For almost three quarters of a century, children’s museums were the only museum type that exclusively welcomed and served children and their families. Reflecting and adapting to the constant changes in society and their surrounding communities, as well as embracing the latest pedagogical methods, they were highly successful throughout the 20th century. 

 

By the beginning of the 21st century, however, their unique position has significantly changed. They were and are confronted with a cultural landscape in which children are a much-desired audience by all museums. 

 

Today it is a familiar picture to see children sitting with their drawing pads in front of famous paintings or using/working on interactive installations with their parents in science museums. School groups have access to the latest equipment in labs of natural history museums. Creative spaces for encounter, children’s paths through exhibitions, or even integrated children’s museums are now common state of the art. 

 

While action and interaction were once the distinctive and unique feature in the concept of children’s museums, the hands-on principle now seems to belong to the general repertoire of museums, regardless of their mandate or provenance. 

 

Since traditional museums have started targeting younger audiences, children’s museums have lost their prior exclusivity. This poses the question of the relevance of children’s and youth museums today and in the future. When and why has this change of paradigm in museums taken place? In the last quarter of the 20th century, children were discovered as potential audiences. At that time, major reductions in public funding put museums under pressure to demonstrate ‘healthy visitor numbers’. Bigger audiences were seen as indicators to prove that museums were successful. By inviting schoolchildren, they were able to open up to new communities. This, furthermore, helped to show the museum’s relevance in communities with rapidly changing demographics. 

 

When serving new audiences, museums had to adapt to these new target groups by offering action and interaction in their exhibitions, workshops, and child-friendly programmes. Methods previously used exclusively by children’s museums were copied. 

 

How can children’s museums compete with this development, especially as other museums are better equipped financially and in terms of staffing, offering highly budgeted blockbuster exhibitions as well as more advanced facilities and better equipped workshop spaces? 

 

What are the consequences for children’s museums? 

 

These new developments can best be illustrated by the winners of the Children in Museums Award, which was established in 2011, celebrating the best children’s museum worldwide. First only called the Children’s Museum Award, it quickly adapted to the new situation in 2014 when it changed its name to the Children in Museums Award by opening up to applicants from all museum types to reflect the wider range of provision for children in today’s museums. 

 

Over the last few years, a significant shift in the structure of the competing museums has become noticeable. 

 

The number of applications from children’s museums have significantly decreased while those from other museums have increased. Representatives of practically all museum types – from science museums, natural history museums, historical museums, to even art museums – are now competing with traditional children’s museums. 

 

The diversity of the museums, in terms of their financial and organisational potential, made it hard for the jury to judge small, underfunded children’s museums which were competing with big national or regional institutions. 

 

Objective criteria that gave small institutions with more limited resources a chance to compete had to be defined. The jury agreed on the following criteria: 

 

 

Innovation. Being innovative had been a hallmark of the children’s museum movement since its early days, but what was once a breathtaking idea soon became mainstream. Interactive installations as well as programmes offering self-directed learning can nowadays be found in most science and natural history museums as well as historical museums.

 

So, what are the new creative ideas implemented in museums that can be judged as being innovative?

 

Creativity, action, and interaction, using artistic-aesthetic methods, playing with all the senses, and connecting this with intercultural and global learning, are here a few of the key words associated with innovative museums today that put children in the centre. But above all, it is the risk-taking, the leaving of the beaten paths, the trying to be pioneers, the changing of the paradigm, and the serving as a model to other institutions that convince the jury to judge a museum as innovative.

 

Immersive learning environments aim to turn the museum visit into a personal and very emotional experience. Creative environments are able to completely captivate children, encouraging them to use all their senses and stimulating curiosity and learning. The scenography conveys a message as well as a content. Only the best of designs and architecture should be implemented in children’s exhibitions and areas. The importance of creating beautiful aesthetic environments has increased immensely over the last years as applications for the prize have proven. Most of the museums use young artists, including well-known designers, and architects to design the exhibition areas. The quality has therefore improved much compared to former times.

 

Bridging the analogue and the digital worlds is one of the most important tasks of children’s programmes. The concepts are designed to help children as digital natives to learn healthy ways to use their devices and to better understand the difference between the real and digital worlds.

 

Convincing concepts in children’s museums help them to change their role from user and consumer to creator and programmer, for example, by making trick films, podcasts, and films. Digital programmes in museums ought to differ from programmes that young people can play from home. Preferably they should include teamwork and bridging analogue and digital creation.

 

Creative ways to use collections has become an important criterion as more and more traditional museums with huge collections are serving children and families. Radical approaches on how to engage young audiences with museum collections have come up in recent years. Whereas traditional museums are providers of information that visitors merely absorb, these museums have reversed their roles.

 

Young audiences are invited to investigate and research collections and find their own stories and interpretations. 

Addressing contemporary issues through daring and demanding themes. As the youth of the early 21st century are becoming more and more political, exhibition themes should be chosen according to the interests of young people: ecology, climate change, pollution, migration, and pandemics. 

 

Such exhibitions should help these audiences to distinguish between facts and fake news, stimulate critical thinking, and develop a more global view on contemporary issues. 

 

Enforcing social impact, being meaningful for people’s lives. Best practice museums focus on the question of how to respond to the needs of different communities. Through partnerships with community-based organisations, welcoming programmes are developed that keep in mind the special needs of this potential audience. 

 

These museums see themselves as places of encounter where families can spend quality time in a safe environment. They serve as meeting places for old and new citizens, enhancing cultural exchange and learning from each other. They add new narratives that awaken curiosity in different perspectives and enrich children’s lives. 

 

Participation, children as experts. It is a very radical approach to define the role of children in museums. They cannot simply be seen as little visitors who must be safely guided through galleries. On the contrary, they are identified as competent young people engaging with the institutions through their ideas and creativity. Museums have implemented advisory boards of young people, invited them to write labels, or even co-create exhibitions, and try out the role of curator. 

 

These programmes are normally very demanding for the museum staff. They need a management team that is open and ready to take risks and one that also trusts the competence of children, as well as being patient and taking the necessary time. 

 

The many exceptional applications from children’s museums, as well as from children’s areas and programmes in other museums, that have been sent in over the past ten years have met these criteria. 

 

The question arises as to how children’s museums can survive in this contested museum landscape when more and more museums are focusing on families and children. 

 

Their best chance of survival is to remember their strengths instead of constantly looking for new paradigms. 

 

In contrast to traditional museums, children’s museums have the possibility to focus and serve exclusively one specific target group. These institutions know best their communities’ needs, by sensing changes in society and the lives of children and then reacting accordingly. Children’s and youth museums have a long history of dealing with demanding themes like death, illness, sexuality, queer lives, and migration. In their opinion, no theme is too difficult for young people, when addressed in the right way. The staff must have the sensitivity to transmit the topics in a child-friendly form in a safe and inspiring environment. 

 

Thus, the children’s museum of the 21st century must be a space for social interaction and intercultural dialogue, which involves itself in the way social issues such as exclusion, increasing poverty, and life in a migration society shaped by diversity are dealt with. Here, it is not about constructing a children’s world, but about taking children and young people seriously, with the goal of helping them become tolerant, respectful citizens. 

 

To defend their unique position, they must, however, offer the best quality by

 

In the future, children’s museums will need to realise and to defend their potential in the light of global and economic crises in order to assert themselves and prove their worth as essential cornerstones in the cultural and museum landscape of their respective countries. The question is how. This question can only be answered through the active interchange of the people involved, locally, nationally, and internationally.


First published in: Children in Museums Award. The first decade, 2021