How can museums interest young people?

 

 

 

 

Talking to some volunteers working in the British Museum, we exchanged stories of young visitors, schoolchildren and teenagers visiting archaeological digs and museums. We agreed that, in our experience, children enjoy coming to archaeological sites, because it is an exciting day out, they can climb in and out of the site…maybe it is just because they get to play in the dirt?

So what about museums then? Some museums are very good at engaging young visitors, with galleries that are easily accessible to children, where there are things for children to do, get involved with and experience. Not all galleries are like this, but is that necessarily a bad thing?

I’ve included a few examples of galleries below, which are for Egyptology collections.

The first is the Nebamun gallery here in the British Museum, which was not specifically designed to target young audiences.

http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/galleries/ancient_egypt/room_61_tomb-chapel_nebamun.aspx

The other is the Egypt galleries at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery:

http://www.brighton.virtualmuseum.info/ancientegyptopening.asp 

 An exciting new approach is the ‘Mini-Museum’, a gallery for under-5 children at the recently reopened Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow.

http://www.glasgowmuseums.com/venue/page.cfm?venueid=4&itemid=36

What do you think works best? How do museums in your countries attempt to attract younger visitors?

Terhi