This work was funded through generous grants from the University of Cambridge’s Arts and Humanities Impact Fund and the Global Challenges Research Fund.

What’s really great about all of this is that it’s quite endless; one door leads to another, then another, then another… It means it’s been a success because it’s opening doors to other possibilities and ideas, which is really interesting. David: And what are the next steps for this? Sara: At the moment, we are running a new series of pop-up museums in Egypt. We would like to extend this and recreate an ancient Egyptian carpentry workshop in Damietta, because although it’s the hub of Egyptian furniture and woodwork, there is no museum related to ancient Egypt in the city.Using the same model, we’ve been taking research, including the work on the Nespawershefyt coffin set that’s displayed at the Fitzwilliam Museum, to the general public in Egypt in new ways. It’s been about exploring different ways of engaging with communities and creating a connection between people and museums. The goal is that museums are not just dry, academic institutions, but something that can go out to people beyond the museum walls. David: Sounds interesting! What kind of things have you been getting up to in your sessions? Any unusual venues?

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Sara: Well, we have been working with furniture and woodwork designers in the city of Damietta in northern Egypt. Damietta is the hub of woodwork in Egypt; Egyptologists and conservators from the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir were able to go to a furniture factory here and run a pop-up museum. Sara: Working with the Fitzwilliam Museum on the Ancient Coffins project has led to new opportunities for collaboration here in Egypt, including with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the National Museum in Alexandria and the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir. The main development was to explore using pop-up museums. In the end, we were having difficulty finishing the pop-ups because more people kept arriving. Someone stayed for almost 8 hours and one of the children who came along told us that: