Meaningful Museum Experiences: Research Background

What makes a museum experience particularly meaningful for children and adults?  We have to admit, we are rather obsessed with this question. 

As we mentioned in our last post, while our field-wide survey work has helped us identify explicit motivations for visiting museums, our more qualitative client work has helped us suss out the types of experiences adults have found most meaningful, or even transformative. It turns out that what people said they explicitly wanted wasn’t always the same as what they found meaningful.

This year, working with 40 children’s museums, we had an opportunity to dig even deeper into those meaningful experiences for adults, while also trying to understand what makes an experience memorable and meaningful for very young children.  It had also been five years since our last field-wide study of children’s museums, so we thought it was an opportune time to check in and see if there had been any shifts in the visitor base at these museums.

So what were our initial questions as we designed this research?  We boiled it down to these:

• Has the children’s museum audience shifted in the past five years?
• What do visitors perceive the role of the children’s museum to be?
• How do explicit motivations and desires differ from what visitors actually value in experiences?
• Why do some children and adults have particularly meaningful experiences in museums?
• How have some museum experiences changed visitors?  What are the common themes, and how can museums “stack the deck” to help more visitors, both children and adults, have meaningful, even transformational, museum experiences?

Our research doesn’t definitively answer all of these questions, but it does give us some greater insights, pushes our thinking even further, and raises new questions (of course!). 

This study required a combination of survey questions, some of which we had used in the past, as well as two carefully crafted open-ended questions.  Forty children’s museums joined us for the ride and willingly sent out survey requests to their e-mail lists and via their social media outlets.  Over 8,400 respondents took time to respond to the survey.

Over the next few months, we’ll share with you our initial findings, give you a peek into our thought process as we conducted our initial analysis, and, at the end, we hope you’ll help us figure out where the research should go next, as we uncover even more questions along the way.

What do you think?  Simply click on “comments” below to share your thoughts (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

Comments

[Janis Nostbakken]

Can't wait to read about your findings. Especially interested in finding ways to deliver meaning to both kids and their accompanying adults. Too many children's museums are reduced to play stations, the equivalent of indoor playgrounds, in my estimation. We all know the importance of play, but what about content? Before the age of museums specifically designed for children, we grew up visiting plain old museums and found a way to be delighted, engaged and passionate about return visits. Have we gone too far in creating kid-centered experiences? Have we underestimated the intellectual capacity of children? Have we failed to deliver opportunities for old and young to share special moments inside the museum walls and even virtually online? Important work you are doing.

[Susie Wilkening, Reach Advisors]

These are great questions, Janis. I grew up before the proliferation of both children's museums and science centers, and was one of those delighted kids anyway. Yet I probably would have loved the interactive nature of children's museums and science centers as well.

We asked ourselves questions similar to those you raise, and purposefully structured the relevant questions in our surveys to not take a position on any of this, but to gather what people have found meaningful and memorable. (Note - we are not looking at learning outcomes, which is a totally different subject!)

Thanks for the comment.

[nurhaya]

My research proposal -An investigation into experiential factors that influence visitors participation and immersion in science centre context. Words like memorable, theming, visitors physical and emotional value., scenography ,creative process,etc yet to be explored. Hope to learn a lot from the expert! Thank You.

[Alan Burrows .... Treasurer, Lady Denman Heritage Complex Inc.]

The Lady Denman Heritage Complex Inc. ... or Maritime Museum (www.ladydenman.asn.au) is a prize winning regional museum and cultural centre for the people of the Jervis Bay region of the south coast of New South Wales, Australia and every other person we can persuade to come and experience our history, heritage and our art. 30+ years old we are also seeking to better understand the current stimulus for young and old to want to explore the collection, local history, local indigenous people, Exhibitions (both museum and cultural based). As an example we currently have an exhibition of model boats .. ho hum .. except that we also had a model boat builder working on his latest creation and more than willing to chat with anyone interested + as part of the See Change art festival (www.jervisbayarts.asn.au) we had an amazing collection of childrens art titled Trash and Treasure (http://www.jervisbayarts.asn.au/?page_id=539).. the imagination displayed in a vast array of works was breath taking.
But like many other regional museums/cultural centres we have yet to re-understand the needs and perhaps unstated desires of our visitors. Those who spend the time to roam and read are astounded ... others look and ponder the cost of entry and decide that the spacious grounds offer a sufficient stimulus.
We wait with great impatience for you to unfold the results of your most recent survey