Damon Rice, responsible for setting up the District Six Ambassador Programme, gives us insight into its success.

The Museum Ambassador Programme contributes to nation-building by empowering communities to access their heritage. It provides young people with skills and experiences that transform their perceptions of themselves, each other and museums.

The District Six Museum Ambassador Programme trains Grade 11 volunteers from schools in communities in and around Cape Town to teach other young people, using knowledge they themselves have only recently acquired, about the museum and its collections. The voluntary nature of the programme is very important as it engenders a culture of community service and volunteerism. The only criteria for participating in the programme are enthusiasm and commitment.

Team work and responsibility to the Museum, fellow team members and school groups are stressed. Although a staff member is present for each presentation, the Ambassadors are in charge from the moment a school group arrives at the museum. Ambassadors work in teams of between four and six. They welcome the school, introduce themselves, organise the group and teach for an hour. Each member of the team is responsible for a part of the presentation.

The presentation covers themes of 'Community Life in District Six', 'Apartheid and Forced Removals' and 'Reconstructing the Past'. Using photographs, games and maps, the Ambassadors draw comparisons between contemporary life and the story of District Six.

The programme provides these participants at school level with work experience, practical skills and knowledge. The result is an increase in leadership skills, self-esteem and confidence, and language, analytical, critical and creative thinking skills are developed.

Every Ambassador I have worked with has discovered something new about themselves. They have learnt that they can look at works of art and understand them, that they enjoy working with young people or as one Ambassador put it, 'that I can do anything that I put myself to do'.

The Ambassadors' perceptions of museums also change. Some have said: 'they are fun places to be', '... they are not as conservative as I thought',
'... they are not dull boring places (which is what I used to believe) and that you can learn a lot from them', '... there is a lot more going on in a museum that others don't know', and 'they are not the elitist institutions I thought they were, museums are for everyone.' Many of the Ambassadors tend to return to the museums on their own, long after their programmes have ended. Many are inspired to follow careers in education, in museums or in the tourist industry. For all participants, museums become accessible environments that they begin to take ownership of. In 1997, a group that I had been working with at the District Six Museum wanted to continue their relationship with the Museum and became involved in the District Six Sculpture Festival entirely on their own initiative.

The programme has an impact not only on the participating Ambassadors but also on their peers. Miss Chotia, the Guidance teacher at Cedar High in Mitchells Plain, was impressed by the impact the District Six Museum Ambassadors were having on their fellow classmates. The Ambassadors had taken on a leadership role within the class, transforming a disruptive unpleasant class into one that was becoming a pleasure to teach. She went on to say that it was witnessing this transformation that made teaching worthwhile and she arranged for her entire Grade 8 group to be taken through the Museum by the Ambassadors.

Primary school students attending Ambassadors' presentations respond extremely well. The museum becomes a 'cool' place to be. Ambassadors act as role models for the younger generation. Informal chatting between Ambassadors and young students takes place both during and after presentations. This usually includes questions about how to become an Ambassador. Students in lower grades hear about the programme and look forward to being in high school when they too can be involved.

Museum Ambassadors represent the Museum in their communities and schools. This leads to a direct change in the community's perception of the Museum as it becomes an accessible representative community space. Parents are encouraged to participate in their children's experiences. At the end of each programme, their teachers, families and friends join in the Ambassadors' graduation ceremony. Mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters and best friends are taken on a tour of the Museum by the Ambassadors and for most, invariably it would be their first visit to a museum.

Most recently I have worked with a group from schools in Manenberg. The District Six Museum wanted to make a special intervention in Manenberg in response to it being identified as one of the most needy communities in Cape Town and one of the places District Six residents were forcibly removed to.

The group developed their own photographic exhibition focusing on an open field surrounded by a crŠche, the library and blocks of flats in the centre of Manenberg. They identified this field as a space they would like to be transformed into a park. To accompany their photographs and vision for the open field, the Ambassadors wrote anecdotes about life in Manenberg. The hope and optimism reflected in their stories provide insight into the realities of their daily lives and inspiration to their peers. After taking the primary school learners through the District Six Museum, these young Ambassadors guided the learners through their own exhibition which was curated at the Manenberg library and titled: 'Manenberg: Young Ambassadors Exploring a Creative Future.'

Establishing museums as resources which contribute to the educational needs of our communities and foster a sense of ownership and pride in our heritage is crucial to the development of healthy communities which have pride in who they are today and hope in their visions for their future.


The Museum Ambassador Programme was started 19 years ago by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco to encourage young people from deprived economic backgrounds to visit the museums. The programme was designed to be run by young people for young people in a supportive, non-threatening and fun environment. A challenge for South African museums is the need to give their audiences a sense of ownership of their collective cultural and natural heritage.

I developed and implemented the Museum Ambassador Programme at the Johannesburg Art Gallery. While I wanted to change young people's experiences in museums, I was also becoming increasingly aware of the diverse and unique educational opportunities museums offered and wanted to develop a programme that would thoroughly explore the museum as a place of learning. Over the last four years I have developed the programme at the District Six Museum, the African Window Museum, the Natale Labia Museum and at two Student Health and Welfare Centres Organisation (SHAWCO) community centres. The dynamic nature of the District Six Museum as a living heritage site has contributed greatly to developing the programme to its full potential.