On today’s menu…
Lots of families have told us that a visit to the café is an important part of their museum experience. They want to feel welcome in the whole museum, the café included. The importance of extending family friendly values to the café even features as a point on the Kids in Museums Manifesto 2012.
In response Kids in Museums started cooking something up: the Your Museum Café project, working with families, museums and galleries to produce guidelines for family friendly museum cafés that meet everyone’s needs – families, museums and other venues.
Café, catering, can-do
A family friendly museum café would include the right facilities for families with children, a range of good-value kids’ food and drinks with healthy options, sugared with friendly staff. The café is also the right place to enhance the museum experience for family visitors. Adapting dishes to the museum collection is only one way to show creativity and make family visits even more enjoyable.
No on-site catering? There’s no such thing as museum without a café. Museums without on site catering will do good to look for alternative services. A partnership with an external café around the corner or proper picnic facilities will meet the needs of family visitors on this point too.
Please keep an eye on our website for guidelines and inspiration on these – and more – tasty matters based upon family input.
To satisfy your appetite for now, have a look at the Kids in Museums’ article in Museum Practice Towards a Family Friendly Museum Café – and overview
We are hungry for your input.
We welcome you to share your experiences with us by answering the questions in a short online survey. By telling us what you think you will help us understand even better what makes a good family friendly museum café.
Online survey:
> If you are a visitor, please follow this link to fill in the online survey.
> If you work at a museum with a public cafe or restaurant, please follow this link to fill in the online survey.
> If you work at a museum without a public cafe, please follow this link to fill in the online survey.
Email: [email protected]
Write to us at:
Your Museum Café
Kids in Museums
CAN Mezzanine
49 – 51 East Road
London
N1 6AH
We like these comments and thoughts on museum cafes -
A truly revolting family museum café
November 8th, 2012 at 9:43 am
Great that KiM is focusing on museum cafes now too! Perhaps you would like to link to our recap of #MusCafe – a discussion on Twitter from March this year all about museum cafes. It included some family friendly recommendations: http://museum140.tumblr.com/post/20113009852/muscafe-revisited
Best wishes, the team from Museum140