Most museums have more than one target group: young children, teenagers, school groups, families... Problems arise when audience segments with conflicting needs compete for the use of our spaces and experiences: young children vs. teenagers, school groups vs. families, commercial venue hirers vs. general public...
The first half of this session will be dedicated to presentations from our speakers, each describing a situation of audiences with conflicting needs and outlining how they coped with it, whether successfully or not. The audience will then be divided into smaller groups each brainstorming on different tensions and solutions, before a collective wrap-up.
Facilitator
Session speakers
Head of Marketing and PR
Graz
Austria
School groups of different ages and backgrounds in the building at the same time effects the feeling of being taken seriously. For example older school kids (teenagers) tend to get the feeling that they are not taken seriously if they see that much younger kids are in the building as well.
Exhibition developer
Portugal
Can an exhibition or the whole building be, both accessible, interesting and appealing to younger audiences as well as adults? We studied the circulation within our spaces carefully in order to try that different audiences empathize and feel comfortable with the exhibition spaces they are visiting.
Public Programme Manager
Natural History Museum
London
United Kingdom
The often tough business of prioritising audiences, refining approaches to engage those audiences and sustaining that engagement with them can be a challenge. It can lead to having to say no to good ideas. Specific examples from the Natural History Museum will illustrate how our strategic priorities manifest themselves in how our spaces are used and how resources are deployed including the balancing act behind these decisions.
Head of Educational Development
Balthazar Science Center
Skövde
Sweden
"We'd like to visit you on Friday with 35 adults, is that possible?" *looking through the booking calendar in half panic to try to squeeze in the 35 adults together with two previously booked groups of pre-school children* Understanding visitor's expectations and pleasing all of them in our 870 m2 is quite often a real challenge. It's a good thing we love challenges!