Trendswatch: Takeover days
The benefits of letting younger visitors take control of your museum
Most museums would probably close if they heeded the old showbiz adage to never work with children, but there’s a difference between welcoming youngsters in and letting them take over the running of the whole museum.
That’s exactly what hundreds of museums will be doing this month for the fifth annual Takeover Day (known as Taking Over Museums in Wales) – and it’s not quite the recipe for chaos that you’d expect.
Since it was launched in 2010, Takeover Day, which is run by the charity Kids in Museums, has evolved from an annual event into something that museums and galleries are embedding into their practice all year round.
More than 6,000 children took part in museum takeovers at almost 200 venues across the UK in 2013, and the successful model pioneered by museums is now being introduced at other arts and heritage venues.
The official event is supported by government funding and takes place on 13 November in Wales and 21 November in England.
Although Scotland has not secured support for 2014, and Northern Ireland has yet to receive any official funding, Kids in Museums encourages museums everywhere to run their own takeover days using the free resources and case studies on its website.
It can also be linked to other ongoing projects, such as Arts Award and the first world war centenary.
The aim is simple: to give children and teenagers an opportunity to work alongside museum staff and gain experience of the different skills, tasks and roles within the museum. But it’s not about merely observing adults at work – Kids in Museums emphasises that children should be given real agency to make decisions and take on meaningful roles.
Benefits for kids…
There are many benefits to children in running a takeover day. They can experience how elements of their curriculum and the skills they learn at school apply in a real-life setting. They are able to gain confidence in completing tasks they may not have done before, such as responding to phone queries from the public. They can also participate in more creative projects such as developing displays and storytelling.
Takeover activities for museums to consider include:
• Getting kids to create a video or audio tour of the museum.
• Letting them create performances, projections and installations.
• Getting them to research and script new interpretation.
• Allowing them to help unpack and check objects.
…and museums
There are multiple benefits to the museum too, including engaging a notoriously tricky-to-reach age group and forging strong relationships with local schools.
“The Takeover Day display case in the main hall and the creation of family trails as part of the day encouraged pupils to bring their families back to the gallery, which was a fantastic outcome and helped to encourage new audiences,” says Becky Davies, the learning and outreach officer at Bradford Museums and Galleries.
Davies says that Bradford has now integrated Takeover Day into its core schools offer. A more straightforward, easy-to-run takeover model has also sprung up this year, the Teen Twitter Takeover Day, where institutions such as the Museum of English Rural life in Reading and Woking’s Lightbox handed over their social media feeds to young people for the day.
Feedback from schools about museum takeover events has been overwhelmingly positive and it looks destined to grow even further next year. As anyone working with children already knows, their abilities are not to be underestimated.
We celebrated Takeover Day by inviting the whole of Year 9 from the Latymer School to take over Forty Hall.
The day took a lot of organisation but I felt students really benefited from the chance to gain experience of working in the heritage sector. It was fantastic for our staff to get to listen to their ideas and feedback and for the public to experience the benefits of students’ impact.
My advice to those looking to work with a school to organise a Takeover Day would be to involve teachers directly from the start; that way you can ensure the tasks given to pupils will stretch them and be effective in allowing them to apply the academic and personal skills developed in their formal education to a practical, work-based scenario.
Start early and ensure that staff are available for students for the whole day. It is good for staff and volunteers to suggest tasks or challenges to do with their roles as a way of directly sharing their expertise.
Frances Cherry is the learning and education outreach officer at Forty Hall, Enfield
That’s exactly what hundreds of museums will be doing this month for the fifth annual Takeover Day (known as Taking Over Museums in Wales) – and it’s not quite the recipe for chaos that you’d expect.
Since it was launched in 2010, Takeover Day, which is run by the charity Kids in Museums, has evolved from an annual event into something that museums and galleries are embedding into their practice all year round.
More than 6,000 children took part in museum takeovers at almost 200 venues across the UK in 2013, and the successful model pioneered by museums is now being introduced at other arts and heritage venues.
The official event is supported by government funding and takes place on 13 November in Wales and 21 November in England.
Although Scotland has not secured support for 2014, and Northern Ireland has yet to receive any official funding, Kids in Museums encourages museums everywhere to run their own takeover days using the free resources and case studies on its website.
It can also be linked to other ongoing projects, such as Arts Award and the first world war centenary.
The aim is simple: to give children and teenagers an opportunity to work alongside museum staff and gain experience of the different skills, tasks and roles within the museum. But it’s not about merely observing adults at work – Kids in Museums emphasises that children should be given real agency to make decisions and take on meaningful roles.
Benefits for kids…
There are many benefits to children in running a takeover day. They can experience how elements of their curriculum and the skills they learn at school apply in a real-life setting. They are able to gain confidence in completing tasks they may not have done before, such as responding to phone queries from the public. They can also participate in more creative projects such as developing displays and storytelling.
Takeover activities for museums to consider include:
• Getting kids to create a video or audio tour of the museum.
• Letting them create performances, projections and installations.
• Getting them to research and script new interpretation.
• Allowing them to help unpack and check objects.
…and museums
There are multiple benefits to the museum too, including engaging a notoriously tricky-to-reach age group and forging strong relationships with local schools.
“The Takeover Day display case in the main hall and the creation of family trails as part of the day encouraged pupils to bring their families back to the gallery, which was a fantastic outcome and helped to encourage new audiences,” says Becky Davies, the learning and outreach officer at Bradford Museums and Galleries.
Davies says that Bradford has now integrated Takeover Day into its core schools offer. A more straightforward, easy-to-run takeover model has also sprung up this year, the Teen Twitter Takeover Day, where institutions such as the Museum of English Rural life in Reading and Woking’s Lightbox handed over their social media feeds to young people for the day.
Feedback from schools about museum takeover events has been overwhelmingly positive and it looks destined to grow even further next year. As anyone working with children already knows, their abilities are not to be underestimated.
Fun at Forty Hall
We celebrated Takeover Day by inviting the whole of Year 9 from the Latymer School to take over Forty Hall.
The day took a lot of organisation but I felt students really benefited from the chance to gain experience of working in the heritage sector. It was fantastic for our staff to get to listen to their ideas and feedback and for the public to experience the benefits of students’ impact.
My advice to those looking to work with a school to organise a Takeover Day would be to involve teachers directly from the start; that way you can ensure the tasks given to pupils will stretch them and be effective in allowing them to apply the academic and personal skills developed in their formal education to a practical, work-based scenario.
Start early and ensure that staff are available for students for the whole day. It is good for staff and volunteers to suggest tasks or challenges to do with their roles as a way of directly sharing their expertise.
Frances Cherry is the learning and education outreach officer at Forty Hall, Enfield