City Museums Get Hands On in Bid to Teach Kids
Some interactive museums aim to attract children to less popular scientific and technical professions.
Published: September 26, 2012 (Issue # 1728)
KIDBURG
KidBurg interactive museum allows children to play at different professions.
While signs in museums reading “Do not touch the exhibits” were once standard, they are becoming increasingly rare: Visitors are now often met by friendlier signs inviting them to interact with the exhibit. Modern museums try to engage young visitors by educating them via entertainment, and interactive exhibits in which people are encouraged to touch the items on show are becoming more and more popular.
While in Europe the new format of “edutainment” (education combined with entertainment) is already well known, St. Petersburg is only taking its first steps in this direction. One of the first interactive museums to appear in the city, back in 2009, was Skazkin Dom (The House of Fairy Tales), where children are immersed in books and learn the story directly from the characters of the fairy tales.
“Since that time, seven similar establishments have been launched in St. Petersburg,” said Yekaterina Andriyevskaya, co-founder of the Skazkin Dom, LabirintUm and KidBurg museums. “Furthermore, traditional museums have started to include interactive exhibits, as they were beginning to lose visitors.
“Although new interactive museums are appearing, we are still years behind Europe,” she said. “In Europe, children’s museums are always interactive, they do not even consider anything else. But our residents still need explaining what it is to them.”
As the old Chinese proverb goes, “Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.” Museum representatives believe that interactive exhibits promote education and help to combat scientific illiteracy. The entertaining format is attractive to children — it is interesting, exciting and makes it possible to demonstrate theory.
“In our system of education, the creative, intuitive abilities of children are not taken into account. They should develope the skill of attaining rapidly changing information,” said Irina Donina, head of the children’s programs and education department at the State Museum of the History of Religion, one of the older museums that includes interactive exhibits in its regular program.
Interactive components have become a fascinating complement to scientific exhibits. For example, visitors can use a video microscope to observe the life of insects or don a special mask that enables them to see the world as animals do. The city’s Planetarium has a laboratory for experiments and also offers visitors the chance to take a “space journey” inside a spacecraft. The interactive format can also be adapted for art museums, as shown by the aromatic installation devoted to Caravaggio organized by the State Hermitage Museum, where visitors could sniff the aromas of the flowers and fruits that inspired the Italian artist.
LABIRINTUM
LabirintUm museum demonstrates the laws of physics and nature to children in a hands-on and memorable way.
“Our motto is fun, beauty and experimentation — all these should be present in an interactive exhibit,” said Alexei Zemko, head of Expo Science Interactive, a company that creates and provides museums with interactive exhibits.
“A guide is also necessary, especially in our topic of telling visitors about religions,” said Donina. “Children should not leave the museum with a belief in shamanism. There is a trend for kids to explore everything by themselves. We follow another tradition, in which a guide directs the young visitor, corrects their understanding, and helps them to find interesting aspects that unite or divide people of various religions.”
Museums using interactive exhibits, however, face a problem inherent in their innovation. The technology is soon out of date and it is generally expensive to regularly update the equipment.
“We have to keep moving and create interactive exhibits with a view to the future,” said Donina. “So we create an exhibit that can be renewed with the use of our own resources. For example, we can use a ready-prepared space, make some minor changes and teach children about a completely different historical period or belief,” she explained.
In spite of the success of the entertainment format, it cannot fully replace the traditional system of education, and is only appropriate for children in a particular age range.
“The classical approach to education will always be relevant, especially for residents of St. Petersburg,” said Andriyevskaya. “Children should also visit classical museums and enjoy traditional paintings, for example.”
The interactive museums do not reject classical forms of education; rather, they aim to complement them. Although Skazkin Dom is an interactive exposition, its goal is to attract young visitors to traditional reading.
SKAZKIN DOM
At the Skazkin Dom edutainment center, children play an active role in fairy tales.
“Our task is to bring children back to fairy tales and books,” said Andrievskaya. “As we always tell children, if they stop reading, the fairy tale characters will disappear.
“We set ourselves a mission: To restore interest in books. Our interactive programs fully involve children in the story and they feel as if they are characters — we provide them with old household items related to the era. We support the school curriculum and have performances based on the works of Alexander Pushkin and Pavel Bazhov,” she said.
Teachers often bring young pupils to the museums to repeat and reinforce what they are taught at school. Older children can also find value in visiting interactive museums. The ultimate purpose of these exhibits to attract children to scientific and technical occupations.
“Our graduates still prefer the careers of financier and lawyer and do not want to enter technical universities. Interactive exhibits can help to solve this problem,” said Expo Science Interactive’s Zemko.
“I believe interactive museums can influence children’s choice of future occupation. For kids it’s like an acid test — by visiting this or that interactive museum, and getting involved in the technical or artistic process, the child can feel whether or not it is for them,” said Andriyevskaya.
“For example, my children visited LabirintUm, which demonstrates physical laws and natural phenomena, but prefer other museums as they are interested mostly in the humanitarian sciences. So they made their own choice,” she said.
The KidBurg museum allows children from a very young age to form an opinion about various occupations: First they are given a job, which they can later change, then they complete tasks, earn and spend money.
“It’s the territory of childhood, a space in which children make their own decisions. For kids it is a new and unique experience, as in real life they can rarely decide anything,” said Andriyevskaya.