Do you want families to have more say in how our museums are run, what they display and how they display it? Or do you want staff to just get on with it using their skills, commonsense and imagination?
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October 14th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
I think museum staff should take on board families ideas and give them an opportunity to voice opinions , perhaps with open evenings or a forum like this website where visitors can leave comments.
Staff should also use commonsense though as I’m sure many of them will have their own families with children and think about visiting from a family point of view.
October 18th, 2010 at 10:38 am
My 3 most recent visits to Museums to do some studying of artefacts have been completely ruined by the theme parks museums are turning into.
Hordes of children, largely unsupervised, dressed up in tacky costumes with painted faces are left to rampage through the exhibitions at full decibel levels without taking the slightest bit of notice of why they are supposed to be there.
The fact that their parents/teachers/attendants cannot be bothered to chaperone them speaks volumes and at the Burrell the children were clambering over objects in the roped off area.
What started out on 3 long and expensive journeys to do some in depth studying ended up being a waste of time and money due to this tendency to turn museums into family theme parks.This way museums increase their attendance but dumb down the experience for others.
The enthusiasm of children is normally great to see but has to be matched by extra staff having to be laid on to stop disruptive families and schoolchildren treating the museum as a new playground thus driving normal scholars away, which it did with us on these 3 occasions.
November 5th, 2010 at 10:54 pm
I think that museums should accept comments from all people and take them into consideration when making decisions but should be prepared to use their own experience and common sense as not all comments will be practical.
It is important that they do listen to families though as they did when we visited the Wallace and Gromit exhibition in the Science Museum. Our son was only a toddler at the time and we found that many of the exhibits were too high for him. We mentioned this to a member of staff who immediately fetched a stool for us that we carried around with us. He said that he’d put it in as a suggestion for other families.