Developing an Art Education and Outreach Programme for Museums in the North East Zone

Museums in North East Nigeria have been severely affected by the Boko Haram insurgency and its humanitarian aftermath, and developing professionally designed art education and outreach programmes for this zone contributes both to cultural recovery and to the fulfillment of museums' social mission responsibilities in post-conflict contexts. This study developed an art education and community outreach programme framework for museums in the North East geopolitical zone, with specific reference to Borno State Museum (Maiduguri) and the Gombe State Museum (Gombe). A programme design methodology drawing on post-conflict museum practice research, structured consultations with 10 museum officers, 8 arts educators, and 6 NGO programme staff, and comparative review of post-conflict museum programming from Rwanda's Kigali Genocide Memorial, Sierra Leone's National Museum, and Palestine's various cultural heritage institutions was employed. Consultations identified three priority programming areas: youth creative arts engagement sessions using museum collections as inspiration, traditional art form revival workshops addressing crafts threatened by conflict displacement, and community history and identity narrative projects for internally displaced communities. The programme designed comprises six programme modules with facilitator guides, resource requirements, and evaluation frameworks adapted for the security and infrastructure constraints of the North East context. Mobile programme delivery capacity (enabling museum programming to reach IDP camps) is a specific design feature. Expert review by eight museum education and humanitarian arts programme specialists confirmed the programme's contextual appropriateness. Recommendations include joint implementation with UNHCR Nigeria's cultural recovery programming.

Keywords: museum education, art outreach, North East Nigeria, post-conflict programming, community museum