Next up on our staff profiles, Tori McNish, Education Programmer.
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| Tori having fun with the newspaper guy on our cake. |
Hi! My name is Tori, and I am the newest Education Programmer at the Musée Héritage Museum. Originally studying contemporary Chinese art history in university, I came to work in a heritage museum in a bit of a roundabout way…
After graduation, I had the opportunity to take part in the Alberta-Smithsonian Internship Program, a work abroad program at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. I was pegged to work on the Ai Weiwei (a contemporary Chinese artist) retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, where I was exposed to developing and delivering formal museum education programs for the first time. Upon my return from the United States, I decided to try something a little different, and was offered a job working in education at Fort Edmonton Park – a far cry from interpreting contemporary art! Yet I had a great time “getting back to my roots,” learning about the history of Edmonton and the surrounding area, and sharing this newfound knowledge and enthusiasm with a young audience. So it wasn’t so much of a leap when I started working here, at the Musée.
My main job as a Programmer consists of delivering curriculum-based education programs for students in elementary through high school. I also assist in developing community programs and special events, and in creating interactive content for exhibitions (including our children’s gallery, the Discovery Room). That means I get to create programming materials using Adobe, something I learned through taking visual communications design courses in university.
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| Tori helping out in the Discovery Room during the Snowflake Festival in 2013. |
Outside of my position in programming at the Musée, I spend a good portion of time writing on my own blog, PrairieSeen, which chronicles the visual arts in Edmonton (I guess you could say I have a foot on each side of the fence!) I have also recently applied to do a Masters program in Museum Education, and hope to start working towards that next September.