Tareq Rajab Docent Programme: First meeting for the year 2019/2020 –
The Tareq Rajab Programme is the first of its kind in the Middle East. It gives NES students an opportunity to pursue their interests in the humanities such as history, geography, philosophy, etc. It is a very prestigious programme as it does not accept everyone that applies. Those who wish to be a part of the Programme need to fill out an application and be interviewed. Spaces are limited and only 15 selected docents get to be a part of this programme. The end-goal of this programme is to train our docents to be able to give tours to interested parties as well as explore their interests in-depth.
The TRDP’s first meeting was on Saturday, 5th October. The intent of this meeting was to make sure all the docents feel acquainted with one another as well as the Heads of the programme.
This was achieved through an icebreaker game, ‘fast friendship’. The Docents lined up opposite one another, talked to one partner for a minute before switching to another partner. This way, each docent had had a short conversation with all the other docents. This game can be seen in action from the picture above.
Once everyone had gotten well-acquainted with each other, the docents were paired and were given a page from the Museum Handbook, which gives the docents a brief outline of each artefact, i.e. dates, facts, figures. They were asked to study these facts and present the piece to the rest of us. It was quite challenging for most docents as they were not able to put their opinions forward confidently due to their lack of complete knowledge and training. However, they all tried their best and gave an excellent first presentation, and with sufficient training, they have great potential to be excellent docents.
If you yourself would like a tour of either of the two Museums, please do not hesitate to email either, Amishi Singhal (8799) or Faris Al-Sayed (9495) to book one.
Weekly meeting updates will be posted on the Print: stay tuned!
