Daring to introduce the change

The Collections Management Training Program in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was held from November 2016 until January 2017, was truly a unique experience in my life. Not only did it affect me, on a professional and personal level, but it also gave me the chance to witness the growth of other participants. Fionn succeeded in helping us advance not only as museum professionals but also provided us with a variety of skills and techniques to cope with everyday life. Despite our strong resistance towards her strict and professional approach, she did not back down and by doing so eventually showed us that we can be what we aspire to be even though we live in the Balkans. Every lesson we had was eye-opening. I feel like I have learned more from her during this short time spent together about the museum world, than I learned in five years of formal education. The assignments were not a delight, they took so much of my time and yet I feel weird about not doing a terminology definition next Monday. The class that ended up being all female was this astonishing mixture of individuals with views and opinions that were completely different and somehow she managed to please us all. Witnessing the progress other ladies made before my eyes made me hope that I had progress at least partially as much as they did. I strongly believe in these amazing ladies and I look forward to seeing their future individual successes. Through this program I have learned much, I saw that I need to learn a lot more but it also made me want to achieve more, made me believe in myself and basically made me fearless. For that I will always be grateful to Fionn and I can only hope that more people from Bosnia and Herzegovina will have the chance to meet her and learn from her.