National Museum of Bermuda: Stories of a Collective Past

The National Museum of Bermuda (NMB) is a premiere organization located on the island of Bermuda in the mid-Atlantic. The Museum is housed in the island’s largest fort and explores 500 years of Bermuda history through its exhibits, collections, publications, research and education programs.  Guided by their education strategy, NMB is shifting how and whose history is taught in Bermuda classrooms.

Through their Teacher Professional Development Programme (TPD) Moving the Needle, NMB provides accurate historical content, new teaching methods, and free workshops for local educators to make history relevant to today’s learners. In June 2021, NMB partnered with StoryCenter to bring Bermuda middle school educators together for a 6-week, online digital storytelling workshop. The goal was to introduce local teachers to digital storytelling tools they can bring back to the classroom as their students research, document and share their family histories. 

The educators created stories that blend indelible memories of land and sea, family, and moments that bring history to life. One tells of a mango seed carried from St. Kitts as a gift; another profiles a dapper, great uncle in Italy, who survived a Nazi prisoner of war camp; and others explore a woman whose Scottish father taught her, as a child, how to play a drum roll on two old biscuit tins full of nails, and a great-grandfather who instilled in his family the value of education for generations to come. There are stories of living on a boat for ten years; choosing one’s own family; and seeing one’s heritage as seeds blown across the Caribbean Sea into the middle of the Atlantic and nourished by the radiant Bermudan sun. These multiple perspectives reflect the rich diversity of Bermuda’s history and cultural heritage. 

 View one example below.