Visitors' Interpretive Strategies at Wolverhampton Art Gallery

Making Meaning in Art Museums is one of two research projects on the theme of art museums and interpretive communities. The first was published as Making Meaning 1:Visitors' Interpretive Strategies at Wolverhampton Art Gallery (RCMG 2001). Making Meaning in Art Museums 2 is the second of two research projects on the theme of art museums and interpretive communities. The Long Gallery at the Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery was selected as the research site for this second study. Both studies have explored the ways in which visitors talked about their experience of a visit to the art museum-both what they said about the paintings and the whole of the visit.The research questions on which this project is based are: What interpretive strategies and repertories are deployed by art museum visitors? Can distinct interpretive communities be identified? What are the implications for the communication policies within art museums? This research is an ethnographic study, using qualitative methods.This research project was funded through a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Boar

Comparison of engagement and emotional responses of older and younger adults interacting with 3D cultural heritage artefacts on personal devices

The availability of advanced software and less expensive hardware allows museums to preserve and share artefacts digitally. As a result, museums are frequently making their collections accessible online as interactive, 3D models. This could lead to the unique situation of viewing the digital artefact before the physical artefact. Experiencing artefacts digitally outside of the museum on personal devices may affect the user's ability to emotionally connect to the artefacts. This study examines how two target populations of young adults (18–21 years) and the elderly (65 years and older) responded to seeing cultural heritage artefacts in three different modalities: augmented reality on a tablet, 3D models on a laptop, and then physical artefacts. Specifically, the time spent, enjoyment, and emotional responses were analysed. Results revealed that regardless of age, the digital modalities were enjoyable and encouraged emotional responses. Seeing the physical artefacts after the digital ones did not lessen their enjoyment or emotions felt. These findings aim to provide an insight into the effectiveness of 3D artefacts viewed on personal devices and artefacts shown outside of the museum for encouraging emotional responses from older and younger people

Motivations and experiences of museum visitors: The case of the Imperial War Museum, United Kingdom

This study explores motivations of visitors to the Imperial War Museum (North and South), United Kingdom, with a view to understanding why people visit museums associated with conflicts. Though museums are part of the education and leisure industry, the distinction between education and leisure is often blurred. There are a number of reasons why people visit museums. Motives of museum visitors can be grouped into intrinsic and extrinsic factors. This study analysed the extent to which museum visitors are motivated by extrinsic and intrinsic factors. Semi-structured interviews with visitors were conducted w at the Imperial Museum of War (North and South), United Kingdom. The findings do establish that extrinsic motivations are more dominant than the intrinsic ones for visiting the Imperial War Museum. The importance of extrinsic factors in motivating museum visitors would suggest that providing an opportunity for a good day out has more appeal to the visitors than the collections in the museum for the average visitors. The experiencing of museum in its totality is more important than the individual collections or the theme of the museum to the mainstream visitor. This work has made a contribution to understanding visitor motivations, which are multi-facetted, complex and not necessarily fully understood by the visitors themselves

Learning beyond the classroom: students’ attitudes towards the integration of CLIL and museum-based pedagogies

In the last two decades, several studies have reported on the benefits of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) on students’ affective and cognitive gains. These studies, however, have mainly concentrated on the implementation of CLIL within the formal (school) context, with very little research on its impact in non-formal (out-of-school) contexts. Thus, the present article addresses this gap by describing an action research project aimed at understanding secondary school students’ attitudes towards the integration of CLIL and museum-based pedagogies. The project involved 284 students (14–16 years old) in northern Italy, who participated in a CLIL museum visit on Animal Classification through English at the Natural History Museum in Venice. A mixed-method research design was implemented and data was collected through students’ questionnaires and focus groups. Results reveal that students showed very positive attitudes towards taking part in a CLIL museum visit based on the interaction among the following dimensions: engagement with museum objects, use of English beyond the classroom, methodology and students’ interests, self-concept and career plans

Strokes of serendipity: community co-curation and engagement with digital heritage

This article explores the potential that community–led digital engagement with heritage holds for stimulating active citizenship through taking responsibility for shared cultural heritage and for fostering long-lasting relationships between local community heritage groups and national museums. Through the lens of a pilot project titled Science Museum: Community-in- Residence, we discovered that — despite working with community groups that were already loyal to and enjoyed existing working ties with the Science Museum in London, U.K — this undertaking proved challenging owing to a range of structural and logistical issues even before the application of digital devices and tools had been considered. These challenges notwithstanding, the pilot found that the creation of time and space for face-to-face dialogue and interactions between the Science Museum and the participating community heritage groups helped to establish the parameters within which digital co-curation can effectively occur. This, in turn, informed the development of a digital prototype with huge potential to enable remote, virtual connectivity to, and interactivity with, conversations about shared heritage. The ultimate goal was two-fold: (a) to help facilitate collaborative sense-making of our shared past, and (b) to aid the building of sustainable institutional and community/public working ties around emerging affinities, agendas and research questions in relation to public history and heritage

Museum education, cultural sustainability, and English language teaching in Spain

The collaborative action research project presented analysed the potential of museum education to radically transform the way in which English was taught and learnt in three diverse elementary, middle, and high-school contexts in the province of València (Spain). Insights from museum education and New Literacy Studies were used to expand upon the pedagogical affordances of the material and multimodal dimensions of English language teaching, in order to generate more opportunities for student motivation and engagement by connecting with the learners' home and community cultures, identities, languages, and literacies. To assess the impact of the project, a variety of qualitative strategies were used (including classroom recordings, student interviews and questionnaires, and photographs). A model for culturally sustaining pedagogy was suggested, which school and museum educators may use to inform their practice

Nunalleq, Stories from the Village of Our Ancestors:Co-designing a multivocal educational resource based on an archaeological excavation

This work was funded by the UK-based Arts and Humanities Research Council through grants (AH/K006029/1) and (AH/R014523/1), a University of Aberdeen IKEC Award with additional support for travel and subsistence from the University of Dundee, DJCAD Research Committee RS2 project funding. Thank you to the many people who contributed their support, knowledge, feedback, voices and faces throughout the project, this list includes members of the local community, colleagues, specialists, students, and volunteers. If we have missed out any names we apologize but know that your help was appreciated. Jimmy Anaver, John Anderson, Alice Bailey, Kieran Baxter, Pauline Beebe, Ellinor Berggren, Dawn Biddison, Joshua Branstetter, Brendan Body, Lise Bos, Michael Broderick, Sarah Brown, Crystal Carter, Joseph Carter, Lucy Carter, Sally Carter, Ben Charles, Mary Church, Willard Church, Daniele Clementi, Annie Cleveland, Emily Cleveland, Joshua Cleveland, Aron Crowell, Neil Curtis, Angie Demma, Annie Don, Julia Farley, Veronique Forbes, Patti Fredericks, Tricia Gillam, Sean Gleason, Sven Haakanson, Cheryl Heitman, Grace Hill, Diana Hunter, Joel Isaak, Warren Jones, Stephan Jones, Ana Jorge, Solveig Junglas, Melia Knecht, Rick Knecht, Erika Larsen, Paul Ledger, Jonathan Lim Soon, Amber Lincoln, Steve Luke, Francis Lukezic, Eva Malvich, Pauline Matthews, Roy Mark, Edouard Masson-MacLean, Julie Masson-MacLean, Mhairi Maxwell, Chuna Mcintyre, Drew Michael, Amanda Mina, Anna Mossolova, Carl Nicolai Jr, Chris Niskanen, Molly Odell, Tom Paxton, Lauren Phillips, Lucy Qin, Charlie Roberts, Chris Rowe, Rufus Rowe,Chris Rowland, John Rundall, Melissa Shaginoff, Monica Shah, Anna Sloan, Darryl Small Jr, John Smith, Mike Smith, Joey Sparaga, Hannah Strehlau, Dora Strunk, Larissa Strunk, Lonny Strunk, Larry Strunk, Robbie Strunk, Sandra Toloczko, Richard Vanderhoek, the Qanirtuuq Incorporated Board, the Quinhagak Dance Group and the staff at Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat. We also extend our thanks to three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on our paper.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Cada coisa em seu lugar: ensaio de interpretação do discurso de um museu de história

O Museu Histórico Nacional, situado no Rio de Janeiro, foi criado em 1922, como parte das comemorações do Centenário da Independência do Brasil. Ao longo dos seguintes 38 anos, foi dirigido por Gustavo Barroso. Este intelectual, figura bastante típica da “república das letras” brasileira, imprimiu no MHN uma forte marca pessoal, cristalizada no discurso conservador expresso pelas exposições. Baseado nas formulações teóricas de Carlo Ginzburg, conforme apresentadas em um artigo intitulado “Sinais - raízes de um paradigma indiciário”, bem como em diversos textos que abordam museus como discursos, o autor analisa a exposição do MHN nos anos 30, 40 e 50. Apoiando-se também na produção científica dos conservadores, publicada em livros e na revista institucional, os “Anais do Museu Histórico Nacional”, procura ver o circuito como representação das posições ocupadas pelos “agentes ativos da história” - aristocracia, funcionários públicos civis e militares, dentre outras categorias - em relação a uma categoria não claramente definida, o “povo”, que foi representada através da ausência