Good morning. At the Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah's Amricani Cultural Centre, we kind of came through the back door on this . . . Because we don't have full-time guides (although we have a tremendous docent programme that covers lots of hours), there is no guarantee that someone will be there to help families enjoy their visit to our museum, we create a "Parent's Guide" for each exhibition.
The idea was to give parents information and tools that they could use to enhance their kids' experiences. We included some family-friendly (meaning short and written for a 10 year old) background on each exhibition, details on how to read the labels, anecdotal information on different objects that created storytelling opportunities, questions (usually based on a Project Zero thinking routine) they could ask at different objects (with guides re kids' ages) and follow-up ideas based on anticipated responses, and pictures of certain objects with a detail or two highlighted, again designed to help the parents get their child/children to interact with the object or exhibition.
The first guide we did ran out incredibly fast and it certainly wasn't based on the number of families that visited. So we reprinted and watched what was happening. Turns out many individuals and groups of adults, with no children in tow, were using the "Parent's Guide" on their visit. I think because it was created for children, it was simple, more inviting and covered more museum basics than the traditional exhibition brochures. (It is interesting to note that most of the people we observed also used the exhibition brochure for additional "grown up" information.)
What we do now is do a "Visitor's Guide", which is basically the same as the "Parent's Guide" but written for a high school level reader and without "ask you child" or "point out to your children" notes. Instead, we include comments that encourage the reader to take the appropriate action . . .
Good luck.
Sue
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Susan Day
Education and Communications Consultant
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Original Message:
Sent: 03-12-2015 10:04 AM
From: Gail Ravnitzky Silberglied
Subject: : "How to Visit a Museum" resource for Blue Star Museum program?
This week I attended a kickoff meeting about the 2015 Blue Star Museums program (which as you know, encourages museums of all types to allow active duty military service members and their families to visit their museums for free). During the meeting - which was convened by NEA Chairman Jane Chu, Blue Star Families CEO Kathy Roth-Douquet, and others - it was noted that some military families do not have a lot of experience visiting museums and I was asked if we had a resource along the lines of "How to Visit a Museum" for the general public (the basics on what to do, how to approach it, etc.). I said I would find out.
I've seen individual museums create brochures for "Visiting for the first time" or "Visiting with children" or even "Visiting on a date" and these resources are great. But I am hoping someone has a more generic "How to Visit a Museum" resource that would, ideally, be appropriate for any type of museum. It would be great if we can provide this resource to Blue Star Families to help them promote the program.
Incidentally, you can already sign up to participate in Blue Star Museums 2015, which will run from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Here's the link to sign up or learn more: http://arts.gov/national/blue-star-museums. And thanks to the 2,200 museums that already participate.
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Gail Ravnitzky Silberglied
Vice President of Government Relations and Advocacy
American Alliance of Museums
Washington DC
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