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Ancient Merv Project continuously works with the local schools, education centres and the local villages in order to engage with different groups of the local stakeholders and to communicate the findings of the project. The report below highlights the project's first, full-scale open day for the local community of Merv.
Open day and Art competition
Jumageldy Pirliew, Nadia Glassup, Sjoerd van der Linde and Gaygysyz Jorayev worked together with the park staff and archaeologists of the Ministry of Culture in organizing an open day at Ancient Merv. On Sunday the 1st October, around 50 people came to the site to learn about the history and management of Ancient Merv. The open day consisted of:
- Art competition. Children of neighbouring villages of Merv had been invited to enter into an Art competition. During the open day, the winning entries were announced by the British Ambassador to Turkmenistan. The winning entries can be seen here.
- Handling collections. Several handling collections
have been developed to help archaeologists of the Ministry
of Culture and the Park to explain visitors about archaeological
research. The handling collections and activity sheets will
be used by the park guide Jumageldy Pirliew in educational activities
throughout the year.
- Site visit. Visits were organized to an excavation at Sultan Kala, were archaeologists of the Ministry of Culture explained to visitors about the archaeological work undertaken. Visitors were also taken to several sites within the park.
- Ancient Merv Movie. The Ancient Merv Project and the Archaeological Park staff developed a short interpretive movie about the history and management of Ancient Merv. The movie, available in Turkmen and English, was shown during the open day and will be available for teaching purposes at UCL and the Ancient Merv Park.
We would like to express our gratitude to Mr. and Mrs. van der Linde and to the Wiebe Visser Heritage Foundation for their kind financial support to make this day such a succes.
