On April 5th, the National Museum of Natural History and Science in Lisbon hosted the TEHIC Conference on Museological Mediation and Heritage Interpretation, a meeting that brought together more than a hundred heritage interpreters.

They all came from different backgrounds. They are artists, tour guides and museum workers. They work with artistic, archaeological and natural heritage, and are eager and enthusiastic souls. They use both dialogical and unidirectional experimental techniques to interpret the heritage in their care. These colleagues of ours came to talk, share and inspire each other, in conversations that were structured around six pressing questions. However, these questions, although decisive in sparking the conversation, were not the epicentre of the animation, but were attitudes towards heritage interpretation and museum mediation. Listening to them, it was possible to find two fundamental attributes in everyone present that day: an unwavering commitment to the preservation and respectful valorisation of the heritage in their care, and a socially committed desire to serve the needs of the people who come to encounter that heritage. Listening to them, we also realised the rich diversity with which they give shape to these principles.

We found gardeners, those who see in each object the potential for stories to flourish and who see in each person the power to expand their vision of the world, those who plant seeds even when they don't see them flourish.

We met butterfly hunters, those who see multiple perspectives, infinite possibilities, fluttering in that strange expanse between the eye of the beholder and the object of contemplation, those who come with their nets ready and prepared, and show us that it is possible to catch these wandering slivers of understanding for all our pleasures.

We met fishermen, those who venture out on the moving waters, trying to catch these fast and agile, furiously animated things: the attention of visitors, the secrets of objects.

It is for people in this extraordinary range that the TEHIC project is designing a curriculum. It's for us and those like us. A curriculum that recognises that different attitudes and attributes will make use of different strategies and tools. We all have, to some extent, found our voices as mediators, interpreters and storytellers. But we lacked that marvellous place of playful experimentation that is often found in education. A curriculum capable of sharing multiple competences with its pupils and encouraging them to play, to experiment, to boldly go where these tools take them, can fundamentally reshape diversity in our sector.

Students who try out these methods and tools without the pressures of financial sustainability or commitment to political agendas will learn to use them to their full potential. They will happily experiment with new arrangements and compositions from diverse and sometimes ‘incompatible’ perspectives, enriching our communities with new and marvellous forms of engagement. Able to steal those irresistible words from the mouth of Carrol's little Alice: ‘Curiouser and curiouser!’.