Beginning With Audience

There are many ways for a museum to view its audience—through the lenses of mission, marketing, and engagement to name three. From who must the museum serve to advance its mission, to who must a museum be prepared to serve, to making distinctions between serving audience groups fully and serving them well, audience is an area of enduring interest. The next five Museum Notes posts will look into some of these questions beginning with this post from September 2011.

Audience, an Area of Enduring Focus

Photo credit: Vergeront

Several years ago on a strategic planning project, my planning partner Andrea Fox Jensen referred to a museum’s audience as an area enduring focus. Someone on the strategic planning team had commented that the museum had already been through discussions about their audience and what it should be.

The group seemed reassured by Andrea’s characterizing audience in this way: important, in fact so important, consideration of it is never complete. In any case, they engaged wholeheartedly in lively and productive discussions about age ranges, audience groups, and geographic radius. Later when the planning team brought the board into the discussion, members conveyed the value of revisiting this important question without a “been there, done that” subtext.

Andrea’s observation was so smart and helpful. Every project I work on–a strategic plan, learning framework, exhibit master plan, or something in between–involves a key discussion about audience. I don’t mean a back-up-and-start-from-scratch audience conversation. Typically these are fruitful discussions that review, check, or affirm the current audience. They relate the audience to the current project and get everyone on the same page. Sometimes they help bring new staff or board members along. These discussions are also opportunities to share new information or a chance insight about the audience like the arrival of universal pre-kindergarten in a community, declining school group visits, or an increase in moms’ groups.

These and countless other discussions about audiences, museums, and public value have surfaced features that distinguish audience and other possible areas of enduring focus. Moreover, they have underscored the critical role of audience for a museum acting deliberately on its aspirations.

Of Persistent Interest

Enduring assumes a long-term, continuing interest. Nothing could be more central to a museum’s aspirations and reason for being than its audience. Who a museum intends to serve is as fundamental at start-up as it is during periods of growth and change, as it is at each step of fulfilling a promise to the community.

A sound and shared understanding of a museum’s audience is essential. Museums go about this in many ways and on an on-going basis: identifying primary, secondary, and emerging audiences; surveying visitors; analyzing attendance data; and conducting audience research. Museums then apply an understanding of the audience to shaping and presenting collections, engaging experiences, and educational services in order to open up possibilities of learning for its visitors. 

Sometimes, however, it seems that the persistent focus of audience switches to attendance as Paul Orselli explored in ExhibiTricks. A focus on attendance can, in fact, distract from the centrality of audience to a museum’s value. If, for instance, the goal of audience was simply about more visitors, a museum could just send out a bus, pick up visitors, and hand out free passes. Attendance shoots up!

A Significant Difference

An area of enduring focus must be capable of making a major contribution to a museum’s public service. Audience is pivotal, from community-wide awareness of a museum to making a difference in the learning lives of children, building social cohesion across neighborhoods, or increasing science literacy among citizens.

In this respect, the challenge is less about bringing more visitors to the museum than about bringing the right visitors to the museum. To be certain it serves all parts of its audience well and serves priority audience groups fully, a museum must be knowledgeable about, alert to, proactive, and respectful towards its audience. Stories spread about museums discovering there are consequences to being vague about or indifferent to their audience.

Using a current and well-informed understanding of its audience, a museum needs to effectively reach and actively engage underserved groups; families, school, and community groups; children and adults; and both current and potential visitors. The informal learning experiences it offers must address age-related development; be relevant to visitor interests, expectations and everyday lives; and align with its own aspirations.   

A Sharpening Perspective

Perspectives on critical, complex, and constant areas are never static. They evolve, advance, and become nuanced. Museums as well as their audiences exist in dynamic external contexts. Successes and failures produce new insights that affect understanding and reaching audiences; new practices help refine and advance audience knowledge.

In only a few decades, museums have shifted from being about something, to being for the general public, to serving specific audience segments, to being concerned with who is not coming to the museum. Learning from and about actual and intended visitors shifts perspectives, reveals interests and expectations of visitors, produces new insights about what is attractive to them, and how the museum must change.

A body of audience knowledge builds from multiple sources: surveys, focus groups, and visitor panels, census data, and information generated by other groups. New practices and insights come from the work of other museums, from research conducted in the field on behalf of museums, and from audience development work supported by foundations. Continuous scanning of emerging community and audience trends, sharing and interpreting observations, and following the implications of new information sharpen perspectives and informs action.

Supporting Practices

An intense commitment to audience in a pocket of the museum is inadequate for serving audiences well and catalyzing the mission. A museum must operate with a willingness to welcome everyone, a shared understanding of priority audiences, an organization-wide value on relationships that serve the audience well, and a strong belief that improving service to the audience will make a difference.

Robust audience-centered systems and procedures, integrated with practices, supported by resources, and reaching across the organization are necessary to grow audience knowledge, facilitate its transfer, and apply it effectively to experiences. Supportive practices must permeate developing and designing exhibitions; involving audience groups in planning programs and exhibitions; training and preparing staff for interaction; calibrating the variety of offerings and rate of change; and evaluating programs and exhibitions and their impact on the audience.

This is a museum’s everyday version of enduring focus. It circulates and re-circulates, interprets and re-interprets audience information and visitor studies. Staff look for evidence for-and-against goals and hunches. Teams address audience interests and engagement strategies at the forefront of every project and initiative. They prototype and revise experience goals, activities, messages, and designs. They evaluate the impact of experiences on the audience. And they begin again, playing it forward.

Intensifying Attention to Audience

In my work, I have found that identifying audience as an area of enduring focus is useful in intensifying attention on this critical piece of a museum’s potential to make a difference. It effectively signals to staff and board that the people and communities they hope to serve matter; they are the highest priority, at the center, and at every step.

What are your thoughts?

• In what way does identifying audience as an area of enduring focus help your thinking and work?
• Would you suggest other areas of enduring focus? What about:
  • Product, or a museum’s exhibitions, programs, learning experiences and environments, through which it serves and engages its audiences and accomplishes its purpose?
  • Resources, financial, human, intellectual, and real property, that are the necessary means to make this possible?
  • Impact, or areas of significant change in the public service a museum provides that are congruent with its purpose and to which it will be held accountable?

Adult-Child Connections: First Person

Last weekend my husband and I visited the Providence Children’s Museum with our almost six year 6 year-old great niece and just 4 year-old great nephew. It was a rainy Sunday morning; the Museum was full and lively. We explored all the areas of the Museum, inside and out including places you can only get to by climbing up or crawling down on all fours. The children showed us around their Museum, what they liked best, what was new, and what fascinated them. At the end of our visit we spent a long time at the Cardboard Challenge, constructing a colossal castle structure with cardboard and tape. We had a wonderful time, staying until the absolute last possible minute before getting home for a birthday party.

Since then, I have reflected on the visit–one of the highlights of our vacation–and on my role as adult, caregiver, and lucky aunt of these children. I visit a lot of museums as a museum planner, as a member and a tourist, and, less often but fortunately, also as a caregiver. I enjoy the varied perspectives on the museum experience this affords, in this case on the adult role in the children’s museum experience, the questions and possibilities it poses.

Like many museum educators, exhibit developers and designers, and museum planners, I view the adult role as facilitating practical aspects of the visit, extending play experiences, scaffolding children’s learning, and being learners themselves. Some of this is reflected in a research-based tool Adult-Child Interaction Inventory (ACII) developed by Lorrie Beaumont. ACII describes what a set of likely adult-child interaction roles might look like and some supportive design strategies related, in particular, to STEM.

On another front, parent insights into their expectations and interactions with their children at the museums were one focus of an exploratory research project I conducted for 3 Washington children’s museums with Lorrie Beaumont, some of which I wrote about here. In interviewing parents, I was very impressed with how clearly and thoughtfully they were able to frame a children’s museum visit as an opportunity to support specific aspects of their child’s development or to facilitate their interests. 

Finally, I recognized that I also had ideas about what was important to me in our visit, although it took awhile to gather and see them with any clarity. I hoped to get to know my niece and nephew better, observe them as they explored and navigated a different setting, watch them interact with other children, and glimpse what excites and delights them.

Delight and Challenge on the Museum Floor

In spite of, or because of, my experience as a museum planner and museum-goer, I look somewhat critically at my caregiver role and interactions with the children during our visit. I would characterize it as “so-so with a few bloopers.” What did I do and not do? I talked to other adults while Cyrus and Harper played and surely missed a few remarkable moments that I was keenly interested in. I took lots of photos and, even though I knew better, I checked my email once, or actually twice. I asked many simple and yes-no questions and not so many rich open-ended questions. I asked the floor staff whether the almost 6 year old could go into the toddler area and play with her brother even though we were standing in front of the sign that said “4 years and under only.” I sometimes hovered. Rather than stand back while Cyrus explored how to tear the painters’ tape during the Cardboard Challenge, I showed him how to peel the tape and cut it. I surreptitiously added duct tape to the cardboard castle they were building so the structure would hold together.

I didn’t feel pressured or constrained in my choices to behave in a particular way; I just felt very busy. Virtually every moment offered an abundance of options to focus on and consider: watch the children building an arch or climbing into the boat; observe a child; think about the choice he or she made and why; be quick enough to frame an open-ended question about what’s happening; decide whether to step in or stay out as kids crowd together; and soften the landing when the arch caves in under the weight of a 4 year old. The pace of a visit is quick and doesn’t easily allow stepping back or pausing for reflection.

The rewards, however, were great. I saw Cyrus deeply engrossed in filling a small wooden cart with rubber rocks, pushing it across the arched bridge about as wide as the cart, carefully arranging the rocks in the painted stream on the other side; climbing into the rocking boat; and scooping up the rocks. Harper casually explored many areas but focused intently on the soft Soma cube puzzle and how the pieces fit together. She was particularly intent on creating a rambling structure where several children could lounge; and they did.

In the Cardboard Challenge, Cyrus discovered painters’ tape. Peeling, cutting, and wrapping tape became the focus of activity with cardboard and construction a distant second. Harper’s face beamed with triumph each time she returned from forays throughout the room bearing another cardboard shape to add to the castle project. Thank you Harper and Cyrus!

Stepping Back and Looking Out

A week later, I am still thinking about my visit and my role. For starters, I am surprised, amused, and a bit dismayed at how off the mark I was in meeting my own expectations about the adult role and interactions with my niece and nephew in spite of years in museums. It brings to the forefront questions about understanding and negotiating this territory. On the one hand, we don’t want parents hijacking their child’s activities and doing things for them. On the other hand, we don’t want adults ignoring a child. At the same time, museums shouldn’t be scripting parent-child interactions. I have been considering what this suggests about expectations of adults, at least in children’s museums, currently and going forward.

Initially overlooked and long-under valued except as drivers and pocket books that bring children to the museum, adults (caregivers and parents) are now seen and valued, although somewhat abstractly as playing roles and interacting with children. Of course they do play roles that are critical to easy, manageable, and meaningful visits. Through their interactions–verbal and non-verbal–adults supervise for safety; encourage, guide, and model. They scaffold and make connections with experiences the child has had previously. They add and appreciate humor and revisit shared experiences over time. While definitely important, I wonder whether this view is limiting and whether it adequately recognizes other significant and on-going factors at play in shaping, impacting, and enhancing a valuable museum experience for children and the important adults in their lives.

If we believe in museums’ capacity to engage children’s potential and contribute to their positive development, we need to place the adult role and interactions in the larger context of an on-going, powerful, relationship between children and parents and caregivers. In rethinking the adult presence, children’s museums could serve the long-term relationship between the adult and the child, one that begins long before and extends well beyond the museum visit.

Until well into children’s tweens, the parent/caregiver-and-child relationship is central in a child’s life, even as it changes with age. A prized and enduring connection for both the child and the adult, it is a dynamic to which each contributes, changing with time through exchanges, collaboration, the child’s development, and a growing set of shared activities, experiences, and memories. Museums are very much a part of this.

Let us pay more attention to the pleasure and possibilities of adults and children in being together in the lively and alive setting of a children’s museum. To what we already know about adult roles and interactions, let us consider and build on the on-going relationship. Let us invite the adults’ view of what they hope to get from the visit, including their hopes for what to learn from and about their child.

Essential Experiences: Where Museums Can Matter

Museums want to matter. They want to matter to their communities and to their visitors in large and small ways. Those hopes are expressed in their missions; they guide museums in framing the future and in making major decisions. Museums work to build connections with their communities, place visitors at the center of their thinking, and find meaningful ways to engage children and adults in exhibits and programs in order to matter.

Yet, a vast expanse of territory exists between intending to provide meaningful experiences and actually doing so. Missions are typically lofty and aspirational; they don’t readily translate into experiences for learners or something a family can do on a visit. Conducting audience research about whether a museum’s experiences are meaningful is ambitious, if not out-of-reach of most museums. Exhibit goals can miss the mark as well by being narrow and primarily focusing on cognitive areas such as thinking skills and knowledge.

Museums can, however, be deliberate in delivering a set of essential experiences that make a difference in people’s lives and, eventually, in the collective life of their community. Essential experiences are valuable opportunities that build on and contribute to the potential of the visitors in areas that move a museum towards its mission and achieving its impact. While museums alone cannot change life outcomes, they can focus their expertise, efforts, and resources on creating and delivering root experiences in areas that matter. 

At the Convergence

Most museums have a handful of opportunities that would be a starting place for a set of essential experiences. Perhaps a favorite phrase or powerful image surfaces and is repeated. “Frequent and positive experiences with nature,” “a time and a place to be children”, or “coming together as a family” might galvanize teams and resonate strongly as experiences your museum values.

A museum’s essential experiences emerge from its mission; on behalf of its audience; and from opportunities afforded by its strengths and distinct features.

Essential experiences are where a museum needs to deliver over time in order to act on its mission and reach its stated outcomes. A mission gives direction about what experiences matter: people discovering and valuing nature; the role of science in everyday life; children’s well-being; understanding works of art; or sustaining our community. These are clues about how children might succeed in life, how a community might be healthier, or what a brighter future might look like. Essential experiences build on these hopes and beliefs. 

Essential experiences are for the audience, building on their potential, and considered from their vantage point. They can be developed for priority audience groups such as children, youth, or families and might be tailored to an age cohort or interest group. Essential experiences focus on and are inspired by potential, by an image of vibrant, competent, curious children, connected youth, motivated educators, engaged citizens, or involved parents. For Louisiana Children’s Museum’s Early Learning Village, positive outcomes for children, families and the community inform the essential experiences. Robust, healthy children become responsible, caring adults who, in turn, contribute their strengths to their children and to their communities in the future.

A museum’s advantage in contributing significant experiences and influencing outcomes is where its strengths complement what other organizations and agencies offer–and don’t offer. As informal learning environments, museums are social settings, where participation is self-motivated, guided by learner interests, voluntary and personal, contextually relevant, collaborative, and non-linear. In these attributes are opportunities during out of school time, for families, bringing people together, and using rich objects and environments. A museum’s particular valued contribution is in its partnerships, its collection, its site, and its story.

Framing Experiences

Similar to building blocks, essential experiences support internal resources, positive developmental processes, and protective factors. While they emerge from the mission and connect with strongly held organizational values, they are also grounded in research, supported by theory, and reinforced by community wisdom. Enjoying many of these experiences is associated with a firmer toe-hold in life, with flourishing, and helps advance well-being, strong families, engaged citizens, or increased social cohesion.

A set of experiences will not, and need not, be exhaustive. They should, however, be rich and varied. Building block experiences span domains, tapping into the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional dimensions. They are holistic and inclusive, accommodating children and adults from a wide variety of backgrounds. For some parts of the museum audience, essential experiences reinforce a good start or provide an extra boost; for others these experiences serve as protective factors against challenge and risk. Delivering these experiences alone will not change life outcomes. Doing so, however, represents a well-informed step towards building on capabilities and intentionally adding positive factors to members of the community.

Children and adults should enjoy essential experiences regularly with their family, friends, peers, and new members of a group at the museum, as well as in other settings. More than an activity like problem solving or reading, essential experiences are opportunities with long tails. Close observation of the world; experiencing wonder, beauty, and awe; and following interests and motivations to explore personal questions are experiences that contribute to a long-term experiential bank, enhancing internal assets.

Essential experiences may be framed by a museum team or with community members as part of many museum-planning processes. They can be identified in planning a new museum as the emerging Children’s Museum of Sonoma County did or as Louisiana Children’s Museum has in planning its early childhood campus, the Early Learning Village. Tamarack Nature Center designated essential experiences when it reinvented itself through its master planning process. These platform experiences can be identified during exhibit master planning as The Family Museum has. Providence Children’s Museum has developed Avenues of Play Experiences for its Play Power initiative. In every case, essential experiences need to emerge from a museum’s core interests and be easy to communicate to staff, board members, and partners.

Naming Experiences

Essential experiences are an invitation to capture, name, and cultivate assets that we hope children, youth, adults, and members of our community enjoy. Rather than focusing on skills, communicating exhibit content, or interpreting principles, these experiences emphasize what happens for the person. Solving a problem for someone else, being at the spot where a view is revealed, or transforming materials for new uses draws on internal resources and contributes to a solid foundation for life.

Describing an experience in a way that is more poetic than clinical makes room for interpretation and insight. While clear and backed up by evidence, these experiences are not narrow, nor are they necessarily tangible. Finding respite in nature, being touched by art, connecting with place, or making the most of everyday moments fuses thinking, feeling, and doing with a generative quality.

The Early Learning Village focuses on offering essential experiences that cultivate: a robust sense of self; supportive relationships; a sense of well-being; making sense of the world; and a child’s expanding sense of the world. These five areas reflect what matters to the ELV’s target age range in the Greater New Orleans area and highlight adults’ critical roles. They work as a set, strong in all domains. Each is a platform supported by more specific experiences. For instance, a robust sense of self is supported by Pursuing appropriate risk and experiencing disappointment and failure in a safe environment and four other related experiences which are all supported by many and specific activities and moments. The ELV’s essential experiences have guided facility and exhibit design and are the areas in which it is building capacity.

Each and every encounter with exhibits, programs, events, take-homes, on-line activities, or walking through the museum door, offers children and adults an opportunity to engage in a rich, experience that matters and contributes to their individual resources. Museums support building block experiences when they are intentional in many and everyday ways.

A museum’s commitment to its experiences guides planning, revisiting and recalibrating an outdoor site, exhibit component, family night, badge project, or professional development workshop. In which part of the site do visitors connect with nature through all the senses? How does this particular component help a learner reduce uncertainty by seeking and gathering information? In what ways does someone enjoy a sense of well-being here? How is our staff prepared to provide attention, guidance, and support to parents? to children? to seniors? Considering questions like these and finding ways to intentionally support and strengthen experiences that matter for visitors is foundational work for museums that matter.

Remembering Peter Benson

As I have been thinking about essential experiences, I have been remembering Dr. Peter Benson, a great champion of youth and what it takes for them to thrive. Until he passed away October 2, Dr. Benson led the Search Institute (www.search-institute.org) in its remarkable work on positive youth development work that has made a difference to children, families, and communities across the country.

Museums have used assets for healthy development for understanding what children and youth need, as tools for planning exhibits and programs, in interacting with visitors, and as inspiration for essential experiences. In 2010, Dr Benson accepted the Association of Children’s Museums’ Great Friend to Kids Award on behalf of the Search Institute.

Audience, An Area of Enduring Focus

Several years ago on a strategic planning project, my planning partner Andrea Fox Jensen referred to a museum’s audience as an area enduring focus. Someone on the strategic planning team had commented that the museum had already been through discussions about their audience and what it should be.

The group seemed reassured by Andrea’s characterizing audience in this way: important, in fact so important, consideration of it is never complete. In any case, they engaged wholeheartedly in lively and productive discussions about age ranges, audience groups, and geographic radius. Later when the planning team brought the board into the discussion, members conveyed the value of revisiting this important question without a “been there, done that” subtext.

Andrea’s observation was so smart and helpful. Every project I work on–a strategic plan, learning framework, exhibit master plan, or something in between–involves a key discussion about audience. I don’t mean a back-up-and-start-from-scratch audience conversation. Typically these are fruitful discussions that review, check, or affirm the current audience. They relate the audience to the current project and get everyone on the same page. Sometimes they help bring new staff or board members along. These discussions are also opportunities to share new information or a chance insight about the audience like the arrival of universal pre-kindergarten in a community, declining school group visits, or an increase in moms’ groups.

These and countless other discussions about audiences, museums, and public value have surfaced features that distinguish audience and other possible areas of enduring focus. Moreover, they have underscored the critical role of audience for a museum acting deliberately on its aspirations.

Of Persistent Interest

Enduring assumes a long-term, continuing interest. Nothing could be more central to a museum’s aspirations and reason for being than its audience. Who a museum intends to serve is as fundamental at start-up as it is during periods of growth and change, as it is at each step of fulfilling a promise to the community.

A sound and shared understanding of a museum’s audience is essential. Museums go about this in many ways and on an on-going basis: identifying primary, secondary, and emerging audiences; surveying visitors; analyzing attendance data; and conducting audience research. Museums then apply an understanding of the audience to shaping and presenting collections, engaging experiences, and educational services in order to open up possibilities of learning for its visitors. 

Sometimes, however, it seems that the persistent focus of audience switches to attendance as Paul Orselli explored in ExhibiTricks. A focus on attendance can, in fact, distract from the centrality of audience to a museum’s value. If, for instance, the challenge of audience was simply about more visitors, a museum could just send out a bus, pick up visitors, and hand out free passes.

A Significant Difference

An area of enduring focus must be capable of making a major contribution to a museum’s public service. Audience is pivotal, from community-wide awareness of a museum to making a difference in the learning lives of children, building social cohesion across neighborhoods, or increasing science literacy among citizens.

In this respect, the challenge is less about bringing more visitors to the museum than about bringing the right visitors to the museum. To be certain it serves all parts of its audience well and serves priority audience groups fully, a museum must be knowledgeable about, alert to, proactive, and respectful towards its audience. Stories spread about museums discovering there are consequences to being vague about or indifferent to their audience.

Using a current and well-informed understanding of its audience, a museum needs to effectively reach and actively engage families, school, and community groups, children and adults, both current and potential visitors. The informal learning experiences it offers must address age-related development; be relevant to visitor interests, expectations and everyday lives; and align with its own aspirations.   

A Sharpening Perspective

Perspectives on critical, complex, and constant areas are never static. They evolve, advance, and become nuanced. Museums as well as their audiences exist in dynamic external contexts. Successes and failures produce new insights that affect understanding and reaching audiences; new practices help refine and advance audience knowledge.

In only a few decades, museums have shifted from being about something, to being for the general public, to serving specific audience segments, to being concerned with who is not coming to the museum. Learning from and about actual and intended visitors shifts perspectives, reveals interests and expectations of visitors, and produces new insights about what is attractive to them.

A body of audience knowledge builds from multiple sources: surveys, focus groups, and visitor panels, census data, and information generated by other groups. New practices and insights come from the work of other museums, from research conducted in the field on behalf of museums, and from audience development work supported by, for instance, the Wallace Foundation. Continuous scanning of emerging community and audience trends, sharing and interpreting observations, and following the implications of new information sharpen perspectives.

Supporting Practices

An intense commitment to audience in a pocket of the museum is inadequate in serving audiences well and catalyzing the mission. A museum must operate with a shared understanding of priority audiences, an organization-wide value on relationships that serve the audience well, and a strong belief that improving service to the audience will make a difference.

Robust audience-centered systems and procedures, integrated with practices, supported by resources, and reaching across the organization are necessary to grow audience knowledge, facilitate its transfer, and apply it effectively to experiences. Supportive practices must permeate developing and designing exhibitions; involving audience groups in planning programs and exhibitions; training staff for interaction; calibrating the variety of offerings and pace of change; and evaluating programs and exhibitions and their impact on the audience.

This is a museum’s everyday version of enduring focus. It circulates and re-circulates, interprets and re-interprets audience information and visitor studies. Staff look for evidence for-and-against goals and hunches. Teams address audience interests and engagement strategies at the forefront of every project and initiative. They prototype and revise experience goals, activities, messages, and designs. They evaluate the impact of experiences on the audience. And they begin again, playing it forward.

Intensifying Attention to Audience

In my work, I have found that identifying audience as an area of enduring focus is useful in intensifying attention on this critical piece of a museum’s potential to make a difference. It effectively signals to staff and board that the people and communities they hope to serve are the highest priority, at the center, and at every step.

What are your thoughts?

• In what way does identifying audience as an area of enduring focus help your thinking and work?
• Would you suggest other areas of enduring focus? What about:
  • Product, or a museum’s exhibitions, programs, learning experiences and environments, through which it serves and engages its audiences and accomplishes its purpose?
  • Resources, financial, human, intellectual, and real property, that are the necessary means to make this possible?
  • Impact, or areas of significant change in the public service a museum provides that are congruent with its purpose and to which it will be held accountable?