Abstract

Mexicolore is a small, long-established, independent, artefact-based teaching team on Mexico and the Aztecs (for schools and museums throughout England); after 27 years of bringing Mexican culture and history to life through music, dance, drama, costume, and artefacts of all kinds for tens of thousands of children, the Mexicolore team plan to establish an Educational Trust, to bring in more front-line and support/research staff, and to explore new opportunities offered by modern communications technology (such as live interactive videoconferencing) in linking and working with schools in three languages and countries (English/UK, Spanish/Spain, Náhuatl/Mexico). The involvement of a wide range of partner organisations in these three countries is actively being sought.

Author: Ian Mursell 

Publication Date: 2007

At the heart of ‘Mexicolore’ lies a small, long-established, independent, artefact-based teaching team on Mexico and the Aztecs (for schools and museums throughout England); to date the team have worked with around 125,000 children in over 1,500 primary schools alone since 1980, as well as in major national museums, including the British Museum, Museum of Mankind and the Royal Academy of Arts (where the team ran a series of oversubscribed workshops for schools attending the major exhibition ‘Aztecs’ from 2002-3). Their expertise has been regularly sought by the BBC (from featuring prominently in the BBC Schools’ pioneering ‘Landmarks’ series on the Aztecs to being extensively consulted for ‘What The Ancients Did For Us’ and many other programmes for TV and Radio) and by educational institutions of all shapes and sizes. The British Museum’s Education Service has called Mexicolore ‘the highly successful teaching team’, and National Geographic Magazine has referred to Mexicolore as ‘a terrific resource for children and adults interested in learning more about Aztec history and culture’. The team were honoured to be invited to perform a traditional Mexican folk dance with a local London primary school in front of HM The Queen for the official opening of the Clore Education Centre and Great Court at the British Museum in December 2000.

In support of their core teaching programmes in schools, Mexicolore hosts an educational website on Mexico and the Aztecs, aimed largely at teachers and students of all ages with a serious interest in the Aztecs (an optional unit of study in the National Curriculum for Primary History, Key Stage 2). The site is updated and expanded constantly, and contains a huge range of carefully researched informational resources, rich in illustrations, with sections on Aztec life, artefacts, music, calendar, pronunciation, stories, links… It also offers a unique ‘Ask the Experts’ service, resource reviews, photo galleries, quiz, animated microsite on the Aztecs for children, and much more. On Mexicolore’s ‘Ask the Experts’ panel are 20 world class scholars on the Aztecs, including Professors Gordon Brotherston, Warwick Bray, Frances Berdan, Karl Taube, Esther Pasztory, Bernard Ortiz de Montellano, Dr. Colin McEwan, Dr. Tim Laughton and others from the UK, USA, Mexico and Spain.

Mexicolore’s website has recently been selected by the British Library to be archived as one of a small number of ‘documentary heritage’ sites that will form part of the new UK Web Archiving Consortium project. The Aztecs homepage can be seen via the links provided at the bottom of the page.

After 27 years of what the Royal Academy has called ‘inspirational’ workshops and presentations in schools, the core team intend to establish Mexicolore as a registered Educational Trust in order to ensure the long-term continuity of their educational work on (ancient) Mexico. At the same time demand for Mexicolore’s services is taking their work into new areas such as videoconferencing, teacher training, interactive resource production, prison education, school linking, and support for community education projects in Mexico in areas where the Aztec language (Náhuatl) is still spoken by between 1 and 2 million people.

To cope with the steadily increasing demand (the team is now regularly fully booked each term) plans are now in place to take on new core teaching staff as well as assistance from part-timers and volunteers keen to experience a unique ‘Theatre-in-Education’ troupe at work. In many ways schools see Mexicolore as a ‘travelling museum’, offering children the chance to involve themselves in Mexican culture and history by a direct hands-on approach: the artefacts are there to be touched/worn/played and generally ‘experienced’! Learning through artefacts (using music, dance, drama, costume, arts and crafts, as well as every-day lifestyle and work implements) has always been at the heart of Mexicolore’s approach to teaching – one glance at the ‘Feedback’ section of Mexicolore’s website should suffice to convince anyone of its value…

Mexico features in the National Curriculum not only in History: the little town of Tócuaro, Michoacán is the focus for a locality study in Geography (Key Stage 1) and approximately 20% of Mexicolore’s workload now comes from schools delivering this unit, for which the team have developed a dedicated programme.

Videoconferencing has opened up a whole new world of possibilities with schools beyond the team’s current ‘range’ from their London base. Two years ago Mexicolore decided to partner with Global-Leap, an organisation at the forefront of bringing videoconferencing into classrooms, and has not looked back since. Global-Leap is a not-for-profit resource, funded by subscription from UK schools, to provide help, support and develop and extend content for videoconferencing in the classroom, to provide support for content providers (such as Mexicolore), and to identify contacts and support for international programmes. Whilst nothing can match immediate direct personal contact between team, children and artefacts, there is a unique element of excitement and discovery in a live interactive videoconference session that holds a particular attraction for learners of all ages, and Mexicolore now run sessions ranging from ‘Snakes and Lizards’ (a team challenge based on the calender signs in the Aztec Sunstone) to ‘ofrenda’ decoration (how to prepare a traditional family altar for the Day of the Dead festival); they have even managed to teach a Mexican folk dance successfully despite the camera being unable to track the floor to show the dancers’ feet movements! Children seem endlessly to enjoy commanding a ‘real’ expert to pick up/demonstrate/explain strange artefacts they see on studio tables, walls or shelves in front of them…

But it’s the long-term possibilities presented by videoconferencing that really excite: linking a UK school with a Mexican school AND an archaeological team at work in the field; researching and devising a simple performance based on triangular input from schools in three countries and languages, such as the enactment of an ancient legend in English (UK), Spanish (Spain) and Náhuatl (Mexico).

Over the years many schools in England have expressed interest in linking with partner schools in Mexico. Today, finally, the technology and institutional infrastructure are now more or less in place to enable such links to flourish. Mexicolore have been involved in supporting two major initiatives in recent years in this field: a group of secondary schools in Cumbria that set up links with the British Council’s help with partners in Mexico City, and (more recently) a group of 10 primaries in Nottinghamshire that now have firm links with partners in Coahuila, northern Mexico, through the ‘Háblame’ (‘Speak to me’) project. In 2006 Mexicolore ran workshops in each of the 10 Nottinghamshire schools to help kickstart the links: one teacher described the visit later as ‘fantastic – universally acclaimed by staff and pupils. A perfect positive experience to help launch our Mexican link and our teaching/learning of the Spanish language…’, and another wrote:-

‘Thank you so much for a wonderful day. The children are going to be talking about your visit for weeks, and I know they will remember it for the rest of their lives! The lighting effects created a fantastic setting, and I think the children thought they were stepping back into another time. Your artefacts are amazing and we could never hope to let the children see so many truly awe-inspiring items, let alone give them the chance to hold them and use them. They loved the dressing up, all the more because they were trusted to go back to their seats still wearing the costumes. Everything combined to give us an unforgettable day.

‘But it wasn’t just the artefacts and materials, it was the lovely, friendly, enthusiastic atmosphere created by the two of you. The children felt very comfortable and able to ask questions which were going to be answered without them feeling silly or embarrassed, and they loved the way Graciela treated them as if they were really Aztecs or modern day Mexicans.

‘I know that over the next term, I’m going to be referring back to your visit every time we work on Mexico and the Aztecs, and we can’t thank you enough for your input into our topic work.’

The success of these linking projects is largely due (at the UK end) to the work of dedicated staff at local Development Education Centres. Mexicolore has forged a strong association with Mundi, the DEC in Nottingham that is masterminding the Nottinghamshire-Coahuila links. Given that Mexicolore was conceived at its birth in 1980 as a ‘development education’ project – and received small project funding from Christian Aid and Oxfam, as well as from the Greater London Arts Association – it is perhaps a sign that it has remained faithful to its roots that in January 2007, in a poll of over 30 DECs throughout England, 75% of the Centres expressed a positive interest in working with Mexicolore in the future in new collaborative ventures.

Moreover, plans are fast developing to establish links further afield still: with community education projects among Náhuatl-speaking villages in central Mexico, with schools that have access to videoconferencing equipment in Mexico, with Mexico’s interactive digital educational software developers Enciclomedia, with researchers documenting Nahua oral history…

The team’s vision is that of helping to create, nurture and support an international (and interactive) learning and teaching community focused on Mexico and Ancient Mesoamerica, in which all the participants – University Professor, field archaeologist, teacher, actor, village elder, school pupil, musician, anthropologist, researcher, volunteer, translator, writer, linguist, librarian, artist, web developer, student… – can share inspiration, encouragement, information and intrigue in each other’s creative work. In the long run, a valuable, thriving and living resource will exist, at the service of the international community, powerful enough to break barriers and to be a force for good.

Just as the Mexicolore team now receive messages from newly qualified teachers who were ‘fired up’ as children by Mexicolore workshops they themselves took part in 20 or more years ago, our wider legacy to the next generation must be the wisdom of the Toltec artist who leaves a message behind to inspire others for the common good –

‘I carve a great stone, I paint thick wood, my song is in them. It will be spoken of when I am gone. I shall leave my song-image on earth…’

Personal Statement:

‘Mexicolore’ is a small, long-established, independent, artefact-based teaching team on Mexico and the Aztecs for schools and museums throughout England; to date the team have worked with around 125,000 children in over 1,500 primary schools alone since 1980, as well as in major national museums, including the British Museum, Museum of Mankind and the Royal Academy of Arts. Mexicolore also hosts an educational website which has recently been selected by the British Library to be archived as one of a small number of ‘documentary heritage’ sites that will form part of the new UK Web Archiving Consortium project. After 27 years of what the Royal Academy has called ‘inspirational’ workshops in schools, the core team intend to establish Mexicolore as a registered Educational Trust in order to ensure the long-term continuity of their educational work, which is now expanding into new areas such as videoconferencing, teacher training, interactive resource production, prison education, school linking, and support for community education projects in Mexico in areas where the Aztec language (Náhuatl) is still spoken by between 1 and 2 million people. Videoconferencing has opened up a whole new world of possibilities with schools physically ‘out of reach’, but it’s the long-term international possibilities that really excite: linking a UK school with a Mexican school AND an archaeological team at work in the field; researching and devising a simple performance based on triangular input from schools in three countries and languages, such as the enactment of an ancient legend in English (UK), Spanish (Spain) and Náhuatl (Mexico)…The team’s vision is that of helping to create, nurture and support an international (and interactive) learning and teaching community focused on Mexico and Ancient Mesoamerica, in which all the participants – University Professor, field archaeologist, teacher, actor, village elder, school pupil, musician, anthropologist, researcher, volunteer, translator, writer, linguist, librarian, artist, web developer, student… – can share inspiration, encouragement, wisdom and creativity.

Link to the Mexicolore Aztec Home Page: http://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/

References & Contacts

No references available in original ac.uk case study.