Engaging Audiences Strategically

Awhile back I had a conversation with Jeri Robinson from Boston Children’s Museum about the changes the Museum was noticing in its audience: fewer school visits, more younger children, a softening at the upper end of their age range. The Museum was looking at these audience shifts as part of its strategic planning process.

That wasn’t the first or only conversation on this topic I’d had about changing museum audiences. Sometimes these conversations are part of a planning project and naturally focus on the ages of the audience. Other times I hear in the midst of a conversation that the museum’s audience never really was who it thought it was. For children’s museums this often means that the audience has been younger than thought. For many art museums, the audience has often been older than thought.

This issue is wide-spread and not just pertinent to conversations I’m having. The just-arrived ASTC Conference flyer asks, “Have you been working to engage older audiences?”

Museum audiences aren’t static but are affected by changes in the external environment. A few related trends I’ve heard of recently are: introduction of universal pre-K; increasing costs for busses to bring students for field trips; decreasing money for field trips in school budgets; expectations for museum visits to map tightly onto school curriculum; baby boomers hitting the bulge; demographic shifts in ethnic groups; and population shifts between suburbs and cities.

Let me pause to acknowledge that a well-developed understanding of audiences is not a snap. For many years I certainly didn’t get it. I tried to be a good advocate for the audience’s learning interests. I didn’t recognize, however, that this was only a piece of the picture and of limited value in knowing how to reach the audience. Fortunately, two colleagues, Andrea Fox Jensen and Barb Plunket, were helpful and patient in expanding, shifting, and deepening my understanding of audiences. Still, after many years, I work to appreciate the complexity of the audience, their interests, and ways the museum can engage them. 

Audience at the Center

Audiences are central to a museum’s purpose and sustainability. Attendance numbers matter and attendance shifts can hardly be taken lightly. Every museum needs a sound and shared understanding of who it must serve to achieve its mission. 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 sometimes conducting audience research. Together these practices contribute to an audience-centered museum capable of engaging its audience strategically.

But, just what does engaging the audience strategically mean? It is not planning exhibits and programs for the entire audience and hoping they will come and like what they find. To the contrary, it is intentionally using museum resources–staff time and expertise, museum spaces, and information on and from the audience–to maximize the possibility of effectively serving those who will most use and benefit from the services.

A focus on engaging audiences strategically is especially valuable when the presence of audience groups at the museum is increasing or decreasing; information surfaces that a group hasn’t been served well; or when a museum rethinks its audience during strategic planning.

Deciding how to serve museum audiences is challenging. Usually one challenge emerges early and persists. Because no museum can offer everything to everybody, choices must be made. While this seems obvious, making distinctions about serving audience groups is difficult; it is not unusual to feel a group is being overlooked or excluded. To help manage this tension, keep in mind and repeat often:

A museum must serve all parts of its audience well. It must serve priority audience groups fully.

Describing the Audience

Planning for specific groups is more effective than planning for one large undifferentiated audience. There are many ways to describe an audience. I have written before about viewing the audience as customers, learners, and citizens and there are many others. Engaging the audience in the museum’s programmatic offerings means considering specific attributes and qualities that are salient to involvement with exhibits, programs, and events. Four attributes I find relevant are age, interests, availability, and grouping. They admittedly interact with one another but are also worth considering separately.

• Age of children is relevant because age-related development drives other important considerations: how children of different ages explore, play with, and learn from objects, activities, and spaces; how they interact with family and peers; and related roles for adults. 

• Interests may be personal like dinosaurs, sports, engineering, music, nature, or art. Interests may also be related to development such as a preschooler being interested in what her parents is doing and a tween being interested in peers. For adults interests may be related to careers and hobbies.

• Availability depends on other options or commitments on someone’s time. This includes school and jobs for most people from 5 to 65 years; school vacations; more open schedules for retirees.

• Grouping relates to whether children and adults are likely to visit in groups (school, family, or community organizations), or as individuals.

Accessibility (how easy it is to get to the museum and cost) is a very important factor that tends to be addressed more effectively in subsequent rounds of planning and logistics.

Meaningful Audience Groups

Creating audience groups, or segments, benefits from a variety of perspectives, and multiple sources of information. Create a museum team from education, exhibits, marketing, and visitor services. Gather as much information as possible (and realistic): attendance figures, program numbers, surveys, and staff observations. This is a good time to note what information is not available but would be helpful; this could be information to start gathering for future tracking. Multiple sources of evidence will increase confidence in decisions as well as make it easier to share the thinking behind the work. Information is also helpful because myths around the presence of audience groups are not uncommon. Get going.

1.     Describe the audience as a whole in a meaningful way. This should be easy by stating the museum’s targeted audience. For instance, children six months through 16 years, their parents, grandparents, teachers, and other adults, in the (geographic) area.

2.     Identify smaller groups, or segments. An audience segment shares similarities with one another that are salient to how they are likely to use the museum and what the museum hopes to offer. These attributes distinguish each segment from another. Segments for this targeted audience might be:

6 months - 2 years: Infants & toddlers

2 - 5 years: Preschoolers

5 - 8 years: Kindergarteners, 1^st & 2^nd graders

8 - 11 years: 3^rd, 4^th & 5^th graders

11 - 14 years: 6^th, 7^th & 8^th graders

14 - 16 years: 9^th & 10^th graders

Parents, grandparents, and caregivers visiting with children

Teachers

Adults (visiting without children)

The age groups reflect typical developmental differences among children, relate to grades, and (should) align with museum programming. They will naturally vary from museum-to-museum. There’s no set number of groups, but having many groups can get cumbersome, especially because many groups could be present at the museum in various groups. Engagement strategies could take that into account as, for instance:

5 - 8 years: Kindergarteners, 1^st & 2^nd graders in families

5 - 8 years: Kindergarteners, 1^st & 2^nd graders in school groups

5 - 8 years: Kindergarteners, 1^st & 2^nd graders in organized groups

3.     Prioritize audience groups. Using the gathered information, characterize the current and potential presence of each segment at the museum. First, think about whether each segment currently has a low, medium, or high presence at the museum: year round, for exhibits, programs, and events. Use observations, attendance data, enrollment in programs, classes, camps; field trip numbers, etc. Designate their presence at the Museum as L (low), M (medium), and H (high).

It quickly becomes clear that all groups cannot have a high presence. A museum’s sweet spot has a high presence; usually the upper and lower ends of an age range have a lower presence. This is a great place to pause and remember: A museum must serve all parts of its audience well. It must serve priority audience groups fully. High priority audiences should have more offerings compared to segments with low and even medium current presence: more exhibit real estate, more program topics and time slots, more events, more of everything.

Now consider where potential exists to increase the presence of some of these segments at the museum. Before deciding to increase the potential presence of all segments, keep in mind that a crucial dynamic exists between segments a museum intends to serve and those actually willing to be served. For instance, a museum might WANT seniors to come, but are they interested? Where else might they go? This is equally true of tweens, toddlers, and families. There are, however, factors over which a museum has some control and, if put into play, could increase the presence of a segment at the museum.

For instance, if a segment is well-represented in the area population but is under-represented at the museum, increasing its presence is possible. This segment might respond to more offerings, the museum better understanding its expectations, or more convenient scheduling. Not every segment could have a high potential presence at the museum, but usually at least some segments can move from low to medium or medium to high. (Perhaps some engagement strategies are coming into focus.)

Now decide whether each segment could have a potential presence at the museum that is L (low), M (medium), or H (high). An audience segmentation might look like the following. Comparing current and potential presence for segments, opportunities for growth appear.

Segment	Current Presence L/M/H	Potential Presence L/M/H	Engagement Strategies
6 months - 2 years: Infants & toddlers	L	L
2 - 4 years: Preschoolers	M	H
5 - 8 years: Kindergarteners, 1st & 2nd graders	H	H
8 - 11 years: 3rd, 4th & 5th graders	L	M
11 - 14 years: 6th, 7th & 8th graders	L	M
14 - 16 years: 9th & 10th graders	L	L
Parents, grandparents, and caregivers visiting with children	M	M
Teachers	L	L
Adults (visiting without children)	L	L/M

Documenting information about each segment is helpful at this point. Elaborate on interests, availability, and, for children, tolerance of or need for adults. For instance: low attendance for preschoolers during naptime; 5 - 8 year olds are coming with field trips; summer camps are filled with 8 - 10 year olds but fall off at 11; the museum gets requests for youth development programs for high schoolers, etc. The age at which children get involved in team sports in a community is often the age at which their weekend or afterschool presence at a children’s museum or science center falls off. It’s hard to impact their availability.

Questions related to segments will surface and the museum won’t have information. This is an opportunity to gather that information. Talk directly to the audience; ask parents whether they are looking for more summer camps or how ages of their children affect decisions to visit the museum. Sub-segmenting to characterize the current and potential presence of segments visiting in family, school or community groups is helpful; this may reveal that the presence of a segment is due primarily to particular visitation patterns. Build on the museum’s knowledge of the age groups it serves by using books like Yardsticks: Children in the Classroom Ages 4 - 14 by Chip Wood to get at some interests typical of children in this age range. Incorporate information about community priorities that maps onto audience segments: local needs for more out-of-school time, or under-served audience groups.

Finally, important members of the museum’s audience may not have a high, or even medium, current or potential presence at the museum. But they are valued members of the audience and important to achieving the museum’s mission. Non-traditional audience groups may be included as part of other groups, for instance, as students in kindergarten - grade 6^th visiting with school groups or community groups. Increasing their presence might also be possible through specific engagement strategies.

Engagement Strategies

Most people are all-too-ready to start with engagement strategies. Without the previous steps, however, finding ways to increase the presence of a segment is chancy. Using information about what is and isn’t working for specific audience segments and problem solving, tweaking, and expanding programmatic formats can lead to more fully serving high priority segments and, very likely, serving all segments well.

Most museums have a set of programmatic options they’ve developed. Some are fairly common while others are less so. Often these are variations of program format (camps, workshops, parent-child sessions, special events, etc.), topic (school standards, personal interests, career threads, etc.), scheduling (school days, school holidays, weekends, evenings, etc.), and use of space.

Engagement strategies are ways a museum delivers varied experiences to its audience groups that are responsive to their interests and availability. They are programs, exhibits, and events but selected and developed in ways that:

• Build on an area in which it is already and reliably excellent;

• Avoid areas in which a segment is currently being served well;

• Respond to documented community needs or priorities;

• Anticipate relevant trends and shifts. 

I’ve clustered opportunities into five areas. In exploring them, keep in mind those segments with a low presence or even a slipping middle presence.

1. Take advantage of the availability of segments to increase their presence at the museum.

Consider more summer camps for 5 - 8 year olds and 8 - 11 year olds. Most parents of children in this age range (8 - 11 years, especially) are looking to create full summer schedules. For the same reason, consider camps during winter and spring school holidays for these same groups and consider after-school programming. Preschool-aged children who are not enrolled in regular programs are available during the morning for special toddler times, or mommy and me programs.

 2. Follow children’s interests to increase the appeal of museum offerings.

Many exhibit and program topics emerge from school subject areas and what adults want children to know. This is not necessarily what is of high interest to children. Talk with and observe children to learn about their interests, especially children at the upper end of the age range. Often sports, music, and technology make the list. So will making things, inventing, becoming competent with tools, and learning feats like juggling. Fill gaps in what’s available elsewhere in the community; intrigue and challenge children; and keep to the mission.

3.  Make finer distinctions in developmental shifts.

As children become more interested in peers, opportunities for social interaction become increasingly important. Programs are conducive to social interactions and can be a more effective way to engage children eight years and up in scout and after-school programs; on over-nights in the museum; or as apart of junior volunteer or youth development program.

Older or younger audience groups may not have a high presence at the museum, but serving them very well might maintain their presence. Tailor spaces for these (or other low-presence) segments distributing activities throughout the exhibits. In some children’s museums, areas for toddlers are set aside and distributed throughout exhibits. This option can be used for 8 - 10 year olds. But it does take attention to understanding what is of particular interest to them. This is a mini-research project. Count where children 8 - 10 year olds currently have the highest presence in exhibits; ask them what they like about that area and why; build on their interests, add an activity layer, expand text, etc. Create a magnet for that segment.

Families with preschoolers are looking for age-appropriate ways to celebrate holidays. Tailor not-so-spooky Halloween, New Years at Noon, Valentines Day, and Earth Day for toddlers. 

4. Strengthen events that serve families with children across the age range, including the upper end of the age range.

There are events families share together even as children seemingly age out of them. Increasingly “cool” children and youth can make an exception for family activities as parts of traditions. Some of these traditions are museum Halloween events, the gingerbread house c=design contest, or New Years celebration.

5. Bring existing content and expertise to new segments and sub-segments.

There are audience segments within segments a museum already serves that it may be able to serve better. For instance, if a museum serves children 2 through 14 years, it very likely can also serve that age group with special needs. Many museums already have set times for children with autism or immune deficiency. There are many families and school groups looking for great experiences for their children with special needs.

Museums have valuable expertise in informal learning that can supplement strategies and approaches teachers use in the classroom. Museums can bring an understanding of the value of play, hands-on learning, early literacy development, or inquiry to teachers in professional development workshops, institutes, or academies.

A Way of Thinking and Planning

By no means is this a complete list of engagement strategies and not all of these changes will produce high volume changes. Every museum can expand engagement strategies for its audience groups by being intentional in delivering varied experiences to its audience segments that are responsive to their interests and availability. 

Developing engagement strategies is not easy. Implementing them doesn’t happen in a snap. But I also know there is no silver bullet. With tight resources for the foreseeable future and a growing interest in sustainability, museums will continue to operate in an environment of accountability. Well-honed engagement strategies, however, have the added benefit of serving a museum’s audience more fully. 

Please share! What engagement strategies have you found successful at your museum?

TapeScape

Photo from: http://archrecord.construction.com/features/stick together structure/slideshow.asp 

‘Who would think to build something like that?’ That’s what Eric Lennartson thought when he saw a photograph of a sculpture in a weekly e-mail from an architecture magazine.  Eric is an architect in Mankato (MN) and on the board of the emerging Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota (CMSM). Fascinated by this art installation and excited to see evidence of children using it, Eric thought it would fit in with the kind of experiences the emerging museum was interested in for its Play Lab. CMSM’s temporary base of operation, Play Lab is introducing the children's museum to the community while it is focusing on how exhibits play with children and families and how children and families play with exhibits. 

Plastic wrap stretched across the steel frame

CMSM’s TapeScape is exactly that–a landscape made of packaging tape. Plastic shrink-wrap has been stretched back-and-forth from end-to-end of an L-shaped steel pipe structure about 32’ L x 24’ W x 9’ H. More shrink-wrap was wrapped and woven cross-wise around the first strips to strengthen the structure, shape the tubes, and thicken the surfaces. Long tubular shapes narrow in the middle and flare at the ends. About 15 miles of tape was used to cover the surfaces of the arms and legs of the TapeScape creating smooth, continuous surfaces with almost gyroidal form. Upper surfaces covered in clear tape give a pleasant light-filled quality to the space; lower surfaces covered with colored tape add a landscape quality.

Twisting and Somewhat Tubular

Tubular forms take shape

The unusual construction offers equally unusual possibilities for exploration. No surfaces are horizontal, none are vertical, and they are all difficult to name and describe. Surfaces curve, slope, and twist. The “floor” eases into the side of the structure which gradually becomes the ceiling. Plastic wrap and tape stretched tautly around the metal frame produce springy surfaces. Negotiating the springy, curving surface is challenging, unpredictable, and the source of laughter and humility. Even with practice, walking or crawling on the undulating surface changes immediately when someone else approaches; the impact of their weight sends waves of motion across the surface. And there are always others in TapeScape because it is an attractive, engaging, and social space.

Unexpected ripples in the responsive surface challenge and inspire children’s and adults’ movements. Stand where the floor slopes up as someone passes by and suddenly you will be sliding down on your backside; the soft and easy landing is simply too inviting not to do it again very much on purpose. Crawl up the side and let yourself slide back; do it with a friend or two or three in shared delight. Take a running start, drop to your knees and you can feel like you are making a sensational slide into home base.

The challenges of slopes, rises and ripples

Some of these examples may seem to peg TapeScape as a funhouse feature. It does invite big movements like the bouncy inflatables common at fairs and festivals. TapeScape surfaces, however, are not as responsive. Big, bouncy, repetitive movements don’t yield satisfying effects. But sliding, spilling, falling, crawling, rolling, twisting; on your front, back, or side; head or feet first is extremely satisfying.

These physical challenges have significant value for younger children. If you have just learned to crawl or walk on an even and stable surface, adjusting your balance to navigate an undulating surface is quite an accomplishment. You may be able to walk up a small firm slope in the front yard, but what will happen when the floor becomes the wall? Opportunities for developing and practicing spatial awareness and skills in TapeScape are plentiful and varied. For children as well as for adults, practice in negotiating an ambiguous space with people moving in unpredictable ways is highly valuable. 

TapeScape is a good example of the More Varied Environments for children I wrote about here recently. It’s a sculptural somewhat ambiguous environment. It’s immersive, but not thematic. It affords full-body movement and sensory exploration that is not readily available in homes, neighborhoods, schools, playgrounds, nature centers, or museums. With its novel use of familiar materials it is fresh and innovative and sustains interest. The experience, or play, value TapeScape offers is high, in fact, very high.

A Changing Landscape

Building TapeScape took place right there on the Play Lab floor over several weeks. Children and adults saw the pipes go up and the structure take shape. They watched as the layering, wrapping, and scaping came into view. Because Eric and his fellow tapescapers were also visiting Play Lab and watching as children and adults used it, TapeScape has continued to evolve. Modifications have been added, and repairs have been made.

Adding a horizontal (red) tube slowed down the running.

Since the very beginning, running through the giant tubes has had great appeal for not only children but adults as well.  To manage the running, both to reduce collisions and extend the life of the structure, new tubes have been grown selectively. A red horizontal tube lowered the overhead clearance and slowed traffic. (See photo at right.) More recently a vertical tube was added to create two chambers out of one larger one. The materials allow these relatively simple changes; cut a hole, add plastic wrap, and surface with tape. This same approach has been used to repair a rupture and to add a porthole. (Notice the yellow sun in the photo above.) The technique will be used to add a spiral in one area and add peepholes in others for viewing children’s art work.

TapeScape is in a permanent state of prototyping. The ability to slice-and-tape to repair and shape means the structure can evolve based on use. Play Lab staff and volunteers have brought an experimental mindset to TapeScape. They are using weekly observations, discussion, an interest in extending play and understanding how children explore and use space to rethink and change TapeScape.

TapeScape straddles an interesting and unusual position for a museum exhibit. It is unashamedly plastic and, in fact, fascinating because of the responsiveness and light qualities of the plastic. On the one hand it has an elegant gyroidal shape and, on the other, it is relatively unfinished with low production values compared to most exhibits.

Requiring about 200 volunteer hours to build, another 100 hours to make changes and repairs, and about $5,000 in materials, TapeScape has been a nimble response by a resourceful young museum to finding experiences that support its mission and goals, engage its audience, and offer insights into play and exploration.

A Sticky Idea

TapeScape seems to have immediate appeal. Eric first saw the image of the structure in October 2010. Construction began in January 2011 and TapeScape was open and fully owned by Play Lab visitors in February. I have been fortunate and fascinated to see it grow so quickly on my monthly visits to Play Lab. In just a few months, it’s also drawn interest from several museums and museum planners.

This marvelous structure won’t last forever. It probably isn’t able to stand up to tens-of-thousands of museum visitors. And in May when Play Lab closes its doors, TapeScape will become a huge tape ball. TapeScape, no doubt, has a promising and interesting future. Maybe you’ll find it at a museum near you.

Building on Strengths

Display from 2005 Jane Addams School of Democracy Freedom Festival (St Paul, MN)

Some weeks I want to write about children building with blocks or exploring with loose parts. Other weeks I am thinking hard about how museums build public value or community impact. Both interest me. They interest me intensely. They may seem unrelated or perhaps even opposite. For me they are inextricably related. Strong children need strong communities; resilient communities rely on capable children. Museums have a role in contributing to both.

Seeing Children

Children are inherently capable with a great many resources and potential. Before even entering school where we expect they will start to learn, children have learned to communicate, to walk and talk. They get themselves dressed, help here-and-there around the house, show compassion, and even make jokes. All in just about 4 years.

Yet, we tend not to recognize children’s competence. Rather we describe them as being deficient in some way. Often this is due to their not being older or bigger than we know they are. Have you heard someone say to a 3 or 4 year old, “when you can read…” or “when you can ride a bike…” or “when you are big…”? Our preoccupation with what children can’t do interferes with our appreciation of their remarkable abilities and capabilities at every age. I would love to hear a 3 or 4 year-old pipe up and say, “I am just fine as a 3 year old, thank you!”

No sooner are we pushing children to be older, but we are saying, “when they were young…” or, “oh, when you were little, you were so cuddly.” First we overlook how remarkable they are; then we regret they are no longer that way. In between we have missed their wondering, investigating, and discovering.

So often we remark that children look at things in really interesting ways. Actually, I think we’re surprised by how fully children look at things. A child notices how a bird walks or wonders whether she will see her face in this mirror too. Children are excited to tell us what they see and what they think about it. Their language is fresh, inventive, and expressive. It tells us, if we are listening, of their ideas, understanding of relationships, and theories about the nature of things.

When I work with museums, I frequently hear language such as, “we’ll make the children try…” or “this will let children,…”. In spite of my best intentions, I do this as well. We often speak and act as if children are passive learners, rather than the natural, active learners they are. They hardly need our permission to be curious, touch something, ask a question, or make sense of what is going on around them.

While they don't need our permission to be curious, children do deserve recognition and support for their remarkable abilities and resources. They also need adults to pay attention, listen to their words, observe their response to materials, see their excitement, notice their learning strategies, and think about their interactions with others. They benefit from the experiences and encounters that engage their creativity, knowledge building, and individual action. Building towers, structures, and designs; exploring rich and varied environments; and playing with loose parts are really important. These are, however, only a few of the kinds of activities children should be able to experience, enjoy and draw from. 

Networks of Relationships

The same qualities children bring to accomplishing their greatest learning feats are those that make a difference in school, the workforce, families, neighborhoods and civic life. Taking initiative, being resourceful, asking questions, listening, acting on ideas, and communicating with others prepare children and youth to have relationships within their community and to become contributors and thoughtful critics in their communities as adults. Developing these qualities happens in the context of strong relationships with caring adults in many roles from infancy through young adulthood.

Strong children mean strong communities. This may sound like a cliché, but it’s not. Evidence of this connection comes from several directions.

The Search Institute’s research-based work for 50 years has focused on strengthening how citizens and communities raise children and adolescents. The Institute has identified 40 Developmental Assets for healthy development. Assets are positive experiences and qualities that help influence choices children and youth make and help them become caring, responsible adults. The more assets young people have, the more likely they are to thrive and the less likely they are to engage in a wide range of high-risk behaviors.

The Search Institute’s work and their Healthy Communities • Healthy Youth initiative recognize that raising strong and successful children takes more than just one single family or a school. An entire community must be engaged. This requires many people—educators, faith community leaders, parents, aunts and uncles, governmental figures, and others—to come together and nurture strong, active relationships with children and youth.

An interest in children and youth brings members of a community together. Examples readily come to mind of informal “mom’s groups” that meet and connect around childbirth, the playground, or other parenting interests. Parents and neighbors working together have made preschool coops, scouts, and children’s sports run. They have been vital to starting children’s museums all across the world.

A landmark study of civic engagement, Working Together: Community Involvement in America, sponsored by the League of Women Voters reinforced this when it concluded that, “A focus on children and youth is key to engaging Americans… children and youth registered among people’s top concerns and [the subjects] most likely to motivate community involvement.”

The Habits of a Community Develop the Habits of Children

Several years ago the Kettering Foundation produced a report on why some communities work. Research presented in Communities at Work pointed to many factors. One, in particular, stood out: “One of the characteristics common to communities that are able to manage, if not solve, their problems is that citizens take responsibility for their future.”

Neighbors, parents, or citizens who come together to solve a problem, address a concern, or realize a hope initiate a cycle of reciprocity. First they change or improve conditions by sharing ownership and taking action. Then they create a lasting example of community engagement for their children. Children grow into the lives of the people around them; they will renew the community in the future.

One city’s remarkable educational and civic project has been evolving in the infant and toddler schools in Reggio Emilia (IT) over the last 60 years. Based on an image of the child as strong and capable and of relationships among children, teachers, parents, and citizens at the heart of learning, the schools have become known worldwide for integrating theory and practice to work at the intersection of strong children and a vibrant community.

A sense of co-responsibility for children’s education and their futures is deep and wide spread. In fact, in June 2010, Pedagogista Tiziana Filippini was honored by Louisiana Children’s Museum with one of its Great Friends to Children Award. In acknowledging the award, Tiziana also made a polite yet important clarification when she said, “My city is the great friend to children.”

In St. Paul (MN), a group of neighbors and organizations has been involved since 2004 in creating the West Side Neighborhood Learning Community. Their vision for All Around the Neighborhood is “a community alive with learning where youth develop their potential and become productive, contributing adults.” Children and youth are involved in planning and co-creating learning experiences as they learn in and about their West Side neighborhood. Parents, neighbors, and businesses are actively involved as planners, teachers, learning sites, and in documenting learning activities.  One result of these activities is that West Siders have been engaged in rethinking and designing new public play spaces.

Strong Children, Strong Museums, Strong Communities

Where do museums fit in? Along with libraries and schools, museums are part of a civic infrastructure that is critical to vibrant, resilient communities and to the well-being of their citizens including, of course, children. While schools have a particular civic function–to provide basic education–museums and libraries do not. They do, however, have a responsibility to use their resources to contribute to a rich, shared, inclusive, public life.

Museums also have a tremendous opportunity to leverage their knowledge, assets, and relationships to deepen connections with the community and to enrich and expand their understanding of its children. Contributing to strong children and strong communities as museums also strengthens themselves in a decidedly rich, complex, and long-term process. A few dimensions and the interactions among them interest me, in particular.

• Take the wealth of children’s potential seriously. Involve people from across the museum in actively pursuing ways to make children’s thinking visible. Develop, adapt, and practice documentation. Develop museum-based practices for observing, noticing, responding to, scaffolding, extending, recording, and revisiting evidence of children’s learning.
• Use the museum’s growing knowledge of learning and learners in informal settings along with its expertise in creating learning experiences with objects and materials to design encounters for children to follow their interests, pursue their explorations and extend their thinking.
• Pursue the thoughtful and deliberate thinking required to develop public value and explore the authentic give-and-take dialogue to define what a stronger community means to a particular community that Nan Kari encouraged in her comment on that blog. 

My thanks to the friends and colleagues who have helped my thinking on this: Nan Kari, Tiziana Filippini, and Lani Shapiro.

Just Let Children Build

When people want to validate that just building is worthwhile for children, they mention that Frank Lloyd Wright’s mother gave him Froebel blocks to build with when he was a child. The geometric shapes he built with as a child influenced his architectural designs later.

It’s as if we need to justify children’s building because a famous architect also built with blocks as a child. When I see the concentration, problem solving, negotiation, measuring, estimating, designing, describing, conversation, and great excitement that children of all ages show as they build, I am perplexed as to why we are so reluctant to just let children build.

Building blocks and toys are valued loose parts children use to explore, shape, and vary their environments. In building, children investigate the nature of things, work with others and on their own, and explore their imaginations. Building encompasses a wide range of activities, materials, and scales. With large cardboard building blocks children construct dens and forts, while they use smaller unit blocks and Kapla blocks to create complex structures, intricate patterns, and tall towers. Extensive building systems such as LEGO and K’nex add specialized parts and themed sets for constructing elaborate models. Building materials can also be found at the beach, in the woods, or in the trash. Irregularly-shaped building materials like sticks, stones, branches, and cardboard packing boxes introduce variety and the opportunity to build virtually everywhere. This great wealth of building materials fosters open-ended exploration, embraces children’s questions, invites self-challenges, and releases delight in their accomplishments. 

Parents and children build with boxes

Everyone Gets into the Act with Building

The urge to build emerges early and persists. Watch a baby try to stack bits of food on her highchair tray or a toddler as he stacks plastic cups on top of each other on the floor. In preschool and kindergarten rooms across the country, the designated block corner signifies an understanding of the social, emotional, physical and cognitive value of block building. Though boys may engage more in constructing structures and systems and girls in creating places and patterns, both like to and do build. 

Everyone builds at the Minnesota State Fair

Long after children have left behind other forms of building and childish activities, many tweens and teens still build complex structures with kits and models. And, as some of my recent observations have indicated, adults more readily engage in building with children than in most other kinds of activities besides the café and grocery store exhibits. Whether building towers and forts revives their own childhood memories or the urge to build never completely disappears, adults are valued partners in extending children’s play and exploration.

Nanne, 4 years old, arranges blocks in patterns

STEM, STEAM and Literacy Too

Experiences with STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) begin early with a toddler’s stacking and dropping. The tremendous capacity for repetition for which this age group is so well-known is especially beneficial for exploring cause-and-effect. Watching and listening to the sound of crashing, tumbling, skittering blocks provides first-hand information about the force of gravity that, by third grade, children may only be reading about in books. The value of building is not limited to science centers and children's museums; it has a role in art and history museums as well. As children build, they work with STEM concepts, incorporate the arts to produce STEAM, and practice 21^st century skills. All is richly layered with the “talk and play” foundation for literacy as children:

Let's build.

•    grasp, lift, and carry blocks;

•    connect, stack, order, and balance blocks;

•    count, divide, and compare blocks among co-builders;

•    arrange and fit blocks together using their length, width, or height dimensions;

•    create symmetrical and radiating patterns and designs;

•    measure structures using standard and non-standard units of measurement;

•    build from memory, imagination, or views;

•    describe their structures and create stories about inhabitants and the worlds they have created.

How tall should we make our tower?

The Glorious Informality of Building

Building is a source of rich content. But it does not necessarily benefit from being interpreted or taught directly. Actually, I find the informality of children just building to be building’s great strength. When children direct their own building, they follow their interests, work at their level and stay ahead of where instruction would likely peg them. Building engages them in an easy balance of process and product. So, rather than incorporating more explicit subject-matter content into building with structured activities or text, a few adjustments are more likely to extend and enrich children’s building.

• A Building Place: Building can proceed at a furious or leisurely pace in an area that is out of the way and protected from traffic. A smooth and stable building surface reduces the frustration of unsteady blocks toppling too soon. A slightly raised platform protects impressive, but fragile, structures from moving feet. It can also can be a place to crouch or perch. Multiple platforms ad the possibility of multiple building projects.

Can we make this tower as tall as he is?

• Abundance: A wealth of blocks, boxes, bricks, or sticks encourages building, building, and more building. There is no sharing to slow down enthusiastic builders; they need only add extensions, build higher, create more intricate structures, and perhaps discover a new city. To inspire building, I would choose sets, and sets, and more sets of blocks over architectural models or inspiring photos of architectural landmarks.

• Open Views and New Perspectives: Introduce views and perspectives from which children can draw their own ideas and inspiration. Locate building areas near windows that bring the outside in and frame building shapes and proportions that are part of the everyday world. Especially when windows aren’t an option, place mirrors to provide new views of the most fascinating building activity of all. Wall-mounted mirrors can show different views of a structure. Mirrors can also be placed in less likely positions: down low or overhead to capture the evolving construction from different and interesting views.

If we pull up a stool, we can add a few more inches?

• Comfort: If adults are to be engaged as observers, supporters or co-builders, their comfort must be considered as well. A platform of 12” - 18” is great for both building on and perching on.

• For the record: When a few materials for documenting what they have built are present, children can make their thinking visible, express their joy, and share the experience with others. Small pieces of paper or sticky notes, pencils, a place for display, and a way to post them are often just enough to capture what is important to a child about what she has built. These traces are also small gifts to museum staff on how to build on the strengths children have brought to their constructions. 

Why Not Just Plain More Building for Children?

Now, the big push. Let's see how it falls.

Even if building didn’t offer children a splendid array of physical, social, cognitive, and emotional benefits, museums might want to offer more building anyway. Building helps them negotiate around practical constraints. Building areas with abundant materials bring high play and learning value at a relatively low cost for many visitors at small museums, new museums, museums with tight budgets, and museums needing to fill the schedule between traveling exhibits. Few museums, if any, that I know of don’t need to plan around one at least of those considerations.  

So, let's get building.

Great building opportunities and materials are everywhere.

Public Value: From Good Intentions to Public Good

For several years, I’ve been interested in public value as a framework for museums being more intentional about how they make a meaningful and recognized contribution to their communities.

Recently several professional opportunities have focused on public value in museums. The public value of visitor studies was the theme of the 2010 Visitor Studies Association conference in Phoenix. All 2010 issues of the Journal of Museum Education focused on museum education and public value. For the Association of Children's Museums’ March leadership call, I presented Connecting the Dots Between Building Public Value and Service in Children’s Museums.

Public value isn’t a new concept. It goes back to John Cotton Dana and The New Museum in the early 20^th century. Stephen Weil was also an eloquent advocate for museums doing useful work. Relevance and community impact often refer to how a museum matters in its community.

While not new, public value is also not business as usual. Tough economic times have amplified the need for museums to go beyond fostering good will to intentionally and actively fostering public good. In the past, museums have relied on their mission statements and attendance figures to convey their value. But these do not go far in telling whether and how a museum has made a difference in the lives of children, families, or the community.

Positive, Recognized Change

Public value moves beyond internal museum priorities to the positive changes a museum can bring to its community. Increasingly, museums are expected to–and want to–demonstrate their public value. This relies on knowing the public good they are trying to accomplish for their community and how to contribute to that public good in a way that also serves their mission.

As a museum planner, I have found the ideas in articles and presentations by Mark H. Moore, Carol A. Scott, and Mary Ellen Munley to be extremely interesting and helpful. Also as a planner, I have also seen the need for a practical, accessible process to guide a museum in thinking and acting systematically in building its public value. With this in mind, I've used several sources to synthesize a seven step approach to build public value. Thinking of these steps as “dots” that need to be deliberately connected to one another emphasizes how each and every step must build on the previous one to maximize a museum's impact.

•   Community challenges: Knowledge of the pressing needs that face the community based on current studies, reports and needs assessments

•   Museum’s strategic interests: Aspects of the museum’s strategic interests– its mission, audience, position–that align with community challenges 

•   Public good: The positive and recognized changes in the community that the museum intends to have and for whom that also advance its mission

•   Goals: Framing what the museum intends to accomplish to achieve those changes

•   Platforms for action: Strategies and resources targeted to accomplish the goals

•   Outcomes: Specific areas of intended change for individuals, groups, the organization, and/or the community 

•   Measurement: Indicators that measure the extent to which the museum is having the desired impact

Most museums do some of these steps well. Some do many steps well. Often, however, connections between these steps are not fully made. They may hover near one another but do not truly engage, work in sync and, consequently, produce recognizable change. Unconnected dots are the difference between a museum that is well thought of in its community and a museum that is recognized for making a difference in the lives of children, families, parts of the community, and the community as a whole.

Going Forward

Public value is a rich and roomy idea that is definitely worth taking the time to understand and put into practice. Museums can integrate this approach into their work as part of strategic planning, in developing a large scale project or initiative, or in developing a case for support for an expansion or even a new museum. The following resources might be helpful in going forward.

A presentation, Connecting the Dots Between Building Public Value and Service in Children’s Museums is available here on Museum Notes. You should be able to get it by clicking on the slide to the right.

A session at InterActivity: From Nice to Necessary on May 19 at 10:45 AM in Houston

Articles: These are some of the articles I have found helpful.

•    Measuring Public Value. V.S. Yocco, J. Heimlich, E. Meyer. And P.Edwards. Visitor Studies, 2009, 12(2), 152-163.

•    Being Purposeful: Planning for, Initiating, and Documenting Public Value. L. Dierking. ASTC Dimensions. January-February 2010.

•    Raising the Bar: Aiming for Public Value. M.E. Munley. Journal of Museum Education, Vol. 35, No. 1. Spring 2010. Pp. 21-32.

•    Museums, the Public, and Public Value. C. A. Scott. Journal of Museum Education, Vol. 35, No. 1. Spring 2010. Pp. 33-42.
•    Intentionally Fostering and Documenting Public Value. Lynn Dierking. Journal of Museum Education, Vol. 35, No. 1. Spring 2010. Pp. 9-19.
•    Advocating the Value of Museums. C. A Scott. Presented at INTERCOM/ICOM, Vienna 20th August 2007. www.intercom.museum/documents/documents/CarolScott.pdf.