When one museum tackles a
big question about serving their audience, I am likely to hear audience in many other questions museums are considering. So it
has seemed recently. Over the last few months, I have been in multiple
master planning sessions, on conference calls, and pouring over marketing
studies that focus on serving the upper end of a museum’s age range. That’s one
reason why I re-posted Audience, An Area of Enduring Focus last week.
Like all museums,
children’s museums struggle with how to serve the full range of their intended
audience. Their more specific challenge is how to serve the upper end of their
target age range and whether to serve children 7 or 8 to 10 years, tweens, and
youth at all. This dance, shared by many museums, has a long history with many
variations.
At one time children’s
museums opened their doors to welcome children 3 - 12 years old, their parents
and caregivers. Children 3 - 6 years arrived, returned, and began owning the
museum. With time, many children’s museums rethought their audience and
offerings and often landed on serving newborns - 8 year olds, occasionally
targeting children up to 10 years. This change, it seems, brought younger
children to the museums. More 2 year olds showed up as well as loyal 3 - 6 year olds.
Wanting to expand their audience, serve the community well, and sometimes
responding to internal pressure to “own” a wider niche, some children’s museums
pushed on serving 7-10 year olds.
Evidence supports decisions
to serve a younger audience and top out, for instance, at 6 years. Concern
about the skills gap has meant more communities now offer universal pre-K. More
4 year olds are spending more of their day in school with less time for weekday visits to the children’s museum. Elementary schools are cutting budgets
and classroom time for anything but teaching to standards and tests. School
group attendance that draws children 5-6 years and older is dropping.
Out-of-school hours are filled with afterschool out-of-home care , with
sports, scouts. and music lessons. Growing competition among science, history,
and art museums for 6-12 year olds in family and school groups is also
impacting attendance. Finally, some children’s museums seem
to feel resigned to losing the upper end of their target age, citing KAGOY–kids
are getting older younger–and the
“boo” factor–bigger children don’t want to be around younger children.
On the other hand, the
lower end of the age range, newborn to 2 years, is fairly secure for children’s
museums. Parents with infants and toddlers have fewer options of places where
their very young children are truly planned for and welcome. These parents are
also strong, very strong, advocates for their needs and those of their babies:
nursing spaces, clean and safe places, less busy times, times with fewer or no
big kids. And while art, science, and history museums may be interested in serving 6-12
year olds, serving infants, toddlers and preschoolers is a significantly
greater stretch to serve well. Many children’s museums are telling
me that they track the average age of their audience and it is dropping. Last
week I heard one museum say its average age is 4.5 years. A reasonable decision
is to concentrate resources on serving a narrower age group well.
Not So Fast…
Physical challenge in play, part of a healthy childhood |
Many parents and
grandparents don’t want their children aging up so fast. They want to enjoy
their child at each age and stage rather than find themselves saying, “When the
children were young,” regretting time passed unnecessarily quickly. Even children remain attached to their childhoods, at
least occasionally. Regrettably lacking a study to back this up, I do have
examples from experience: focus group summaries of tweens who are nostalgic
about their childhoods and marketing studies citing 11 year olds wanting “lap
time” with their parents. In children’s museums I see and listen to 10 and 11
year olds and remember overhearing an 11 year old announce, “I want to do this
for a living when I grow-up,” as he pressed his 10th paper pulp
medallion. Museums can make experiences better, much, much better for 7+ year
olds by recognizing and responding to parents’ and children’s attachment to
childhood.
Holding onto childhood favorites |
A developmental perspective
across the full range of early and middle childhood is invaluable. It shifts
the primary focus from chronological ages and grades in school to what is
happening for the child. Understanding the full developmental range
involves understanding each age and stage. Recently I facilitated a half-day
discussion with a leadership team to affirm their target age range–newborns
through 15 year olds–and how to serve them. At the workshop’s conclusion, one
participant noted that serving the age range well means knowing not only
where a child is developmentally now, but also where that child is headed
developmentally.
Families with children across the age range |
What other considerations
do you find at the convergence of a museum’s strategic interests, the
developmental interests of its young audience, and the needs of its families?
Focusing on the Audience
What is interesting to 7 year olds? |
- Trying to serve a museum’s full age range is not the same as “aging up” or changing the target audience to older children. When a museum works to better serve its full age range, it builds on a foundation of serving that audience: attendance data with school group numbers; member and visitor surveys often with age group information; and relationships with members and teachers. An approach to better serving the upper end of the current age range may also be helpful to a museum expanding its age range from, say, 6 years to 8 years or 8 to 10 years–but the starting points differ.
- All parts of a museum’s audience are valued. All must be served well. Here’s the catch: all parts of the audience will not (and can not) have a high presence. An equally high level of services, offerings, programs, and exhibit real estate is not needed for all groups. Groups with a lower presence at the museum, typically the youngest and oldest, should have comparably fewer but high quality experiences. The 7-10 year old set is in this “older shoulder” group.
- Serving any and all age groups well relies on understanding them well. Get to know 7-10 year olds. Bring varied perspectives and sources of information to this exploration. What do these children say is fascinating to them? What does the museum do consistently well that other venues do not? What’s happening for them developmentally? What do their parents say interests them? What do their parents think is wonderful about them? Check assumptions about who they are and their interests. Ask them and observe them. Don't guess.
What other
considerations of the audience prepare a museum for serving the upper end of
its age range?
Getting Started
If
serving the upper end of the museum’s targeted age range better is central to
mission, attendance, and visitor experience, a deliberate and thoughtful
approach is necessary. By no means
comprehensive, the steps below can get a museum started. Lessons from these steps should point to new ones.
Clarify the starting and end
points. Decide on the age group
to focus on and be specific. Gather information on the number of children in this age range
currently served and how: in exhibits? in programs? If no information is
available, a survey may be in order. Be clear about what you hope to accomplish
with this effort. Is it an increase in the number of children in the age group?
If so, what’s a realistic stretch? Is it satisfaction among families with
children across the age range? Keeping families as members for longer? Keep in mind that 7-10 year olds flooding
exhibits and programs and pushing their share of attendance from 5% to 25% is
unlikely. An increased presence will occur gradually as 5 and 6 year olds grow
up and stay hooked on museum offerings; as word gets out to more families; and
as the museum improves its pitch for older children.
Get to know the age group. Visit places where children 7-12 years spend time
and are engaged in ways the museum hopes to engage them. It may be in your
museum, another museum, at the library, park and rec, or Boys and Girls club.
Observe them, listen to what they talk about, notice how they relate to one
anther. Take notes and photos. Refer to books like Yardsticks
by Chip Wood which has a good feel for children 4-14 years and to the Search
Institute’s Developmental Assets.
Know your own museum. Take a very good look at where children in the upper
end of the age range currently have the highest presence in your museum's exhibits and
document it. Observe them; talk to them. Ask what attracts them to the area,
what they like about the activity, why, and what else they'd like to do there. Photograph them and what they are doing; make notes. Record numbers of
children, ages, and times on a floor plan in the area. Then, build on their
interests, responses, and insights. Modify or develop activities and
incorporate them into exhibits. Be sure to revisit these areas, observe, and
compare before-and-after data. Has the presence, activity, or dwell time of
this age group changed? Repeat this process; it may take several rounds to get
a good feel for a good match. Apply the approach to programs as well.
Open-ended materials: water,mud and gravel |
Tweens area (right) set lower than children's area (left) |
Taking a cue from children's thinking |
What strategies have
you found that are effective in serving children 6 and 7 years old and older?
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