Research: How do families experience our museums?

Research summary

• October 2016 to March 2017

Academics from Manchester Met worked with the Humber Museums Partnership (HMP) to explore the way that families and children under five years old experience museum spaces. In particular, they were interested in how children’s experiences changed over repeated visits, from a first encounter to the stage where a venue had become familiar.

The aims of the study were:

1. To understand how families with under fives use HMP spaces, identifying favourite exhibits and spaces and ways in which the children make meaning in these spaces.
2. To identify how interactions, movements and traditions emerge for families in these favourite exhibits and spaces over time.
3. To inform how Humber museums in particular, and the museum sector more generally, can cater better for this audience, with a focus on how museums can identify and celebrate the strengths of their spaces, objects and provision for family audiences.

The researchers addressed two major questions:

• How do under fives and their families use and experience the museum spaces in Humberside?
• How do museums identify their strengths for family audiences with young children under five years old?

The project used a mixture of observations and participatory methods for working with young children and their grown ups in three Humber museum sites: North Lincolnshire Museum, Streetlife Museum of Transport, and Sewerby Hall. In total, seven families in Scunthorpe, ten in Hull and four in Sewerby each made a series of four visits to their local site.

Once data had been gathered from all three sites, the project focussed on analysing the data from the different sites, identifying emerging themes and moments of resonance. This was done through a series of collaborative meetings in which the three researchers shared their data and discussed potential themes. Following this, the researchers met with HMP staff in Hull, for a collaborative meeting in which they engaged as a group with the data and the emerging themes.

The project ran from October 2016 to March 2017. An independent evaluation report identified the impact of the Under Fives in Museums project. A toolkit, ‘Freedom to explore’, informed by the research findings, was produced and widely disseminated. It is free to download online.

The full report is available on the Humber Museums Partnership website.