A Little Older, A Little Wiser
My experience with Knowledge Kapamilya is one that I will remember with fond memories. I am grateful that I became closer with people in this program, and I learned about things that I was interested in like pre-colonial Philippine history and impacts of western colonization. I was really struggling with taking 18 credits this quarter and I was glad that I decided to stick it out. Meaningful and important work was done this year, and even though it might just be a puddle from the ocean that is the entire collection of the Burke Museum, I am glad to have done this work.
Knowledge Kapamilya has opened my world perspective in more ways than one. It was more like an internship rather than a class. I felt like this experience was real-world learning; things that were very tangible were in my hands and themes and objectives were moderately hard to pick up but the right people were there to support me in grasping the concept. Most importantly every single person involved wanted to be there. No one was there because this class was a prerequisite to a class they really wanted, it wasn’t a class that was required by a major, and the “professors” were excited guides that helped us navigate the museum world.
If this was a summer camp, I would immediately sign up. One of the missions of the Burke Museum is to decolonize the museum space and I believe that with the Knowledge Family system, it is taking leaps and bounds to do that. Museums are typically look, but don’t touch, observe, and all the information you need to know about an object or artwork is on a card the size of your hand by the bottom left corner of whatever you are looking at. This experience has shown me what museums are capable of, what museums can accomplish if they just take the time to teach.
Overall, Knowledge Kapamilya has stayed true to three things:
- It showed me the rabbit hole that museum collections are
- It fostered spaces that invited learning from the ground up
- And it created a family just like the name says.
I will miss being able to take my time learning and reflecting and I will miss feeling special that I get to go to the backrooms of the Burke Museum. Most of all I will miss my Knowledge Kapamilya members and seeing them every week .
