This morning we visited the Irish Emigration Museum, also known as EPIC, and explored the stories and experiences of Irish emigrants throughout history. The museum was extremely engaging with 20 exhibits that used technology to interact with the “emigrants” while we walked around collecting stamps on our fake passports. I was overall very impressed and interested with my experience.

I learned about the diversity of Irish emigration, people of many backgrounds how left Ireland for a variety of reasons. Their new experiences were shown in the different exhibits such as the innovation exhibit “discovering and inventing”, sports exhibit “playing the world”, and the storytelling exhibit. There was plenty of opportunity where they traveled but, once they arrived in their new countries, Irish emigrants often faced discrimination and hardship. At the “Hunger, Work, Community” exhibit I learned about how the Irish emigrants work in low-paying jobs and live in poor working conditions. Irish immigrants to the United States were not treated correctly and were discriminated against, which was sad to read about at EPIC.

The section that I enjoyed the most at the museum was the final exhibit named Connection. There was a 5-minute presentation that made the viewer feel like they were traveling onboard with an emigrant leaving Ireland to get to the United Stated during a rain storm, and also being on the airplane with the immigrant traveling to Ireland. This allowed me to have a better perspective of how real the situation was, and I felt like I experienced it myself.