“We are Together” – program that works!

In 2017, the employees of the Kirillo-Belozersky Museum-Reserve continued working within the framework of the museum program “We are Together” aimed at joint activity with social welfare facilities located within the Kirillov district.

Children and adults were told about the history of the monastery and the town, folk and church art during the tours and lectures. They actively visited temporary exhibitions in the People’s House. Kids especially liked the exhibition “Magic Forest” and the fairy tale “Moroz Ivanovich” that they saw after the tour.  In March, they had a chance to become actors of the puppet theatre themselves. At the beginning of the lesson, the children remembered Russian folk tales, learnt to operate puppets and then played out the tale “Hare’s Hut”. They joined in the master-classes delivered in the Museum of Town and District History and learnt about modern techniques of decorative and applied arts.

The museum employees organized four complex trips to the mental hospitals and the in-patient department of the Complex Social Service Center in Talitsy. They included lectures, master-classes, and mobile exhibitions. Specialists of the social welfare centres note that work with natural materials – clay, birch bark, wool, flax - has some positive therapeutic effect. For instance, the following master-classes were delivered in the psychoneurologic hospital in Pustyn: “Flowers of Birch Bark”, “Horse of Bast”, “Cockerel of Flax”. Besides, a cycle of lessons “Art Felt” was repeated there. Work with felt is an interesting lesson that has a beneficial effect on emotional relaxation and development of creative skills. Participants of the master-classes were told about different felting techniques – dry and wet felting. They made the panel “Summer Motives” and a brooch in the felting technique and beads, a pillow and the panel “Floral Fantasies” – in wet felting. They created pendants, magnets and small sculptures at the moulded ceramics lessons of M.N. Vasilieva.

72 lessons for 874 people were conducted in the first half of 2017 within the framework of the program “We are Together”.