Customer, Learner, Citizen

Photo credit: Vergeront

Originally posted January 2011




Visitors, audiences, guests, customers, clients, patrons, users, the public. How do you or your museum refer to the people it serves and hopes to serve? 

Articles, blogs, conversations, and even mission statements suggest there is little agreement about this important term among museums. In fact, labels are often used interchangeably. This might imply that it doesn’t really matter what we call the adults and children who walk through the doors, enroll in classes, become members, shop at the store, explore exhibits, and visit our websites.

In fact, what we call our museum’s public beneficiaries really does influence how we think of them, plan for them, serve them and our communities, and even assess our impact. “Visitor” might have the lead as a standard term, but with major shortcomings. It is not only impersonal, but it also lumps together millions of people into one undifferentiated mass. It implies a temporary relationship with someone who will be leaving soon. Finally, it ignores the vast number of people who may not physically come to the museum but who have an interest in and a relationship with it. Teachers and school administrators, volunteers, partners, funders, business leaders, neighbors, and taxpayers are only some of the stakeholders who don’t fit the label "visitor."   

Visitor is not so much a wrong term; it is simply inadequate. The lively, exciting activity around audience conceptualizations seems to suggest this as well. (Falk, J. 2006;  Stylianou-Lambert, T. 2010. Pekarik and  Mogel. 2010.)

Somewhere between a one-size-fits-all category of visitor and a research-based audience segmentation is a view of museum visitors as:

• Customers
• Learners
• Citizens

While very basic as a taxonomy, this nevertheless focuses on the person, engages with museum practices, and aligns with most museums’ broad strategic interests. It also accommodates the very real possibility that one person is likely to be a customer, a learner, or a citizen at various times during a museum visit depending on their interests, choices, and activities.

Considering the particular roles and associated interests of customers, learners, and citizens opens the possibility of relationships with them that are more personal than abstract and that may be on-going. It places people in the social context of museums. And it facilitates understanding, describing and assisting people in what they hope to accomplish by connecting with the museum.

• Customers purchase memberships, attend events, shop in the store, and use websites. They are interested in friendly service, personal satisfaction, a good value, comfort, easy navigation, and a positive experience. 
• Learners visiting exhibits, participating in a program, or upgrading skills expect rich accessible content, opportunities to apply existing skills and experiences, or appreciate art. They may want to learn together as a family or provide a learning experience for their children.
• Inspired to serve their community, eager to expand or share skills, or acting on a long-standing interest, citizens may be volunteers, participants in research, advisors, advocates, or enthusiasts. They bring energy, expertise, and goodwill that help a museum strengthen its community connections.

Getting to know and plan for customers, learners, and citizens suggests new contexts and practices. We tend to construct a context that takes into account qualities we attribute to someone in a particular role. So distinguishing among roles is likely to sharpen awareness of expectations and associated contexts. Alternative assumptions, approaches, and practices may come into play along with new resources and studies.

Customers

• Customers. Satisfying customers brings to mind ways to be helpful, the importance of taking the extra step, and the potential of an on-going relationship that serving visitors does not. Two decades ago museums experienced a surge of awareness around satisfying customers. Meeting or exceeding their expectations became a priority. Subsequently, customer service procedures were developed, staff training was implemented, and satisfaction levels are measured and tracked. Lobbies increasingly offer designated lines (i.e. member express), food and other amenities, and activities to engage children while parents purchase tickets. A reputation for exceptional customer service builds a valued brand and good will that benefits a museum for years.

Learners

• Learners. Imagine the discussions, questions, and choices a team planning an exhibit for learners would have compared to the same team planning an exhibit for visitors. To plan for learners, a team might develop a definition of learning. It might identify attributes like curiosity, rich experience bank, or creative, that learners bring to the objects, images, text, media, and activities a team will shape into an exhibition. The team could use generic learning outcomes or content-based frameworks to frame learning goals and evaluate the exhibit’s impact, just as it could design exhibits using research on the connection between family learning and exhibit characteristics. The more developed a view of the learner a museum has, the more fully it is able to deliver on a promise of learning value.

Citizens

• Citizens. Museums invest significant resources in developing partnerships, growing networks, recruiting volunteers, delivering programs in the community, and reaching new audiences. These are long-term efforts and a challenge to sustain. Engaging citizens in this work, however, can shift resources and results. Whether they are neighbors, hobbyists, volunteers, activists, artists, inventors, or scientists, citizens bring high levels of motivation and commitment. Moreover, their experiences, expertise, and perspectives are assets that help the museum serve its customers and learners more effectively, expand its cultural knowledge, research a pressing local issue, or bring a wider range of the community into the museum. While listening, nurturing relationships, and building trust take time, authentic citizen engagement goes directly to a museum’s aligning its interests and assets with its community’s priorities.

Everyday, museums open their doors, look sharp, eagerly await and welcome visitors. If, however, a museum were to focus on serving its customers, inspiring learners, and engaging citizens, it could accomplish this and more. A museum could also help itself become a recognized and valued asset in its community.

• Falk, J. 2006. An identity-centered approach to understanding museum learning. Curator: The Museum Journal. 49/2: 151-164.

• Pekarik, A.J. and B. Mogel. 2010. Ideas, objects, or people? A Smithsonian exhibition team views visitors anew. Curator: The Museum Journal 53/4: 465-483.

• Stylianou-Lambert, T. 2010. Re-conceptualizing museum audiences: Power, activity, responsibility. Visitor Studies: 13(2): 131-144.

Seeing Children in the City

Together on the Piazza di Nettuno in Bologna

My last post included mention of some Reggio museum group members preparing for the study tour by looking for traces of children in the city and for evidence of how communities support children. Inspired by their intentions, I have charged myself with thinking about and looking for children’s presence in the city and using the cities I am visiting on my way to Reggio as a provocation. I have been spending a few days in Leeuwarden in the northern part of The Netherlands, in Amsterdam, and in Bologna.

A concept of interest to me for some time and one I have written about previously here and here, seeing children requires both on-going thinking and vigilance to become meaningful. A recent experience reminded me of this when a museum leader involved in master planning asked, “What does seeing children mean?” referring to a core strategy in the master plan. In this setting, the phrase and strategy were not new, but clearly they were neither well understood nor internalized. Several interpretations were proposed by members of the group: valuing and investing in children; recognizing their capabilities and potential; taking children seriously.

Taking the train to Amsterdam

As I have traveled by train, tram, bike, and walked in Leeuwarden, Amsterdam and Bologna, as I have waited in airports and train stations and looked about me, I have been asking myself what might seeing children in the city mean.  Although not as simple as the list below, probing each word begins to expose the depth and complexity of 5 words and the wide variety of ways in which children can be visible in the city.

Seeing: Noticing children; hearing their voices; listening to their questions, thinking, and ideas; valuing their identities, differences, and uniqueness; welcoming and appreciating their presence, ways of learning, and play in many forms; making room for them to make meaning 

Children: Full of curiosity, capabilities, and potential; full of empathy; with ideas and with many ways of expression; responding to their environment; owning capacity to create and contribute 
In: In relationship with others; present and engaged with physical and social, public and civic spaces, not only in the home; at the center of a community’s long-term interests 
The city or town, village, suburb, region: Out in the public, in traffic, at play; in places of culture; as active and contributing participants, engaged in real and meaningful experiences

A First Pass at Seeing Children

This exercise does not result in a Rick Steves travelogue, although a Seeing Children In Brussels (or Boston or Reggio) could be fascinating. In fact, visiting cities and looking for children’s presence creates a very different–but rewarding–kind of sightseeing than churches, museums, monuments, or historic houses. A few initial observations have surfaced during a week’s travels.

• In Leeuwarden, Amsterdam, and in other cities and towns in The Netherlands where many people ride bikes and take public transportation, children are highly visible, especially compared to when they are passengers inside cars moving quickly along streets and highways. Riding on the front or back of bikes when they are young, riding their own bikes at an early age, or taking trams, children are easily seen to the city as they go to the market, on a family outing, to school, or to visit friends.

• From a very early age, Dutch children travel on the front or back of their parent’s bikes. Perched up high, they see buildings and people, they see their surroundings, and they see where they are going. Riding close to a parent, they have someone to answer their questions and interpret what they are seeing.

Children off to school in Leeuwarden

• Daily, children ride their bikes considerable distances on their way to school, on bike paths, sometimes paralleling highways, and often in the rain. They go over bridges and under tunnels, cross streets, and signal turns. In moving traffic in a densely populated country, children are considered responsible and are trusted.

Children at the front for Rembrandt's Night Watch

• In the Hall of Honor in the recently and magnificently renovated Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, a group of school children  sat on the floor right in front of Rembrandt’s celebrated Night Watch. In a place of great significance culturally and nationally for The Netherlands, children received the prime spot.

The Netherlands, a country of bikes

Bologna, a city of motor bikes

Leaving Leeuwarden and Amsterdam and heading to Bologna, I wondered what I might find there. All cities aren’t­–and shouldn’t be­–the same. Just as their cultures and contexts are different, so will children’s presence be different. I noticed, for instance, that Leeuwarden and Amsterdam are bicycle cities, while Bologna is not. Bologna, it seems, is a city of motorbikes and children in strollers under the porticoes. 

In strollers, under porticoes

In my walking about, I came upon several examples of how the municipality of Bologna, or Comune di Bologna, is supporting places for children in its historic and cultural center. 

START Laboratorio di Cultur Creative in the Palazzo Re Enzo

• Passing through the Palazzo de Re Enzo on the Piazza Maggiore, several windows stood out from among the others. They looked like a children’s store or children’s museum. Stepping inside, I learned about START Laboratorio di Cultur Creative (Creative Cultures Lab) that was opened 2 years ago by a foundation with an interest in the public communication of science and technology–informal science.  START offers interactive programs for children 2 years through high school in families and schools in the sciences and arts and provides professional development for teachers. START is located in a space provided by the Comune di Bologna.

One of 3 libraries for children in the Bologna Library

• Just across the Piazza from START is the main library of Bologna. Many libraries have a children’s library, but Bologna's has 3 children’s libraries, one for bambini under 3 years, one for children 3-8 years, and one for youth. In the Bebe library, a group of 3 mothers with their bambini were gathered in a comfortable, intimate space. Babies weren't limited to this space; in the big central hall of the library a father held his toddler up to play with the flashlight in one of the displays. 

• On the third level of the library the Urban Design Center, Bologna is located. An exhibit on the master plan for the Comune di Bologna is presented in this space covering plan principles and approximately 25 designated projects for implementing the plan. Among the 10 principles presented and explained–Bologna Ancient and Comfortable, Unites, Is Born Again, Travels, Produces, etc. one, Innovate, highlights children: “…to encourage creativity, to consider its younger generations a resource in which to invest, …” It appears that Bologna does see its children, but does not seem to have taken the larger step of seeing them as creative and as active agents in their learning and in building Bologna’s future now.

Before departing Bologna for Reggio, I found these packs of sugar on the saucer of my cappuccino.  

Toddlers Being Citizens

 

Now and then a blog posting unfolds in real life.     

Several weeks ago, I wrote about Raising Citizens and highlighted the importance of seeing children as citizens today, recognizing their capabilities, and strengthening relationships between children and the community.

Neighbors and friends down the street have a family day care. One of the many wonderful things about these two sisters, Nina and Chrissie, is that they find ways to talk with their day care children about what’s happening in the world. They are astute and attentive observers of their children, following and supporting their interests, and extending their explorations of the world. They also read Museum Notes and last week they talked to their children about Raising Citizens.  

Chrissie told the children that a neighbor, Jeanne, the one with the dog named Coco (they remembered Coco) had said it’s important for children to see the neighborhood and for the neighborhood to see the children.

On a  sunny late-winter day last week, Chrissie, Nina, and the children took a stroll down our street. Nina led with the 2 and 3 year olds in the big wagon. Chrissie brought up the rear with the 4 year olds. I was lucky enough to be looking out the window as they approached. I noticed the wagon slowed every now-and-then as it moved along the sidewalk.   

When wagon and walkers came closer, I understood the reason for the changing pace of the procession. At each house, everyone paused and the children waved. There was no sign of anyone at home at the green house or the tan house, where Jane or Rita lives. Yet, house-by-house, they waved to their neighbors.

I wish, how I wish, I had a photo, or even better, a video of these children. I do not want to forget seeing those young citizens waving to the window, to the house, to their neighbors, seeing their neighbors and letting their neighbors see them.  

Raising Citizens

 
Last year I wrote about Customers, Learners, Citizens. I often write about children. In the broader culture, we are doing quite well in raising customers. In museums, schools, and homes, we work hard at raising learners. How do we raise citizens?

We talk about children and youth becoming global citizens and citizens of the world. Civic literacy is one of five 21^st Century Themes in Museums and Libraries, and 21stCentury Skills.  Schools and colleges, churches and synagogues set requirements for children and youth to complete community service requirements. Kindergarten and first grade study units typically include getting to know the community and community helpers.

In many children’s museums, a city or streetscape with shops, bus, fire truck and streetlight are extensive settings. The expectation seems clear that young children should be learning about the community from play in settings with civic associations–dressing as a fire fighter, passing the town square on the way to the grocery store, delivering mail, or climbing aboard the bus. Although these settings  facilitate valuable social negotiation, rich language, and drawing on previous experience, I am unaware of evidence that shows  they are also helping to grow citizens. Perhaps when a group of children organize themselves around a sequence of putting out a fire and saving a cat in Our Town, they are engaged in a civic narrative of assistance and responsibility. I'm not sure that's adequate.

How do we grow citizens and what role can museums play?

The answer to this question is not, I repeat–not–an adult framed and delivered civics lesson, not even an innovative civics instruction about voting, the Constitution, or volunteering. It is not a screed against partisan sniping or voter apathy, nor is it an argument for giving children the vote. Raising citizens is about shifting our perspectives on children to…

•                  See them as citizens today

•                  Recognize their capabilities

•                  Strengthen relationships between the child and the community

Citizens Today
When we gravely refer to children as future citizens, our voices become thick and low; this is serious. Putting future between children and citizens, however, suggests otherwise by postponing a decade or two of opportunities for children to actually be citizens. If children are to be future citizens, why ignore early and middle childhood and the teens? 

Carlina Rinaldi of the Municipal Infant Toddler Centers and Preschools of Reggio Emilia (Italy) frames the alternative: "The child is not in the future, the future is his work. The child is now, he is a citizen since the day he is born and has rights." Children are citizens today. Now. This moment.

I suspect we don’t think of children as citizens now because we focus on what they can’t do by using as a measure what we think they will be able to do in the future. A three year old can’t read yet and can’t ride a two-wheeler. A seven-year old is not an abstract thinker and doesn’t think using multiple variables. In this deficit-based view, a three-year old simply turns into an inadequate five-year old rather than a competent, accomplished three-year old who will become an equally capable five-year old in just two years. In this respect, I believe, we are not taking children seriously at all.

Capable Children
In a view of children as citizens now, however, their capabilities and strengths become the focus. This includes the presence of empathy and appreciation in toddlers. Last year, four colleagues in a Twin Cities school district gave themselves the task of focusing on helping behaviors and acts of kindness among toddlers and preschoolers in their classrooms. This was a shift from a perceived focus on problem and negative behaviors. Their focused observations noticed, for instance, a child desiring a particularly beautiful bead that another child had and receiving a promise of one similarly beautiful bead being found for her or being given that one. A classmate spent time finding another beautiful bead. After regularly noticing unprompted acts of kindness among young children during play, this group now sees these behaviors as the norm in the classroom. Acts of kindness and generosity, they have decided, are generative. This project, described more fully in Tomsensori’s blog, includes videos that capture moments of kindness and appreciation.

Children’s capacity to be citizens is widespread and not rare. Citizen-relevant capacities unfold continuously throughout early and middle childhood and beyond. Around eight years, children respond to stories concerning fairness and justice; they are interested in topics related to interdependence. Soon after, their ability to deal with multiple variables emerges. Around eleven years, children’s capacity to de-center and see the world from various perspectives increases; they are able and willing to see both sides of an argument.

Such developmental changes are occurring in children who are born researchers, discovering and navigating this moment and the next. Nourished by a joy of questioning, children are growing a sense of possibility and efficacy; they are intent on fully knowing and inhabiting their world. A child who searches everyday for the reasons for things, who searches to understand something, and who draws out meaning is constructing his world, a world that is rapidly changing and, day by day, becoming the future.

Seeing and Being Seen By the City
Children have considerable capacity to be citizens now and in the future. Opportunities and experiences, however, can’t be limited to recreated cities or fenced in playgrounds where children play among themselves and peek through a fence at a larger world. To flourish, children need real encounters in the places they live, play, and go to school; in their neighborhood, town, or city; and with family, friends, and new faces. Meaningful ways for them to make sense of their civic world come from opportunities and experiences to participate that are grounded in a spectrum of the community’s vitality, complexities, and realities.

The community serves as a fund of knowledge, providing resources and revealing relationships embedded in community, neighborhood, and home. As children experience the city directly, the abstract concept of community dissolves. When children move around and through the city, when they walk, take busses, ride bikes, and travel by car, they come to know the city. When they photograph the river, follow the railroad tracks, or study their city, the parts, people, and relationships that make up the community become visible. The possible ways of taking care of one another and of valued places come into focus. Real life, in-community experiences activate and strengthen connections and a sense of belonging essential to helping children find their way and their place.

When children meet an expert potter, write with a local poet, visit the waterworks department, interview a community gardener, or gather data in a ladybug count with scientists, they engage in meaningful opportunities to think, learn, decide, and lead. As children actively engage in and with their community, they become visible and remembered by the community. Just as children need to see the city, the city needs to see, remember, and value their children.

The Habits of a Community
Children grow into our expectations of them. They follow our examples of being civil or uncivil in voice, tone, gesture, and action. They watch as parents, neighbors, and grandparents actively participate in their community, vote, reach out to others, listen to voices they disagree with, take them seriously–or not.

The habits of a community develop the habits of children. In serving their communities and as parts of their communities, museums have roles to play in developing those habits and raising citizens. Museums can recognize children as citizens now, see and build on their strengths and competencies, and engage them in real experiences. 

In museums we can notice acts of kindness and helping behaviors among children. We can draw on their questions and understandings of their streets, bridges, sewers, buildings, and parks. We can invite them to explore the real workings of the city and open the museum to their ideas and discoveries. We can pair them with artists, tinkerers, chefs, inventors, and writers. We can involve them in community-based projects of today, for tomorrow. In an effort to raise citizens, we can grow the ways in which  we see children as citizens and expand the roles museums play (and play well) to help raise citizens.

Customers, Learners, Citizens

Visitors, audiences, guests, customers, clients, patrons, users, the public. How do you or your museum refer to the people it serves and hopes to serve? 

Articles, blogs, conversations, and even mission statements suggest there is little agreement about this important term among museums. In fact, labels are often used interchangeably. This might imply that it doesn’t really matter what we call the adults and children who walk through the doors, enroll in classes, become members, shop at the store, explore exhibits, and visit our websites.

In fact, what we call our museum’s public beneficiaries really does influence how we think of them, plan for them, serve them and our communities, and even assess our impact. “Visitor” might have the lead as a standard term, but with major shortcomings. It is not only impersonal, but it also lumps together millions of people into one undifferentiated mass. It implies a temporary relationship with someone who will be leaving soon. Finally, it ignores the vast number of people who may not physically come to the museum but who have an interest in and a relationship with it. Teachers and school administrators, volunteers, partners, funders, business leaders, neighbors, and taxpayers are only some of the stakeholders who don’t fit the label "visitor."   

Visitor is not so much a wrong term. It is simply inadequate. The lively, exciting activity around audience conceptualizations seems to suggest this as well. (Falk, J. 2006;  Stylianou-Lambert, T. 2010. Pekarik and  Mogel. 2010.)

Somewhere between a one-size-fits-all category of visitor and a research-based audience segmentation is a view of museum visitors as:

• Customers
• Learners
• Citizens

While very basic as a taxonomy, this nevertheless focuses on the person, engages with museum practices, and aligns with most museums’ broad strategic interests. It also accommodates the very real possibility that a person might be a customer, a learner, or a citizen at various times during a museum visit depending on their interests, choices, and activities.

Considering the particular roles and associated interests of customers, learners, and citizens opens the possibility of relationships with them that are more personal than abstract and that may be on-going. It places people in the social context of museums. And it facilitates understanding, describing and assisting people in what they hope to accomplish by connecting with the museum.

• Customers purchase memberships, attend events, shop in the store, and use websites. They are interested in friendly service, personal satisfaction, a good value, comfort, easy navigation, and a positive experience. 
• Learners visiting exhibits, participating in a program, or upgrading skills expect rich accessible content, opportunities to apply existing skills and experiences, or appreciate art. They may want to learn together as a family or provide a learning experience for their children.
• Inspired to serve their community, eager to expand or share skills, or acting on a long-standing interest, citizens may be volunteers, participants in research, advisors, advocates, or enthusiasts. They bring energy, expertise, and goodwill that help a museum strengthen its community connections.

Getting to know and plan for customers, learners, and citizens suggests new contexts and practices. We tend to construct a context that takes into account qualities we attribute to someone in a particular role. So distinguishing among roles is likely to sharpen awareness of expectations and associated contexts. Alternative assumptions, approaches, and practices may come into play along with new resources and studies.

Customers

• Customers. Satisfying customers brings to mind ways to be helpful, the importance of taking the extra step, and the potential of an on-going relationship that serving visitors does not. Two decades ago museums experienced a surge of awareness around satisfying customers. Meeting or exceeding their expectations became a priority. Subsequently, customer service procedures were developed, staff training was implemented, and satisfaction levels are measured and tracked. Lobbies increasingly offer designated lines (i.e. member express), food and other amenities, and activities to engage children while parents purchase tickets. A reputation for exceptional customer service builds a valued brand and good will that benefits a museum for years.

Learners

• Learners. Imagine the discussions, questions, and choices a team planning an exhibit for learners would have compared to the same team planning an exhibit for visitors. To plan for learners, a team might develop a definition of learning. It might identify attributes like curiosity, rich experience bank, or creative, that learners bring to the objects, images, text, media, and activities a team will shape into an exhibition. The team could use generic learning outcomes or content-based frameworks to frame learning goals and evaluate the exhibit’s impact, just as it could design exhibits using research on the connection between family learning and exhibit characteristics. The more developed a view of the learner a museum has, the more fully it is able to deliver on a promise of learning value.

Citizens

• Citizens. Museums invest significant resources in developing partnerships, growing networks, delivering programs in the community, and reaching new audiences. These are long-term efforts and a challenge to sustain. Engaging citizens in this work, however, can shift resources and results. Whether they are neighbors, hobbyists, volunteers, activists, artists, inventors, or scientists, citizens bring high levels of motivation and commitment. Moreover, their experiences, expertise, and perspectives are assets that help the museum serve its customers and learners more effectively, expand its cultural knowledge, research a pressing local issue, or bring the community into the museum. While listening, nurturing relationships, and building trust take time, authentic citizen engagement goes directly to a museum’s aligning its interests and assets with its community’s priorities.

Everyday, museums open their doors, look sharp, eagerly await and welcome visitors. If, however, a museum were to focus on serving its customers, inspiring learners, and engaging citizens, it could accomplish this and more. A museum could also help itself become a recognized and valued asset in its community.

• Falk, J. 2006. An identity-centered approach to understanding museum learning. Curator: The Museum Journal. 49/2: 151-164.

• Pekarik, A.J. and B. Mogel. 2010. Ideas, objects, or people? A Smithsonian exhibition team views visitors anew. Curator: The Museum Journal 53/4: 465-483.

• Stylianou-Lambert, T. 2010. Re-conceptualizing museum audiences: Power, activity, responsibility. Visitor Studies: 13(2): 131-144.

---