What’s the problem?
Despite some fantastic work we see happening with children, schools and young people in our North West museums, 16-24 year-olds are the least likely adult age group up to the age of 75 to visit a heritage venue, according to
DCMS’ most recent Taking Part survey. This split between age groups is far less pronounced for other cultural venues, so why is engaging young people with heritage such a tough nut to crack? Why is it important for this to be on the agenda for heritage organisations? And what can be done to make museums and other heritage venues places that people in this age group want to visit and work with?
For the last six years Curious Minds has been supporting cultural organisations to engage young people as audiences and collaborators. Our
Cultural Citizens project, for example, invited young participants to select and organise their own cultural experiences, arranging visits to museums, galleries, theatres and other arts venues, in exchange for feedback about how that experience felt. A common theme that emerged was the importance of staff interactions, not only having an impact on their experience that day, but affecting young people’s opinions of an entire art form. In one case a member of box office staff accused a participant of messing around when they tried to book tickets for a play over the phone: that young person’s feedback was that they “didn’t like theatre”.
All staff are key to young people’s experience of cultural and heritage venues. This is especially true as they begin to visit independently, without the structure and support of a school visit, or being taken by a more experienced adult. In heritage venues, front of house staff, café and retail staff, volunteers, tour guides or staff in exhibitions, are as crucial as the programming or learning teams who you might not see during a visit, but whose work shapes the stories a venue tells. So it’s striking that, a recent survey of a cross section of museum staff conducted as part of our
Hope Streets project revealed that one in four respondents felt that engagement with young people was not of interest or relevant to their job.