‘Fuzzy’ boundaries: communities of practice and exhibition teams in European natural history museums

This paper examines learning among museum staff involved in exhibition development in four European natural history museums. It draws upon a larger body of research1 undertaken for the Mirror project, a European Commission Framework Programme 5 Information Society Technologies (FT5 IST) project aimed at enhancing and improving co-operative practices through the use of new technologies. The aim of this paper is to characterize learning and co-operative practices derived from the interactions of highly heterogeneous teams involved in constructing museum exhibitions, and particularly to distinguish and examine the relationships between actions aimed at fulfilling team-focused exhibition outcomes and those which draw upon the knowledge base of external peer groups. The concepts of communities of practice (Wenger, 2000, Wenger, Snyder and McDermott, 2002), situated learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991) and vertical team-work and horizontal peer-group exchange are used to describe the learning interactions and co-operative practices. However, whilst the relationship between situated learning and Communities of Practice has determined our preliminary theoretical perspective, this has, as we explain below, been heuristically revised in the light of the practical reality that we encountered

Conducting visitor studies using smartphone-based location sensing

Visitor studies explore human experiences within museums, cultural heritage sites, and other informal learning settings to inform decisions. Smartphones offer novel opportunities for extending the depth and breadth of visitor studies while considerably reducing their cost and their demands on specialist human resources. By enabling the collection of significantly higher volumes of data, they also make possible the application of advanced machine-learning and visualization techniques, potentially leading to the discovery of new patterns and behaviors that cannot be captured by simple descriptive statistics. In this article, we present a principled approach to the use of smartphones for visitor studies, in particular proposing a structured methodology and associated methods that enable its effective use in this context. We discuss specific methodological considerations that have to be addressed for effective data collection, preprocessing, and analysis and identify the limitations in the applicability of these tools using family visits to the London Zoo as a case study. We conclude with a discussion of the wider opportunities afforded by the introduction of smartphones and related technologies and outline the steps toward establishing them as a standard tool for visitor studies

UK-South Korea Inclusive Digital Museum Innovation, Report

This publication reports on the ESRC-funded UK-S. Korea inclusive digital museum innovation network project which examined how we can learn from experiences in both the UK and South Korea to create inclusive digital transformation in museums, libraries and heritage organisations. With a series of three online workshops, and a final conference held in London, this project initiated unique international partnerships between UCL Institute of Archaeology and the Games and Life Lab at KAIST Graduate School of Culture Technology as well as museum and library partners. This project aimed to motivate museums, libraries and heritage organisations to take actions to mitigate global challenges of digital inequality in society, improve our understanding of digital ethics regarding museum practices, and explore the potential benefits of digital gaming towards equity, diversity, and inclusion

A context for the development of learning outcomes in museums, libraries and archives

A context for the development of learning outcomes in museums, libraries and archive

Family agendas and family learning in hands-on museums

This thesis explores the family museum experience from the point of view of the family members. When families visit museums they bring with them their own agenda. Analysing the components of the family agenda illuminates the frameworks through which families perceive their museum visit. Hands-on museums (or exhibitions within museums) were chosen as case studies because they provide for family visitors and, thus, they are more likely to satisfy a wider range of family agendas. Indeed, different types of agendas - including agendas for adults, children and an agenda for learning - were considered. Based on the analysis of the data collected in three institutions, a family agenda model was developed. Five factors were identified as determining the family museum agenda: the family profile, socio-cultural patterns, the personal and the social context of the visit and the museum exhibition(s). The interaction of these factors creates the agenda for the visit and also influences the way the visit is perceived and reconstructed by family members. All the members of the family are actively involved in constructing the agenda. The museum agenda can also challenge the family agenda. Hence the family agenda is constructed, negotiated and refined before, during and after the visit itself.;The methodology used to collect data was qualitative in nature and involved observing and interviewing all the family members of 86 groups in three hands-on museums/exhibitions. Children's drawings were also used. The analysis was performed on data collected on site at the following institutions: the Xperiment! Gallery at the Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester; Eureka! the Museum for Children, Halifax; and the Archaeological Resource Centre, York

CONTENTS

RCM

Conversations about Home, Community and Identity

Despite an increased interest in how societies produce, present and interpret the past, empirical studies of how people make sense of and use the past in their everyday life are less common in public history. This paper explores how people use material culture to make sense of their recent past by (re)constructing personal, family and community histories both in museum exhibitions and through everyday engagements at home. We use two case studies: 'The West Indian Front' 'Room – Memories and Impressions of Black British Homes' exhibition at the Geffrye Museum, London, and the homes of six families of Albanian heritage in Athens, Greece. In both cases, objects play a key role in mediating and reflecting identity and meaning- making