotta Museum more appealing to young audiences, which are considered to be a challenging target group, and the project has also demonstrated that the past is still relevant today. At the same time, the Lotta Museum has been able to present its themes on a contemporary platform, to provide it with a broader context and open it to wider audiences. The project has also made the museum and the Bachelor of Beauty and Cosmetics Degree more widely known.