what would get you to visit a local museum?

Question

I live in a small town and we have a museum. I have been asked to help in the Public Relations commitee. I'm finding that many older adults have visited this museum, but hardly anyone between 12-30, unless through school. What sort of things do you think would entice people to visit. To me it's comunity awarness...but how.....

Answer 1

An informal luncheon with entertainment?

Answer 2

Any activities that would place the museum in the social consciousness would be good. Think about what people that age do for fun in the community and then try to make the museum a venue for those kinds of activities.

For example, "up all night" events for teenagers including movies, some hands-on stuff, and maybe even letting them sleep over in the museum (this works for science museums).

For young professionals, one thing that has worked is to host singles mixers at the museum. You get a caterer, a dj, and charge some small fee. Then, local singles show up and chat each other up.

For more help, you should feel free to contact the Arts Management program at a local university. They are usually full of graduate students eager to do internships (often for free) on these kinds of projects.

Answer 3

Unusual displays would get my attention. Sometimes museums make the error of keeping everything about the same as usual for a very long time. Has someone donated an unusual collection recently? Can you enlist volunteers to put on a living history demonstration? Can you sponsor a half-off admission day? Can you have a table with free snacks on the way out the door? If you are worried about food particles contaminating displays, you can just do little bags of snacks or something like that. I knew an art museum in southern Utah that also sponsored other cultural activities like poetry readings. Another possibility is to spice up your advertising. I used to hear advertisements for Classical music concerts which emphasized little-known facts or slightly scandalous circumstances of the music being performed, or if it was an opera there might be a run-down of the plot in a synopsis that sounded more like a modern movie plot. Anything to make it accessible to the common audience would help.
For a younger audience, you can sponsor sort of a mystery-solving contest with prizes for finding out the answers in the museum.

Answer 4

What type of museum is it? Art, history, science?

My local science museum is extremely popular with kids because they change the displays around on a regular basis, and they have a LOT of interactive exhibits. Instead of the real first space capsule, they have a plywood copy that guests are allowed to climb into and listen to recordings of the first moon landing. Other displays allow kids to try to sneak up on a bird, or watch chicks hatch. There are glass enclosed exhibits of wildlife habitat in cutaway form, so you can see what's going on underground or in the water. That room also has something I call "smell-o-vision"...you can press a button to get a whiff of deer musk, bear poop, rotten logs or flowers.

Most kids do not want to go to a "boring" museum where all you can do is look at stuff without touching them, and listen to a humdrum lecture delivered in a monotone.

If you can set up something interactive, or have museum staff act out historical battles that would generate some excitement.

Plimoth Plantation, up here in Massachusetts, is set up "time-machine" style. The museum staff dresses up in historical costume, and talks in the same old-fashioned style of English from the 1620s to answer all visitor's questions. People are allowed to touch and help with everyday tasks, so they can learn just how hard life was back then.

Similar things are done with other historial museums in the area. My daughter (age 10) was recently thrilled to be able to "meet" Benjamin Franklin and Paul Revere.

Hope these ideas help.

Answer 5

You don't specify what kind of museum. In general I would suggest something interactive if you want to attract young people.

If it's an art museum, perhaps some type of art contest. Either an original art show of youth art, or have students copy works in the museum.
If it's history, how about a storyteller? Have someone who has written about or participated in local history come in and tell their stories.
A science museum has plenty of possibilities for interactive displays.

Answer 6

Get the local schools involved and have a showing of student created art. That will the students and their families into the museum and it will create an interest in art.

Answer 7

community Museums stir nostalgia for the townfolk.So i love vacationing museums close to my position (India). Time will look to lose its which skill and it will be like a adventure decrease back in time.

Answer 8

The fact i like history. depending on what aspects of history were on display i would think the artifacts themselves would have a big say in weather i visit a museum or not. (world war II is what intrests me most.) :-)

Answer 9

A free Klondike Bar!!!

Answer 10

well if you had clothing and other stuff from the 18th century id gladly visit .