New Book: Teaching Ancient Greece

We are pleased to share the release of Teaching Ancient Greece: Lesson Plans, Animations and Resources! This Open Access volume (that is, free to download) has been published by the University of Warsaw Press. It’s bursting with ideas from the Panoply Vase Animation Project and an international team of fantastic contributors to whom we’re very grateful.

1) What’s it all about?
In short, Teaching Ancient Greece is a set of resources and lesson plans to complement the vases animations and documentaries that we made for the project Our Mythical Childhood. The Reception of Classical Antiquity in Children’s and Young Adults’ Culture in Response to Regional and Global Challenges. The resources and lesson plans are ready to use and can of course be adapted for the particular circumstances of each learning environment. The videos are:

Iris. Rainbow Goddess.
About Iris - Rainbow Goddess (on the Iris page).
Heracles and the Erymanthian Boar.
About Heracles and the Erymanthian Boar (on the Heracles and the Erymanthian Boar page).
Sappho Fragment 44. The Marriage of Hector and Andromache.
About Sappho 44 and Sappho 44 Set to Music (both on the Sappho page).
Libation.
Dionysus.
and
About Dionysus:


2) What topics does it cover?
Pottery gives us insight into all sort of areas of life, so this collection connects with many topics. As well as pottery and art history, there's material on ancient religion and sacrifice, music, museums, curators and collections history, poetry and other forms of creative writing, the origins of drama, relationships and marriage, hunting, war, Latin and modern foreign languages, anthropology, and more.

Above, Sonya Nevin of the University of Warsaw and the Panoply Vase Animation Project with Teaching Ancient Greece in the National Museum in Warsaw - which houses the vases that the volume is based on.

2) What activity sheets are there in Teaching Ancient Greece?
You’ll find info and activity sheets covering:
• The Greek alphabet.
• A chronology of Greek pottery.
• A guide to Greek pottery shapes, illustrated by Steve K Simons.
• A guide to gods and their symbols.
• An activity sheet for matching gods to their symbols.
• Various blank vase shapes for creating new designs or copying existing designs to improve close visual reading and attention to detail.
• Line drawings of existing vase designs to colour, for younger learners and those who enjoy the relaxation of colouring; these can be made into feisty gifs.
• There’s an activity sheet for creating a scene from Sappho’s poetry.
• The musical score to Sappho 44, determined by Armand D’Angour of Jesus College, Oxford. Play your own version of it.
• A blank storyboard for planning new vase animations, as well as example storyboards which were used to plan Panoply’s Our Mythical Childhood animations.
• A huge set of stop-motion figures by Panoply’s Steve K Simons to make animations with.

• As well as activity sheets, each animation comes with a PowerPoint about the vase and its subject and there are bonus PowerPoints about the work of museum curators and about the Greek Gods. All these can be downloaded for free from the Panoply site.

Above, part of Teaching Ancient Greece's info page on ancient Greek vase shapes.

3) What are the lesson plans about and who designed them?
Created by experienced educators, each lesson plan contains an introduction, a lesson including one of the vases and its animation, and an exciting activity to extend the learning experience. The target audience is secondary school pupils, but the lessons can all be adapted for older or younger groups. The book takes you through lesson plans introducing pottery, through topics connected to the five animated vases, onto museum themed sessions, and then into stop-motion. Let’s look at what’s in there:

Pottery
In the chapter Understanding Vases, Warsaw/Panoply’s Sonya Nevin offers an intro to the uses, styles, and shapes of ancient Greek pottery, with lessons to embed that information, including activities with clay.

Above, painted pottery sherds created by trainee teachers at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education practicing a pottery lesson in Teaching Ancient Greece. Drawing vase scenes, especially on clay, is a great way to improve attention to visual detail and to clarify the difference between red and black figure techniques. Creating new designs synthesises what has been learned about ancient culture.

Sappho
The Sappho chapter features Rob Hancock-Jones of Townley Grammar School in the UK. He used the Sappho animation to develop a lesson on marriage and relationships in ancient Greece. This is a particularly good fit for the Love and Relationships part of OCR’s Classical Civ. A-Level.

Igor Cardoso of Colégio Santa Amélia in Brazil created a lesson about Sappho which encouraged young people to think about facing difficult situations and emotional resilience. His students wrote short stories and poetry about Andromache and the Trojan War.

Ancient music specialist Aliki Markantonatou in Greece created a lesson that is a step-by-step walk through composing lyric poetry. This complements her unique recording of Sappho 44, which you can hear along with the Sappho animation and documentary.

Above, the Sappho chapter with the Sappho vase it was based on (National Museum in Warsaw 142333).

Dionysus
For the Dionysus section, theatre facilitator Olivia Gillman in the UK used the Dionysus animation as the basis for a drama class. Students acted out the vase scene and created improvisations around ancient theatre.

Chester Mbangchia, teaching in Cameroon, created a lesson that introduces Dionysus, god of drama, wine, and transformation. All drama students must learn about the origins of ancient theatre. This chapter and its videos provide an effective introduction to drama and how it developed.

Above, the Dionysus chapter with its vase (National Museum in Warsaw EXC243) and the storyboard that was used to plan its animation.

Libation
For the Libation chapter, Sonya Nevin created a lesson plan that teaches about the iconography of ancient gods and how they can be recognised – useful for ancient religion and for art history. This accompanies the Libation animation, which shows the gods Zeus and Athena performing a libation sacrifice.

Michael Stierstorfer of the Gymnasium Schäftlarn, near Munich in Germany, used the same animation in a lesson about sacrifice in ancient Greece: what was done, how, and what it all meant. Animal sacrifice is often a more familiar concept to learners than libation, so a lesson that explores what libation is in the context of sacrifice can be really useful. Dr Stiefstorfer’s lesson also features a Latin language element – that can be included or skipped over according to what best suits the class working with it.

Above, Libation, a visual resource for demonstrating this form of ancient liquid sacrifice. Teaching Ancient Greece has two lessons connected to this vase and its animation and you'll find its PowerPoint on the Libation page of the Panoply site.

Iris
Dean Nevin, a teacher in Switzerland, brings us a writing challenge for younger learners. This session would also work well as a modern foreign language exercise. The class learn about the messenger god Iris and then write a message for her to carry.

Terri Kay Brown of Westlake Girls School in New Zealand (Aotearoa) created an introduction to anthropology. This is a chance to compare different cultures’ myths about the rainbow and to consider what is indicated by the differences and similarities between them.

Iris features in the Iliad more than you might expect. This chapter includes an info page featuring some passages in which she appears and a list of all her appearances. For study of the Trojan War, this can be an effective way to think about the relations between gods and mortals.

Above, a beautifully decorated Iris, by Temperance in Ireland, with the Iris vase (National Museum in Warsaw 142289).

Heracles
Jessica Otto, then in Germany, now in St. Catherine's British School in Athens Greece, uses the Heracles animation to show how stories can be represented and decoded through visual clues.

Barbara Strycharczyk of Strumienie High School in Józefów, Poland, established a project for pupils in multiple years of the school who worked collaboratively to research the hero Heracles: they studied his adventures, they made maps, they wrote newspaper reports, they made mathematical models, they drew pictures, and it all came together in a multi-year group exhibition.

Above, Heracles, club in hand, with the defeated Erymanthian Boar, by a pupil at Strumienie High School, Poland.

Museums
Museum educator Jennie Thornber, at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, UK, created a session for exploring museums in person or online and taking on the role of a curator. This is a great lesson for learning to use material sources as evidence, understanding what curators do, and building confidence about using museums and their websites. A PowerPoint on the Panoply site is one of several providing extra support for these activities.

Louise Maguire of Blackrock College, Dublin and the Classical Association of Ireland Teachers sets a more detailed museum challenge. In the role of curators, students plan exhibtions, considering extra factors such as audience, marketing and communication, budget, and accessibility - a creative challenge that drops students virtually into the world of work asking them to consider others and to think about what they have learned and how they can communicate their knowledge effectively.

If all these animation-orientated activities make you feel like having a go at making your own stop-motion animation, look no further. Christina dePian, a museum educator based in Greece ( https://www.kinoumeno.gr ), provides a detailed and accessible guide to making stop motions. There is information about stop-motion equipment and a lesson plan that goes through the steps of making an animation with a class (or making one yourself). Accompanied by a set of animation resources, this guidance makes it easy for anyone from 5 to 105 to try animation and create their own version of antiquity.

Above, with the stop-motion figures and guide, anyone can give ancient world stop-motion a go.

Teaching Ancient Greece is an action-packed set of resources to make learning enjoyable, challenging, and memorable.

All the animations and other videos can be seen online at https://panoply.org.uk

You can download your free copy of Teaching Ancient Greece here and hard copies are available here.

Thanks again to everyone who made it possible through contributions, editing, reviewing, artwork and more, and to the European Research Council for generously funding it.
We hope you enjoy exploring the ancient world with it!

Above, l-r at the University of Warsaw, Elżbieta Olechowska, Katarzyna Marciniak, Sonya Nevin, and Steve K. Simons. Below, Sappho Fragment 44. The Marriage of Hector and Andromache

Museum Life! A Panoply Interview with Sasha Smith

We’re delighted to be talking to Sasha Smith, Assistant Curator and Senior Executive Assistant (SEA) at the University College Dublin Classical Museum Sasha Smith has an extensive history in the museum and gallery sector. Today she talks frankly about what life in a museum is like and about the great range of cultural activities going on at the UCD Classical Museum. Regular readers will recall that Sonya and Steve of Panoply have had many happy adventures in the UCD School of Classics where the Panoply Vase Animation Project began.

1) You’re the Assistant Curator and SEA of the UCD Classical Museum. What does a typical week involve?
Every day starts with the same routine – check all the climate controls to ensure everything is as it should be for optimum care of the artefacts. Once that’s done, each day takes off at its own tangent as there is always something going on. The museum is in the heart of the School of Classics and any given week could see the museum provide a venue for undergraduate or postgraduate seminars, student society events, concerts, open days or host visiting researchers. We are also open every weekday to the general public and visitor numbers are going up and up.

The museum is true to its origins as a teaching museum so visitor engagement and educational outreach are a big part of my role. I have a lot of interaction with students of the School of Classics as well as other disciplines, amongst them Archaeology, History of Art, Creative Writing, Architecture and Music.

The museum runs a transition year work experience programme which gives secondary school students the chance to get practical experience working in a museum. I give them training in Museum Collection Care, Cataloguing, Digital Preservation, the Educational Programme, Outreach, Visitor Engagement, and so on. I also involve them in the museum’s social media output but that’s where they train me as they are always bang up to the minute on all the latest trends. I’m always delighted to provide visitors with an impromptu tour of the collection. And designing educational material which will appeal to whoever crosses our threshold is great fun.

I am currently conducting a complete re-inventory of the collection. Once done, everything will go on our new collections management system (CMS) which will give the collection greater visibility online.

Above, a view of the University College Dublin Classical Museum, which houses a fine collection of vases and other artefacts.

2) What events and projects have you enjoyed being involved with? What do you have on the cards?
We recently held a festival called Muses@UCD funded by the Night Time Economy Unit of the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. The festival presented six concerts which each represented an aspect of the arts. We had music recitals, art workshops, storytelling performances and poetry readings by some of Ireland’s most renowned writers, all held in the atmospheric setting of the museum after dark. The lead up to the festival was very intense involving everything from fixing dates for each event (easier said than done), designing brochures, promoting the events, managing ticket distribution and even putting out chairs on the night. Happily it culminated in a wonderful series of events which brought a whole new audience to the museum.

We also held a Family Fun Day a few weeks ago which saw an invading army of children take over the museum. It was wonderful to hear their laughter as they hunted mythological monsters and followed archaeological treasure trails. For me, the most memorable moment came when a very shy 5-year-old earnestly whispered to me that she had a very strong interest in ancient Greek geometric pottery! Her mum sounded so worried as she asked me what her daughter had said to make me look so shocked… I still laugh when I think of it!

I’m also really excited about an oral history project that I’m working on which is focused on the museum itself. Provenance is a huge issue for all museums but so much information is vulnerable to loss as it resides in people’s memories. Capturing these stories for posterity is going to be a really significant project. When complete, it will be included in the museum’s archive for future generations. Already wonderful tales of the artefacts' modern adventures are emerging … watch this space!

Above, Heracles fights Geryon on a fabulous black-figure amphora in the UCD Classical Museum. The amphora even has its lid!

3) How did your love of classical art develop?
My family all love history and art so there were always lots of fascinating books around the house with beautiful illustrations that I spent hours gazing at. The pivotal moment came when my parents went on holiday to Egypt and brought me back a little painted wooden sarcophagus which opened to reveal a mummy. I was hooked!

I ended up studying History of Art and Greek and Roman Civilisation at college. I continued my studies with an MA in Classics and a PGDip in Museum Studies. Jobs in the cultural sector were very scarce, so I worked in administration in the private sector and got my cultural fix volunteering with national museums and art galleries. I got a job as a guide in the National Gallery which I did in tandem with my ‘real’ job. Luckily, I worked just around the corner from the gallery – I even gave tours during my lunch hour as well as after work and weekends!

I attended every museum CPD (continuing professional development) event I could, and the years in the private sector gave me many essential transferable skills. It was all worth it in the end – I was over the moon when I got my position in the UCD Classical Museum. For me, it really was better than winning the lotto. It makes such a difference to love what you do and to be surrounded by others who share your interests. My desk is literally three feet from a 2nd century AD sarcophagus – no wonder I love coming into work!

Above, A fragment of a decorated Roman Sarcophagus, UCD 1359.

4) What do people seem to gain when they visit the museum as part of their studies?
The initial reaction from students entering the museum for the first time is nearly always “Wow, I can’t believe this museum is here on campus!” They’re right to be taken aback. The museum is a wonderful teaching tool. Just being able to get close to the items from the ancient Mediterranean seems to ignite such enthusiasm within the students for the civilizations they are studying. It makes that world feel real and knowledge about it attainable. You can really see things clicking in for the students and know that that experience is going to stay with them. Our founder, Prof. Henry Browne set up the museum in around 1910 with precisely that intention. Job well done!

5) There are changes afoot at the museum – what’s going to happen?
The building that the museum is in is 50 years old now and it’s time for a renovation. The whole collection is going to be packed up and put safely in storage for the duration of the works. For some items, like the sarcophagus, this means moving for the first time in half a century. It is an exciting and daunting time for everyone involved… Daunting because it’s a huge logistical challenge. There will be a lot of nail biting until each and every artefact is safely ensconced in its temporary refuge.

Exciting opportunities arise from the refurbishment which offers the chance to redesign the museum with the highest international museum standards in mind. There will be a lot of thought around collections care, access and outreach. It will be sad to see the old museum go but it will live on in the metaverse. The museum is going to be scanned for posterity and an interactive virtual copy of the old museum design will be created - that presents so many fascinating exhibition possibilities. It’s sure to be a great complement to the museum.

Above, an Egyptian Stela (stone inscription) UCD1367.

6) Who’s your favourite ancient Greek?
I would have to say Nike, not so much for the goddess herself but rather for the way she has inspired artists. There are so many wonderful depictions of the Goddess of Victory. The prize for most spectacular must surely go to the Winged Victory of Samothrace in the Louvre. This sculpture is so widely reproduced and familiar that it would seem impossible to be surprised by it. However, nothing can quite prepare you for seeing it in reality, it took my breath away. It's simply stunning. The enormous figure hewn from marble appears to float on a breeze.

UCD Classical Museum has several lovely depictions of Nike dating to 3rd-4th century BC. Perhaps the loveliest, is a red figure bell krater (UCD 197) which shows the winged goddess leading a pure white bull in procession. Panoply made two great vase animations of it a few years ago which can be viewed at https://www.panoply.org.uk/nike. This krater is on permanent display in the museum and is always a favourite with visitors.

Above, a view of the Nike Bell Krater (UCD197) displayed with two vase animations of the krater available on the tablet in front of it. https://www.panoply.org.uk/nike

Many thanks to Sasha for these insights into the busy and varied life of an Assistant Curator.
If you’d like to visit the UCD Classical Museum, head to Room K216 of the John Henry Newman Building, University College Dublin, Belfield Campus, Dublin. Entry is free.
Mon, Wed, Fri: 9.30am-12.30pm.
Tues, Thurs: 2.30pm-4.30p.m.
Or by appointment.
We'll bring you news when the renovation is complete and a re-visit is in order!

If you’d like to see more about the projects Panoply have done with the UCD Classical Museum, take a look at previous blog posts: Adventures at The University College Dublin Classical Museum, and Animation Launch for ‘Bad Karma’, and the UCD aniamtions' page on the Panoply website: https://www.panoply.org.uk/nike.

Above, a brief history of the UCD Classical Museum and its mission to teach classical antiquity via material culture.

Above, a video of the UCD Classical Museum, with bonus contemporary artworks by Dorothy Cross, Michelle Doyle, Aleana Egan, Patrick Hough, Richard Proffitt, Charlotte Weise.
Curated by Pádraic E. Moore and Museum Curator Dr Jo Day.