Through Creative Writing and Heritage
Next Step Initiative’s Heritage Leadership Traineeship Programme continues to demonstrate how creating opportunities for diverse voices within Scotland’s heritage sector can benefit trainees, heritage organisations and communities alike.
One example of this came to life through Colours of the Past: A Creative Writing Exhibition, developed by Heritage Leadership Trainee Devika Ponnambalam during her placement with Museums & Galleries Edinburgh.
The exhibition brought together stories, memories, personal objects and creative writing from women from diverse backgrounds, creating an opportunity for experiences that have often been underrepresented within traditional museum narratives to be seen, heard and celebrated.
From an Idea to an Exhibition
Colours of the Past was not simply an exhibition that Devika participated in; it became a project through which she was able to experience many of the different stages involved in developing and delivering community-focused heritage work.
Working alongside the Museums & Galleries Edinburgh team, Devika reached out to community groups, helped organise workshops, communicated with participants and collected the stories that would eventually form part of the exhibition.
As the project developed, her responsibilities expanded.
She worked on editing and finalising exhibition panels and helped develop an accompanying booklet bringing together the women’s stories alongside photographs of personal objects they had contributed.
This required collaboration with collections staff, a photographer and a graphic designer, as well as extensive proofreading, communication and coordination to bring the different elements of the exhibition together.
Devika also helped organise the exhibition launch, including preparing an Event Plan, coordinating invitations and developing speech notes.
The result was an exhibition that brought communities, personal histories and museum practice together in one space.
Personal Objects, Memories and Stories
At the heart of Colours of the Past is a simple but powerful idea: objects can carry stories.
Personal belongings can hold memories of family, culture, migration, identity and belonging. By creating space for women to share these objects alongside their experiences and creative writing, the project enabled heritage to be explored through lived experience.
This was particularly significant within the museum environment.
Rather than communities simply entering the museum as visitors, Colours of the Past created an opportunity for people to contribute to the stories being presented and to see aspects of their own experiences and cultural identities reflected within a heritage space.
The exhibition launch brought people from different cultural backgrounds together to celebrate those stories and the diversity of the communities that make up Edinburgh today.
Developing a More Confident Heritage Leader
The exhibition also represents an important stage in Devika’s development through the Heritage Leadership Traineeship Programme.
Reflecting on Devika’s journey, her supervisor Ria Sloan highlighted the extent of her involvement from the beginning of the project through to the final exhibition.
Ria described Devika as a fantastic addition to the team and spoke about her involvement in community outreach, workshops, communication with participants, editing, proofreading and bringing the final display together.
She also highlighted a change that goes beyond completing individual tasks: Devika’s growth in confidence and leadership.
Devika entered the placement with previous skills and experience, but the traineeship has provided an opportunity to apply and develop those abilities specifically within a museum and heritage environment.
Through the placement she has developed greater understanding of how museum objects can be used to stimulate storytelling, how objects should be cared for and how community engagement can contribute to museum interpretation.
Alongside Colours of the Past, Devika has undertaken conservation work at the Museum Collections Centre, including helping to create a custom-made loan box for Second World War objects intended for use with schools.
These experiences have helped broaden her understanding of collections care, conservation, interpretation, exhibitions and public engagement.
As Ria reflected during the exhibition, Devika is increasingly flourishing as a more confident leader.
Bringing Different Voices Into the Museum
The impact of Colours of the Past extends beyond Devika’s individual professional development.
For Museums & Galleries Edinburgh, the project represents an opportunity to bring different voices and experiences into the museum and explore how the city’s heritage can better reflect the diversity of the people who live there.
Speaking at the exhibition, Ria reflected on the importance of bringing voices that have traditionally been less visible within museum narratives into the space and giving those stories an opportunity to be amplified and celebrated.
Seeing people from different cultural backgrounds come together around the exhibition demonstrated what inclusive heritage practice can look like in reality.
It is not simply about inviting diverse communities into museums.
It is also about creating opportunities for communities to participate, contribute, interpret and tell their own stories.
Heritage Leadership in Practice
Colours of the Past demonstrates the wider purpose of the Heritage Leadership Traineeship Programme.
The programme is designed not only to provide participants with work experience, but to create supported pathways through which people from Black and Minority Ethnic communities can develop the skills, confidence, professional experience and networks required to build careers within Scotland’s heritage sector.
Projects such as Colours of the Past allow that development to happen through real responsibility.
Trainees are increasingly moving from observing and supporting heritage activities towards developing exhibitions, leading community engagement, working with collections, interpreting heritage and taking ownership of projects.
For Devika, Colours of the Past has provided an opportunity to bring together creative writing, community engagement, heritage interpretation and exhibition development while developing her own professional identity within the sector.
For the museum, it has brought new stories, perspectives and communities into its work.
And for the people whose experiences are represented within the exhibition, it has created a space in which their memories, objects and voices can become part of a wider conversation about Edinburgh’s heritage.
That is an important part of building a heritage sector in which more people can see that their stories belong too.
The Heritage Leadership Traineeship Programme is delivered by Next Step Initiative in partnership with heritage organisations across Scotland, with support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
The programme provides paid traineeships, professional development, mentoring and practical heritage-sector experience, supporting greater diversity, inclusion and representation within Scotland’s heritage workforce.