In October 2017 students from third to sixth grade of the Japanese school in Cairo visited the Grand Egyptian Museum Conservation Center (GEM-CC).
We wanted them to experience the conservation process up close, so we put up a visit schedule to visit the laboratories and then try to be a conservator and fix replica of deteriorated papyrus using the same technique and work flow of the real process.
Ms. Nishisaka, Deputy Chief Adviser prepared a presentation to introduce our project first, then they moved on to check out the labs, starting out with inorganic lab moving on to the wood lab and heavy artifacts and finally experience conservation work at the preparation lab.
Mr. Yosri and Ms. Hasnaa, Organic lab made preparations such as finely cutting Japanese paper and explained to the students how to perform the process and started working together
We separated the students to groups according to their grade from third to sixth grade. They seemed nervous at first, however once Mr. Yosri and Ms. Hasnaa engaged with them showing them how to use the tweezers, Japanese paper and the adhesive solution they showed interest and worked together.
Through this visit many of the students have shown interest in Archaeology and Conservation, and asked a lot of questions and Ms. Nishisaka and the project experts Mr. Okada, Ms. Yokoyama and Ms. Shibata answered them thoroughly.
Later we received a pleasant surprise from the students, they wrote us letters about what was interesting and what they liked, so we wonder if we can see them again as conservators in the future.