Friday, Panel 3, AUDITORIUM 14:30 - 16:30
JOYFUL PROGRAM
All presentations of this panel:
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Power of enjoyment - Best Practices in Finnish museums, Tiina Hero, Tuuli Uusikukka, Uusikaupunki, Helsinki, Pedaali ry, Finland
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Museum together, Petra Fuchs-Jebinger, Weltmuseum Wien, Wien, Austria
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Curating Joy- Audience Engagement at Turku Castle, Bengt Selin, Susanna Lahtinen, Turku City Museums, Turku, Finland
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The Pleasure of Panoramas, Sabine van der Hoorn, Panorama Mont des Arts, ScenoScience, Brussels, Belgium
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We are a moving company, Wencke Maderbacher, Moesgaard Museum, Højbjerg, Denmark
Power of enjoyment - Best Practices in Finnish museums
Tiina Hero, Uusikaupunki
Tuuli Uusikukka, Helsinki,
Pedaali ry, Finland
Keywords: edutainment, interaction, wellbeing, educator, experience
The Finnish Association for Museum Education Pedaali ry would like to bring a collection of best practices from the world of Finnish museums in the themes of active and engaging museum visits, enhancing wellbeing and social interaction in museums and learning through engagement. Most museums are very small and there are no educational or outreach departments, but everyone does everything. Finnish museums have very low hierarchies and where there is a department for education and mediation, the educators working there have a very versatile job description of engaging live and digitally with audiences of all ages. Many museums have combined entertainment and education making learning fun and easy. There is less of traditional lectures and one-sided guided tours, more of thought-provoking, active, audience engaging and co-creative programs, exhibitions and new forms of museum activities in Finnish museums. Pedaali will gather examples from all around the country from small and big; history, art and theme museums of the versatile audience engagement that is done to increase enjoyment and interaction in museums. The examples include e.g., the newly opened Leikki. The museum Leikki is dedicated to childhood, toys and play. The museum offers interesting, nostalgic and touching cultural experiences for all ages. Both with its insightful temporary exhibitions and with its surprising main exhibition, Laboratory of Play, the museum acts as a mirror of childhood in different times. At Leikki visitors can meet their inner child through a variety of events and services. Another example will be the European Museum of the Year nominee Archipelago Museum Pentala which is located on a beautiful island in the Baltic Sea. The museum offers programs for adults combining nature tours and social interaction. The playful and educating school day trips with history and nature are very popular. Pedaali will gather a few other examples from other Finnish museums around the country.
Presentation Tiina Hero and Tuuli Uusikukka
Museum together
Petra Fuchs-Jebinger
Weltmuseum Wien, Wien, Austria
Dia de los Muertos has been celebrated annually at the Weltmuseum Wien since 2017. In 2017 & 2018, the celebration was limited to the collaboration with an association, without the involvement of cultural mediation, because the organization of the celebration was in the department of Event and Marketing. The latter, due to its work processes, preferred to organize all activities exclusively with the external association, exclusively on 31.10. From 2019, the Education Department contributed program and organized thematic tours and workshops for adults and families with the Mexican artist Stephany Rodriguez - but at the request of the Event Department in advance and not on the day of the festival. In 2021, planning a festival was more difficult for the Events Department due to the Corona Pandemic - this was taken as an opportunity by the Education Department to make the activities around Dia de los Muertos more participatory: Stephany Rodriguez was commissioned to work with a school to create an altar (ofrenda). In the lessons for visual arts, death masks made of papp maché and figures for the altar were designed. In the museum there were workshops in Spanish for the students on Mesoamerica, the Dia de los muertos and Mexican culture, conducted by the cultural education department. The students built the altar together with the artist in the museum on October 19. Afterwards, they received a mask dance workshop from a staff member of the Mexican Cultural Institute, which they performed in the evening for the opening of the altar. The altar was then set up in the museum until Nov. 3, by which time numerous children's programs, family programs and vacation programs had taken place, carried out by the Cultural Education Department. The project is an example of the fact that it is essential to involve cultural education in the planning of events. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg_OherbJZM&t=58s
Presentation Petra Fuchs-Jebinger
Curating Joy- Audience Engagement at Turku Castle
Bengt Selin, Susanna Lahtinen
Turku City Museums, Turku, Finland
Keywords: Edutainment, Museum education, approachable, engaging
Our approach in this presentation is edutainment in audience engagement at Turku Castle. Our castle is often seen as a serious place and the most significant cultural heritage site in Finland. We have in recent years tried to shake things up, add a little bit of fun and joy. In our opinion museums can maintain their reliability and trust even if you try to make the audience smile or even laugh. Knowing your subject is key to any good content, whether it is serious or fun. The amount of work and research behind a short and easily approachable video or any other type of museum content is always as large as when making something more serious, even if it might look simple to others. These are always thoroughly curated museum contents, but we sometimes feel like we are also curating happiness. This is sometimes not understood even among colleagues in the same organization. It is often harder to make fun contents than hiding behind a mask of seriousness. When doing something light or fun you put yourself out on a limb. We like using edutainment, because joy and happiness are vital to learning, and learning and visiting museums should be fun. We want to encourage others to try, because even if it fails, remember that nobody dies. And you must accept that there will always be those who do not like the idea. In our presentation we show a few examples where we have successfully used joyful and engaging elements in our audience engagement.
Presentation Bengt Selin and Susanna Lahtinen
The Pleasure of Panoramas
Sabine van der Hoorn
Mont des Arts association, Brussels, Belgium
Access to rooftops, long views with surprising images, playful landmarks in public spaces, treasures revealed in the collections...
The Mont des Arts district in the heart of Brussels has enormous potential. Just a stone's throw from the European quarter, the government buildings and the royal palace, the Mont des Arts brings together not only Belgium's most renowned museums, but also cultural organizations such as the orchestra and the film library. All these, together with economic institutions such as the congress Center and two churches, have been grouped together for 20 years in a non-profit association with 16 members.
The Mont des Arts has the quality of being very central, and a symbolic historical site. However, its development is hampered by the complexity of the Belgian political context: the division of powers between the federal state, the regions and communities, the multiplicity of governments and parliaments and the very diverse political administrative cultures.
Most recently, in May 2022, the association organized an innovative event around a common theme: panoramas. As the institutions are located on a hill, most of them have views over the city. The objective of the festival being to "give a face" to the Mont des Arts, become familiar with the area, open the doors of the institutions, the theme of the panorama seemed appropriate. It did not require a large investment, the principle being to present the existing in a new light: "minimum input, maximum output".
This first experience certainly encourages the search for new forms of accessibility, and building bridges between the museums, their neighbors, and the city. If the animation of the public space has been welcomed with open arms by the financiers and organizers, the greatest challenge is that of getting each institution involved, supported and invested to the extent of its means in the common project.
We are a moving company
Wencke Maderbacher
Moesgaard Museum, Højbjerg, Denmark
Keywords: program development, behind the scenes, team structure, audience engagement
What is the core motivation for the development of our program? What do we want to achieve with our audience with our program? Let’s look at the methods, goals and programs of Moesgaard Museums program for the audience. The journey starts at different angles: meeting and challenging the expectations of our audience, handling quite different types of visitors and their needs and interests, finding the right colleagues and creating a vivid team. In this presentation we take you to the lessons learned of the past years, trying to develop an attractive and exiting program for our museum.
