The Timple House-Museum now has didactic guides for Canary students and teachers. This new resource was presented this Monday by the Minister of Education, Universities, Culture and Sports, Milagros Luis Brito, to the directors of the island's educational centers, as well as to the center's director, Benito Cabrera, the mayor of the municipality, Juan Pedro Hernández, the director of cultural heritage of the Government of the Canary Islands, Aranzazu Gutiérrez, and the island director of Education, Juan Cruz.
Located in the Lanzarote municipality of Teguise, the recently inaugurated Timple House-Museum was created with the aim of being more than just a place to exhibit instruments. It has a regional scope and will highlight an ethno-historical heritage, based on traditional music and the timple as its core.
The didactic guides of the Timple House-Museum are an orientation instrument for visiting this center, according to the Government of the Canary Islands in a statement. This resource serves as support to better understand and take advantage of the museum's contents, before, during and after the visit.
The guides contemplate two levels, primary and secondary-baccalaureate, and present an attentional and perceptive challenge to ensure that not only do students pass through the museum, but that the museum passes through them. In addition, they are presented in two versions, one for the student and one for the teacher. "With these units we provide tools to apply the contents and facilitate student visits to this museum," said Benito Cabrera.
Respect for ethnographic heritage
The objectives of these guides are to awaken active contemplation of the contents and educate in values such as respect for ethnographic heritage. Also, given that the Timple House-Museum presents instruments from various countries around the world, it offers the possibility of serving as a tool for achieving diverse didactic objectives by teachers. In addition, disciplines such as mathematics, history, botany, chemistry or architecture are intertwined in the construction of a musical instrument.
These guides aim to be a proposal that can be adapted by each teacher according to the profile of their students. They are a complement to the visual and technical resources offered by the museum, which are always subject to updating.
A living center
Its museum contents are presented with the characteristics of a living center, with diverse activities and with a divulgative content in which, in addition, the interest of the tourist attraction and local cultural dynamization converge. This will allow offering a program and activities with a stable and quality character that combine the functions of museum, study center and cultural space.
"Knowledge of heritage is of fundamental importance for the preservation of cultural identity, the development of adequate self-esteem and the breadth of vision when knowing other realities from the perspective of our own ethno-historical baggage. Therefore, the involvement of schoolchildren and teachers in this project is one of the goals," they indicated from the Government of the Canary Islands. For her part, in the presentation of these guides, Aranzazu Gutiérrez, stated that "it is about taking care of the intangible heritage that is the most fragile, protecting the oral and musical history that is part of everyone".
Games and questions
The guides can be downloaded from the official website of the Timple House-Museum, at http://www.casadeltimple.org. According to the Teguise City Council in a statement, these guides will include word searches, drawings, difference games, content relationship or questions. "In short, learning by playing is the purpose of these units that anyone can download on the website," they said.
For his part, the mayor of the municipality, Juan Pedro Hernández, has insisted that it is important that the museum be "alive, active, that it is disseminated and made known". "Everything that facilitates dissemination among our young people must be supported," stressed the first mayor of Teguise.