Visiting a museum or art gallery

[rosealbie]

Hi,
I work in museum education/interpretation and am interested to know what, for your family, makes a good day out at a museum or art gallery. What could these sorts of attractions do more of for families?

If you don't visit them, what puts you off or would attract you to come?

What would be your reccomendations for museums, galleries or types of family activity?

thanks in advance

treasure hunts are fantastic, just a simple sheet of paper with clues about the art work to look for in roughly the order that the foot flow tends to go. i agree GOMA in glasgow is excellent for this on the ground floor.

agree that it's so annoying when things don't work or have 'out of order' signs on for weeks.

Kathy, it is different when you look at it from a parents point of view isn't it? My children love coming to the museum I work in but the cafe is also very important to them! As for b/feeding, we have a couple of baby groups who meet in the cafe, feed their babies and generally have a great time. We have recently added an under-5's area which is proving very popular too. Real objects to handle and lots of dressing up, puppets etc. with changing themes and staff to assist visitors.

Just to add, we have a ban on clipboards as there was a lot of damage done to paintings and objects with people leaning on them. We have used sketchbooks for activities which are handed back and re-used over and over. Children can remove their pages if they like.

Rosealbie - yes, I find that as a parent the practicalities take on a far bigger role.
As a fit single person you can visit any museum you want so the content is an issue. As a mother the quality of the interpretation takes second place to your ability to actually get into the building!

The halfway-round-steam-vent (per Kathy - did you use to have a Roman numeral extension (or something like that) to your name??) is a great guiding principle.

Pursuing my immersion thought, once children are school-age, what museums do at their very entrances can be important - it's the place where you can make it a jumping-off point into new experiences. The Disney theme parks know that well - lots of them have a big, slightly disorienting, initial experience - like a waiting room which suddenly becomes a lift taking you down to another world ... Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh uses the same idea, with its lift-time-machine (my two were nearly convinced, and very shiny-eyed). I think you see the same thing when you visit a castle and you find your children prancing with excitement on the drawbridge.

I like the idea of a little reward like a sticker. Culzean castle have the great idea of hiding a little lego man up high in each of the rooms for kids to spot, but a lot are a little disapointed when they make the effort to go all the way back to the reception desk to say they found them all and there is no reward. A sticker would cost hardly anything and would make a childs day.

Older kids also like the idea of a behind the scenes tour. My two got a behind the scenes tour in Culzean and got to see things the public don't like the servants stairs and were told "secret information" about the castle. Talks from the professionals like conservators or real live artists .