Every year we encourage museums, galleries, archives, historic homes and heritage sites from all over the UK to allow children and young people, from toddlers to 25 year olds, to take over adults’ jobs for a day on Takeover Day.

Digital Takeover Day enables young people up to the age of 25 to take over heritage organisations’ digital content for the day, including social media accounts like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, organisations’ websites and YouTube channels.

The theme of our Takeover Day events in 2022 is wellbeing. COVID-19 has had an impact on everyone’s wellbeing, but we know children and young people have been especially affected. For example, children chose anxiety as their word of the year for 2021 according to the Oxford University Press.

A Young Minds survey from early 2022 shows more than 50% of young people (16-24) are worried about their mental health in the year ahead. However over 90% of them did something positive last year to improve or maintain their mental health, showing an appetite for wellbeing focused activities.

We want to highlight the important role museums can play in supporting young people’s mental health and wellbeing.

The Five Ways to Wellbeing are steps everyone can make to improve their wellbeing. These are: take notice, give, keep learning, connect, and be active. The Five Ways to Wellbeing can provide a framework for a range of Digital Takeover Day or Takeover Day activities that young people could do. For example, Leicester Museums and East Riding Museums have created a resource for visitors of all ages, linking a visit to their sites to the five ways.

Digital Takeover Day: Wellbeing themed ideas

We’ve put together a series of wellbeing themed challenges that your young people could take part in. These can be used to create content for Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube or your website.

Think about what kind of content is popular and performs well on your channels – for example, on Instagram, short video content tends to have a higher reach.

If your young people are posting on social media, remember to use our hashtag #TakeoverDay. This will help to boost the reach of their posts and help them connect with other young people taking part. It also means we can see and share their work!

  • Share something in the museum that links to each of the Five Ways to Wellbeing. For example, an object that makes you take notice, a space that enables you to be active or something new you have learnt.
  • Create and share simple instructions for a wellbeing activity linked to your collection. This could be something the young people taking over like to do on a regular basis to improve their wellbeing, such as a craft activity.
  • Come up with a playful activity such as matching an emoji with an object in your museum, asking followers to guess the painting or object using emojis, or strike the same pose as an object in the museum. Being playful can support the wellbeing of people of all ages.
  • Create a wellbeing themed poll or quiz for your followers to answer.
  • Interview a member of staff about wellbeing activities in your museum, or something that contributes to their wellbeing at work.
  • Interview a volunteer about how volunteering or giving their time supports their wellbeing.
  • Create an online exhibition. Choose objects from your collection that link to the Five Ways to Wellbeing and write labels to describe how.
  • Create a virtual tour with a wellbeing theme. Young people worked with Dulwich Picture Gallery to create short films using the Five Ways to Wellbeing, which could be used as inspiration.
  • Connect to another museum that is taking part in Digital Takeover Day 2022 to see what they’re getting up to. We will publish a list of Twitter handles before the day so you can see who else is taking part.

Read our other Digital Takeover Day resources for more ideas on how young people can take over a range of platforms.

Takeover Day: Wellbeing themed ideas

All these challenges can be adapted for a range of participants, from individuals to groups of children or young people, including schools, youth groups or panels, young volunteers or uniformed groups.

Run a wellbeing themed activity or event

Ask young people to co-create a wellbeing activity or an event. This could be for general museum visitors or for other children or young people.

Research objects that have a wellbeing connection and give a guided tour of your museum or ‘object in focus’ talk. For example, this could be an object that relates to one of the five ways to wellbeing, or a tour which covers all five points.

Plan and deliver a wellbeing themed activity inspired by your collections. For example, the activity could be something the young people like doing to support their wellbeing such as arts and crafts, gardening or baking.

All of these activities could enable young people to gain an Arts Award. We have a full resource about combining Arts Award and Takeover Day.

You may wish to work with uniformed groups, such as Girl Guides, who can gain wellbeing badges by running a Takeover Day activity or event with you.

Some museums run Toddler Takeover Days for under 5s, which could be adapted to a wellbeing theme. Read our case study from the Great North Museum: Hancock about their Toddler Takeover for ideas. You might also want to see if your region is part of the 50 things to do before you’re 5 initiative and link this to your Takeover Day. The initiative is aimed at supporting the mental health of under 5s.

Create a self-guided resource

Young people could create a self-guided resource to be used by visitors to your museum on a long-term basis.

Research objects that have a wellbeing connection or that young people can theme around the five ways to wellbeing and record an audio tour for the museum.

Create an age specific wellbeing related trail. This could utilise collections inside the museum, or outside spaces. Abergavenny Castle has created a wellbeing walk and the Horniman Museum and Gardens has a sensory trail which could inspire your self-guided resource.

Co-create exhibitions and labels

Invite young people to choose objects from your collections they feel link to the five ways to wellbeing or have been used to support people’s wellbeing in the past and ask them to write their own labels to explain the connections. These objects could be displayed in a dedicated display case or through an online exhibition.

Alternatively, they could temporarily contribute their own wellbeing themed labels to existing objects on display throughout the museum.

Consider hosting a photography exhibition of photos young people have taken of things that support their wellbeing. For example, this could be from a local walk, a sport or a hobby.

In their displays, children and young people could suggest visitors feedback about what contributes to their own wellbeing.

Become wellbeing consultants

A group of children or young people could act as consultants looking at your museum from a wellbeing perspective. This could be a review of activities you run for families or young people to make them more wellbeing focused.

Further reading

Find out more information about how your museum can support the wellbeing of children and young people in these online resources:

Don’t forget to register your Digital Takeover Day or Takeover Day on our website to let us know you are taking part.

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