How can Museums and Cultural Ins3tu3ons help to create child friendly communi3es? - Playful Planet
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How can Museums and Cultural
Ins3tu3ons help to create child
friendly communi3es?
Charlo'e Derry, Independent Consultant& Lead, Playful Places
Alison Bowyer, Director, Kids in Museums
Rebecca Oberg, Strategic Lead for Play and Early Years, Eureka!
Ruth Lewis, Na3onal Trust
Vision All families will be welcomed, involved and belong in museums, so every child and young person is part of the experiences and opportunities a museum offers. Mission To work with museums nationwide to make them more welcoming for children, young people and families.
Annual programme • Six-point Manifesto • Annual Family Friendly Museum Award • Takeover Day and Teen Digital Takeover • Free online resources • Training and Consultancy
“Historic buildings and places, and associated activities and interventions, can have a wide range of beneficial impacts on the physical, mental and social wellbeing of individuals and communities.” ( What Works Wellbeing Evidence Review 2019)
Young people in the UK
• The Good Childhood Index published by the Children’s Society
shows children and young people are the most unhappy they’ve
been in a decade.
• One in six 16-24 year olds has symptoms of a common
diagnosable mental health problem.
• Among the issues of most concern to children and young people:
climate emergency, knife crime, mental health services, their future
prospects.
Young people in the UK
• 95,000 looked after children and young people, this
number is increasing (Coram).
• According to CPAG there are around 4.1 million
children living in poverty and numbers in working
households are increasing.
• Trussell Trust provided emergency food parcels to over
0.5 million children in 2018/19.
Museum visits by young people
• 8.5 million child visits to DCMS sponsored
museums in 2018/19
• DCMS Taking Part Survey, decline in 2017/18
seems to have reversed, percentage of non-
visitors aged 5-15 c.40%
• Sutton Trust survey shows about 40% of
schools have cut trips in past year
Access to museums isn’t equal • 29% of parents of children with special needs felt unwelcome and 42% were made to feel uncomfortable on visits (Censuswide / Ecclesiastical Survey 2019) • 51.4% of White people had visited a museum or gallery, compared with 28.6% of Black people and 37.9% of Asian people (DCMS)
Why aren’t people visiting? Free admission removes some barriers but, it’s not the same as being welcoming (Colleen Dilenschneider). As far back as 2015, Warwick Commission: “visits by UK residents to national museums with free admission fell by 3% over the period 2008/09 to 2011/12 while visits from UK residents from lower social groups fell even more, by 12%. The higher social groups accounted for 87% of all museums visits, the lower social groups for only 13%.”
Non-visitors: families Derby Museums research 2016: • Worries that museums were stuffy and boring and wouldn’t be fun. • Concerns about being told off when children were noisy or ran around.
Non-visitors: young people
Describe museums as:
• Remote, dusty, daunting, silent
• Big, awkward, cumbersome animals like walruses
(Kids in Museums literature review)
• Negative attitudes passed on in families
• Practical barriers: transport, cost of refreshments, not
able to go independentlyTakeover Day Annual day when children and young people (aged 2-22) go behind the scenes and take over adult roles such as curators, educators, security guards and fundraisers.
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Digital Takeover Day
• Young people takeover
museum social media
feed for the day.
• Target age group 15-22
• Most popular channels
are Twitter and Instagram.Top things young people want to do after Takeover Day: - Become regular museum visitors - Attend special events for young people - Volunteer - Do work experience
Why do museums take part • Working with new partner organisations (inside and outside school) • To kickstart a new initiative such as a youth panel or young curators’ group • To attract new audiences • To get input into future plans
Find out more
www.kidsinmuseums.org.uk
@kidsinmuseums
on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram
Alison Bowyer, Executive Director
alison@kidsinmuseums.org.ukExperiments with
Playful Museums
Charlotte Derry @LottieDerry
Changing the culture of museums to
beJer support and accommodate
children’s play“
Life should be playful, never mind
Museums. Our audiences want to be, so
we should be too…it’s got to be a good
thing!”
-John Beeley, Manager,
Tees Valley Museum Group“
Joyful discovery is the end game.
-Director NaINTENTIONS:
1. TO WORK WITH DIFFERENCE
Museums are shared spaces
Places to exercise rights in common.
WHAT IF WE COULD CARE
“FOR PLAYFUL
BEING-BECOMING
IN COMMON
RATHER THAN APART”?
LESTER, 2016WORKING WITH THE
INTRINSIC VALUE OF PLAY
Designing for the intrinsic value
➤
of play is an approach that is Intrinsic
designed to address the ‘feel’ of
space - within an adult -
dominated context and culture.
➤ If the value of playing, for it’s
own sake, is centre-stage,
instrumental and institutional
value are heightened.
Instrumental Institutional
Adapted from Beuderman’s
cultural value triangle, Lester and
Russell, 20142. Work towards creating favourable conditions
@Museum of London Docklands for play to emerge
Time
Space
Permission
@Halifax Piece Hall
Support - to
do it
For children’s play
And for adults
working with it3. DEVELOP ADULT
RESPONSE-ABILITY
• A movement which, as far as
possible, seeks to maintain
favourable condi3ons for
children’s play
• An experimental, what if approach
to bring more to the environment
and to lessen the impact of
constraining forces4. Promote understanding of
play as being well
‘Basically what “Play is the capacity for
crea1ng an alterna1ve or
play prepares you virtual reality which is
adap1ve because it denies
for is more play temporarily the limits of
existence and allows
and what that exci1ng affec1ve
gives you is more subs1tutes, which help to
create the brief illusion,
satisfaction in that those limits do not
exist”.
being alive.’
Lester, S, 2016• Everyday moments
of play are what
matter to children
• These moments are
pleasurable, they
make life worth
living…and life is
able to go on.
“It’s THE best thing here today!
Make a Cardboard City, Halifax Piece
Hall FesKval, 20175. Challenge the conven3ons of
Please do not touch ?
• Museums often have
contradictory messaging,
& promoted fields of action
• But in spite of “guidance”
children play anywhere
with anything.
Tate Liverpool
2018What happened? IniKal experiments -inspired by collecKons
Using disturbances to give permission One of our dinosaurs is missing! Can you replace it? Unfortunately we only have newspaper and sellotape Manchester Museum
Prompts - adding another layer
of engagement
Manchester Museum
“There’s a newspaper sword fight in the weapons
gallery - only you have to balance a ball on a
spoon at the same time!’Adding Stuff : Loose parts
Disrupts prevailing
order and design of
space
Making dens for animals, Manchester MuseumPermanent
Interventions
The Football Museum, ManchesterEncouraging
permissive staff
Puddle Science, Chester Zoo
Just for nonsense at Manchester Museum??Training - warming up staff for play
Chester Zoo play champions trainingEnglish Heritage Staff and volunteers making time machines
DESIGNING SUPPORT AND ADVOCACY FOR PLAY IN MUSEUMS Book shares ideas & principles from Manchester play training and experiments Written with gallery staff - to share with other settings
Re-imagining museums…..
• In play we can flex our imaginative
muscles
• Empathetically engage with issues
beyond our comfort zone
• Even re-imagine the
world..???Can we design environments which allow
for…..?
“…..excitement, wonder and the
unexpected; children living childhoods not entirely
ordered and determined for them by adults and
their preoccupations; relationships and experiences
that are not defined or legitimated only in terms of
work and outcomes? The value of play and
playfulness in its own right, and not just as a
means to other ends.” (Moss and Petrie,
2002)www.happymuseum.org https://playfulplaces.tumblr.com weareplayful@playfulplaces.co.uk 07982 1984369 Look out for: Messing about in Museums Workshops in 2020!
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