So, in terms of the obstacles and the bottlenecks
that we had to confront over the course of the project,
there were of three main kinds, I would say.
They pertain to human resources,
logistics and nonscientific aspects of the project
and also PR communication about the project.
So, in terms of human resources, we were a team of 12 to 15 researchers
and scholars and heritage specialists working on the project,
but only part-time on top of our day to day job.
So it required constant effort on our part
to find time to devote to the exhibition which consumed...
which was very time consuming, much more probably than we had...
than some of us had probably expected in the first place.
And two people were working full-time.
So, one was a researcher postdoc
who's position was funded through the grant
that we had received from the French National Migration Institute.
And also another one was a young employee who was doing the fundraising,
a lot of the admin work for the
preparation of the exhibition.
But then that person left for another permanent position
elsewhere in the cultural world,
which meant that we had suddenly to put in place a contingency plan
and hurry up in dividing her tasks among us, among the volunteers.
And so it sort of increased the weight
for a number of months until we found a replacement.
It did increased
the duties of each member of the group.
So that was a challenge.
Also, finding the guides was something that took time.
But fortunately, we were very lucky to find three fantastic people
whose contribution
was really essential in making this exhibition a success.
And all the visitors told us about their excellence and the fact that it really was
due in large part to them that people enjoyed the exhibition.
So that's for the human resource aspect.
As far as logistics and nonscientific skills are concerned,
obviously very few of us had professional level
skills in non-academic
fields of knowledge and work.
So, we had to develop those skills, and thanks to funding,
I would say that to young researchers, the more funding we got, the better
able we became to outsource a number of tasks,
be it legal,
museum design related,
logistical, etc., to outsource
these tasks to
professionals who were
way better and more competent than us in doing those.
Another and third challenge we had to meet was to spread the word,
to disseminate, to promote the exhibition.
And so quickly
the project was quite well
known within the social science community and the migration
history community in Paris, but that's a very tiny world.
And so for an exhibition to become a success,
you need to reach out to many more people.
So we put in place a PR strategy and slowly but surely
we approached the news media and then their interest picked up.
And so I would advise our young researchers to really play
that game because once one or two
news media outlets tell a little bit about your project,
then they cross read themselves all the time.
So other
organizations, media organizations,
will reach out to you and
offer you interview opportunities or media appearances.
And so then it really gathered steam and we were able to do printed
press, online websites, in particular in the
arts community.
But then radio, television
and even expanded outside of French borders.
We had Swiss, Belgian, German media approaching us
to tell about the project and how we had designed it.
So, also I wanted to point out
that the reservation website, the website that we partnered with
in terms of booking tickets for the exhibition,
that was, really we didn't expect that, but it was really essential
in promoting our show to the outside world
because that particular website
sells tickets for a lot of
touristic
landmarks in the Paris metro area.
And so as visitors started to come to the exhibition,
we went up in the rankings of that website
and so many more tourists from
all over France and Europe, even from
we had people from the Americas or China coming to the exhibition and they have
only seen this through the suggestions of that particular website.
So that's also key.
It was not expensive at all to team up with them.
And it was also key to expand our reach to the outside world.