Alison Bowyer, Executive Director at Kids in Museums

In 2020, Morris Hargreaves McIntyre published a review of audiences at DCMS sponsored museums in London. One of the report’s most striking statistics was only 12% of 16-24 year olds felt these museums had anything relevant to say to them. This was the latest in a series of studies showing that young people didn’t feel museums were for them. A piece of research by Dr Helen Manchester and Dr Emma Pett from the early 2010s even reports young people characterising museums as slow, cumbersome animals like ‘dinosaurs’ and ‘walruses’.

As part of our mission to make museums better places for all children, young people and families, Kids in Museums wants to understand what lies behind young people’s negative perceptions of museums. In 2023, we brought a group of 18-25s together at The Future is Now: Museum Youth Summit at Thinktank, Birmingham Science Museum, to open up the conversation about their views of museums and how they would like them to change.

Today we’re starting to share the young people’s views with the museum sector. In doing so, we’re trying to live up to this request from one attendee who asked us to “Take on board all of the comments and ideas and present it to the wider museum sector, showing them what young people really think and examples of what they can do to make positive change. No sugarcoating!”

Over 90% of our Museum Youth Summit attendees felt museums weren’t relevant to them and believed museums didn’t consider young people as an important audience. They told us barriers to access such as admission prices and knowledge of when and how to visit were still in place. When they did visit, they found interpretation and activities were rarely designed with them in mind. They felt museums often assumed they wanted a primarily digital experience, ignoring a desire to relax and destress away from screens.

“Take on board all of the comments and ideas and present it to the wider museum sector, showing them what young people really think and examples of what they can do to make positive change. No sugarcoating!”
Museum Youth Summit participant

The young people we spoke to also had strong feelings about their prospects of entering the museum workforce. Whilst they acknowledged there had been changes in recruitment practices, particularly around a degree being an essential requirement, they felt the sector was moving too slowly. The need to build experience through volunteering still exists, career paths are not clearly defined and young people are not always valued members of the workforce.

These opinions might feel like old news, but this should give us pause. The museum sector currently faces multiple challenges and change can be difficult, slow and expensive. However, as a sector, we need to consider why young people continue to hold these perceptions of museums. Without ascribing blame, what are the structures and attitudes that remain active in the museum sector that mean young people feel uncomfortable, disengaged and undervalued as visitors, participants and employees?

Despite their strongly held views, the young people at the Museum Youth Summit felt relatively optimistic about the future of museums. They’re passionate about museums but want more from them. Overwhelmingly, they wanted museums to listen more and be ready to share power and decision making with young people as equal partners. With more power in their hands, they feel change is possible.

Change needs to come from young people and museums working side by side. However, given the powerlessness some young people currently feel, the initial impetus will often need to come from museums. They need to find ways to start meaningful conversations and then take action. Kids in Museums is committed working with its own Youth Panel and Young Trustees to lead and support this process, but we definitely don’t have all the answers. This year we are also delivering a new programme with Upstart Projects to support museums to appoint their first young trustees.

Based on what the Museum Youth Summit attendees told us, we can provide a guide to areas young people want to see change. They want to be taken seriously as an audience. Like all other audience groups they’re not homogenous, but there is an overarching desire for museums to take an active role in public life. On subjects such as ethnicity, class and gender, they wanted museums to be values-led, honest about the past and replace tokenism with action.

They talked about ‘ageing out’ of special interpretation and activities for children and then feeling they became less visible with suddenly nothing being engaging and interesting to them… They would like museums to feel comfortable and affordable places to spend time with friends.

Economic access remains a concern and simple things like replacing student discounts with discounts for under 30s would make a difference.

They talked about ‘ageing out’ of special interpretation and activities for children and then feeling they became less visible with suddenly nothing being engaging and interesting to them. Socialising is a major motivation for this age group to visit museums. They would like museums to feel comfortable and affordable places to spend time with friends.

The young people we spoke to want to see a faster pace of change in how museums recruit and retain younger staff members. Many of their concerns in this area will be familiar. Alongside the struggle of getting a first job, there was a real concern about feeling valued within the workforce. This included not feeling listened to, a lack of support from managers, a lack of long-term career path and museums not being good employers for young people. They wanted to see more flexibility, increased openness to change and organisational cultures that prioritised care and wellbeing.

We’ve tried not to sugarcoat things in this blog post and to accurately represent what young people have told us. We hope it’s clear that while our Youth Summit attendees have some big asks, they and their peers are committed to being part of a process of change if museums can make space and time to work alongside them, sharing power more equally.

For our part, Kids in Museums is committed to sharing decision-making in our organisation. Working with our Youth Panel and Young Trustees we will continue to give young people a platform to speak to the museum sector, train more young people to be advocates for their ideas and create programmes and resources to support museums to begin a process of change.

Now it’s over to you. We hope that next time we run an event for young people we’ll hear news of change in how young people are engaged and employed starting to take root in museums.