We travel......in ancient Macedonia: a museum kit for the permanent exhibition of the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki

Museums, nowadays, seek out to use more effective ways to communicate with the public and to attract new groups of visitors. Their strategy is to “get out of the museum”, to come closer to society by implementing various programs of approach. One type of these programs that belongs to the forms of indirect communication,  according to Nikonanou (2010: 94-95), is the museum’s loan kit. Loan kits are suitcases or boxes that are lent to schools or to other educational institutions.  In addition to informative material and games, the museum loan kits contain copies of museum exhibits, and, in certain cases, they contain authentic museum exhibits. In the dissertation, it was attempted the planning of material for a museum loan kit with thematic units that reconstruct aspects of life in ancient Macedonia. A review of the Greek experience with regard to the planning and the implementation of museum loan kits was considered a part of great importance. Data presented from 102 museum loan kits that come from 29 museums and other similar institutions from all over Greece. It was attempted a categorization of these museums and institutions on the basis of their names and the content of their collections. The planning of the museum loan kit was presented in detail and also are presented its thematic units which are based on the exhibition units of the museum’s collections about “Macedonia from the 7th c. BC until the late antiquity”. The principles for planning the museum loan kit are presented next, and then, proposals are made concerning its use for educational purposes.