This guide was created in partnership with University of Leicester placement student, Lisa Mitchell. Thank you to Amy Davy, Interpretation Producer at V&A East and previously Interpretation Manager at the Science Museum Group, for her contributions.

Introduction

Families are an important audience for many museums. The Audience Agency’s Museum Audience Report shows they make up an average of 35% of museum visitors. This may have increased since the pandemic as family audiences have recovered more quickly than others.

Fun, socialising and learning together are key motivations for family visitors. Many of these are also reasons why families participate in other leisure activities, so museums are competing in a crowded market. However, when a family visit to a museum ticks all these boxes, it can have a powerful impact. Research by Colleen Dilenschneider shows children who have positive experiences when visiting with their family, are more likely to go on to visit museums as adults than those who only go on school trips.

A family friendly exhibition can be a great addition to your family offer, helping to encourage both first time and repeat visitors. Kids in Museums understands that it can be difficult to know where to start when creating an exhibition for families. From signage and interactive elements to partnerships and evaluation, this resource is designed to provide useful ideas about where to begin and where to find information about next steps.

We are grateful to staff from the Young V&A, Science Museum Group, Great North Museum: Hancock, the Garden Museum and Lapworth Museum of Geology who generously shared their learning from recent family exhibitions.

1. Planning a family friendly exhibition

Start by thinking about why you want to programme a family friendly exhibition, the type of families you want to attract and what you know about those families and their needs.

Why create a family friendly exhibition?

There are many reasons why you might programme a family friendly exhibition. It could be part of an organisation-wide commitment to learning for all. Your audience research might show that families with a certain age of children are currently underrepresented. This was the case at the Lapworth Museum of Geology, which used its Creative Children Curating Collections exhibition to build a new early years audience.

Another motivation could be to engage families with a particular topic. Recent research from the Cultural Participation Monitor shows there are family groups that are more motivated to visit venues that reflect their values. Recent exhibitions at both The Garden Museum and The Story Museum have focused on engagement with biodiversity and the climate and ecological emergency.

What do families want from an exhibition?

It’s important to understand your family audience. You may have your own research about family visitors to draw on. Over many years, the Science Museum Group has built a bank of qualitative and quantitative data that feeds into exhibitions planning. If you don’t have your own research, there are national audience studies and case studies about specific audience groups you can draw on such as:

You could also consider running a family focus group to help inform your planning. This could involve families from an existing local group such as a playgroup or nursery, or you could advertise the opportunity through libraries, schools or uniformed groups. Check out the SEND in Museums guide to consulting families.

Your initial motivation for planning a family exhibition combined with your audience research is likely to give you a clearer idea of which families you hope will visit. When considering their needs, it’s important to remember not to treat them as a homogenous group. Families come in all shapes and sizes and have different needs, preferences and interests. They want to feel comfortable and confident in museums and see stories that reflect their experiences and values.

If you’re planning an exhibition for families with children from a specific age group, it’s worth considering the developmental stage of the children and how they are likely to engage. Remember that many family groups include siblings who may be at different developmental stages and adults from different generations.

The Science Museum Group’s ongoing research shows family groups will have a mixture of individual and group experiences during a visit. What makes a good individual experience for a child, does not necessarily match what makes a good, shared family experience. It’s worth considering how to blend individual and group experiences within your exhibition.

Consider families with additional needs

It’s important to build accessibility into your family friendly exhibition from the start. 11% of UK children are SEND and when you consider siblings too, it’s a large number of families. This resource is not designed to provide in depth access information, but some of the things you might want to consider include:

  • Consulting local groups during the planning phase and inviting them to test our facilities before you open. Great North Museum: Hancock built on work with Autism North East as part of their Myth Quest exhibition.
  • Supporting different access needs throughout the exhibition. This could include, but not be limited to captioning, audio description, large print, use of Makaton etc. There are some great examples at Experience Barnsley.
  • Ensuring the exhibition space meets the needs of wheelchair users.
  • Ensuring any wraparound programming such as trails or workshops is accessible and you offer relaxed openings, particularly if the exhibition includes noisy interactives.

Kids in Museums has a range of accessibility resources to support your planning and the SEND in Museums website also contains a wealth of information.

Partnerships

Partnerships can support your family friendly exhibition in a number of different ways. After building relationships during your research period, you might want to consider co-creating your exhibition with people from your target audience. As the Lapworth Museum of Geology wanted to attract more families with two to five year olds to the museum, they co-created an exhibition with nursery school pupils.

Some museums such as Somerset House, The Lowry and The Cartoon Museum have worked in partnership with archives, museums, publishers and producers to create character driven exhibitions.

You might want to join together with a group of museums to create a family friendly exhibition that will then travel to all your venues. The Touring Exhibitions Group has some great resources (some behind a paywall) to get started on making a touring show. If you don’t feel you have the staff resources to design your own family friendly exhibition, you might want to consider hosting a touring exhibition, such as those offered by Seven Stories or the British Library.

Resources

As well as consultation, your planning process is going to include more practical elements, which are outlined below. It’s essential to consider the staff resources and budget to adequately support these areas not only in developing the exhibition, but ensuring that maintenance and any changes required during the exhibition can be supported.

A family friendly exhibition may provide good opportunities for fundraising and sponsorship. You may also want to consider the commercial aspects of an exhibition which will cut across your shop stock and potentially café offer. You may find some of the training and resources (some behind a paywall) offered by the Association for Cultural Enterprises useful to develop this area.

Finally it’s important to consider how you are promoting your exhibition to reach your intended family audience. See our guide to Marketing your museum to families for our top tips.

2. The exhibition space

This section focuses on some considerations you may want to include in an exhibition design brief.

First impressions and layout

First impressions of museums and exhibition spaces can set the tone for a visit. First-time visitors may not feel confident entering an exhibition, so it’s important to try to make them feel comfortable. The Science Museum Group found having a hands-on activity positioned close to the entrance can help families feel they are free to play and enjoy themselves from the start.

You should make your exhibition space meet families’ needs. If you are targeting families with young children, is there sufficient space for buggies if they are allowed in the exhibition? If not, is there a convenient buggy park nearby? Families tell us they like plenty of seats and space around interactives so they can play together.

Children are likely to take the lead and explore at their own pace. Their route around the exhibition may not be linear. The Science Museum Group research highlights the importance of sightlines around the exhibition so parents/ carers can keep track of their children. It’s also worth thinking about the height at which objects and labels are hung. In the Japan: Myths to Manga exhibition at the Young V&A, many of the pictures and labels are hung at child height and there are step stools for exhibits that are higher up.

The grouping of objects is also a way to promote family engagement. The Young V&A decided to group some of their collection by colour, texture, use and name to provide families with different ways of exploring. The Lapworth Museum of Geology worked with schools to reinterpret their collection, with regrouped objects and the addition of drawings and text designed to make the collection more appealing to younger audiences.

If you have sufficient space, you may want to have zones for different types of activities. Again at the Japan: Myths to Managa exhibition, there are areas for making, reading and getting hands on with musical instruments. However, the Science Museum Group has sometimes found this can break up family groups, with adults and children spending time in different areas.

Interactive and digital activities

Family members are likely to have different learning styles, so offering a range of different ways to engage is important. Interactives offer the opportunity for individual and group experiences as well as different depths of engagement.

It shouldn’t be an automatic assumption that children and young people want everything to be digital. At our recent Museum Youth Summit, young people told us that they liked to have space in museums to engage without screens. Interactives and hands-on elements don’t have to be expensive either. They can include drawing stations, free play large blocks and hands-on elements, such as handling objects, feely bags and smell boxes.

The Science Museum Group research found films had mixed success in family friendly exhibitions. Families didn’t tend to engage with a ‘talking heads’ format. They wanted films to have a strong story and preferred animations. However the film, along with the visual style of the whole exhibition needed to appeal to both children and adults, so it was important that cartoons didn’t seem too childish.

Touch screens, consoles and push button interactives can all be popular. The Science Museum Group found providing information on touch screens tended not to be successful. Children expected what they found on the screens would be fun and were put off if it wasn’t. Instead, they found interactives with prompts to action, challenges with rewards and the opportunity to play or engage with other people were more successful.

Text

All the museums we spoke to in creating this resource told us that less is more when creating text for family friendly exhibitions. You need to be clear about the audience for the text – is it adults only, children only or both? The Science Museum Group found that often children didn’t read text themselves, instead it was read to them out loud by their parents/ carers. As a result, it was better to create text for the whole family group.

Text that is simple, concise and uses informal language often works best. The average reading age in the UK is between 9 and 11 according to the Literacy Trust. Pairing text with illustrations, infographics, fun facts and prompts to play or to take on a challenge can increase engagement. For example, at their Permian Monsters exhibition, the Horniman Museum and Gardens brought the creatures to life with playful instructions to ‘Have a scary face competition with your family’. Older young people particularly told us they liked graphics rather than text at our Museum Youth Summit.

It’s also important that your labels enable families to feel comfortable in your exhibition. For example, it should be clear what can and can’t be touched to avoid difficult situations.

There is more information about in our Creating Family Friendly Interpretation resource.

Maintenance

Interactives, handling objects and other equipment in a family friendly exhibition will get a lot of use. Ensure you plan for them to be robust and easy to repair from the start. If you don’t have a lot of budget or staff resources, consider this when planning interactives as you may find yourself unable to maintain them. Feedback from our Family Friendly Museum Award judges shows that interactives being out of service is something that families find disappointing and frustrating. If something is out of service, add appropriate signage and aim to mend it as quickly as you can. It’s also important that you replenish supplies of any self-guided resources and if you are offering backpacks, make sure that the contents aren’t missing.

3. Engaging visitors

This section looks at some aspects of engaging your visitors through self-guided resources, events and the role of your staff and volunteers.

Staff and volunteers

If you’re putting on a family friendly exhibition, it’s essential your front of house staff and/ or volunteers feel confident engaging with children, young people and families. Feedback from our Family Friendly Museum Award judges shows that the welcome and support offered by staff and/ or volunteers can make or break a visit.

Some considerations include making sure staff and/ or volunteers working on the exhibition know how everything works. Plan time to enable them to explore the exhibition before you open and enable them to play with the interactives, take part in trails etc. You might want to write a crib sheet that includes key information and agreed greetings for families.

Your family friendly exhibition should be a place where children can play and explore at their own pace. It’s important staff feel empowered to handle difficult situations in a friendly way and can keep the space safe and comfortable. Our Welcoming families to your venue resource might help you with this.

The Great North Museum: Hancock created roles for costumed characters as part of their Myth Question exhibition. They prompted families to engage with the trails, supported and answered questions.

Additional programming

Additional programming can enrich exhibitions by providing extra hands-on opportunities for families to learn and play. Depending on the content and interpretation in your exhibition, you may want to offer a self-guided resource, such as a trail or explorer backpack. You might find it useful to look at our guide to Creating Self-Guided Resources for Families. These can offer different forms of learning and engagement, but on the other hand could separate family groups and distract from other aspects of the exhibitions.

Exhibition themed events can also support deeper engagement. For the Garden Museum, food education and cooking activities proved popular with a variety of different age groups during the Growing Curiosities exhibition. The Young V&A has run a series of Japan themed craft workshops alongside the Japan: Myths to Manage exhibition. When planning events, have a clear target age group in mind and include this in any marketing. Also make sure the activities are accessible.

Feedback

Gathering feedback helps with learning for future work. It’s important to be clear about the questions you want your feedback to answer and then consider the appropriate way to collect data. You can collect feedback in a number of different ways: informally through social media, sites like TripAdvisor or comment cards, through gallery observations or through surveying. For a family friendly exhibition, it’s important you create feedback mechanisms that enable children of all ages to contribute as well as adults. This film from Bristol Museum shows a simple feedback wall in action.

Additional sources of information

Other Kids in Museums Resources

Understanding your family audience

Exhibition design

 

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