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Day 3: SPEAKERS

Research 2A – Future Classroom

Research 2A – Future Classroom

Session Time: 11.30am
Venue: Ngee Ann Auditorium, B1

How Is Imagination Used During a Museum Visit? The Perceived Difference Between Reading and an Art Museum

Mrs Heidi Weber
Doctoral Student, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

L’imagination est un outil puissant pour le visiteur dans un musée. Qu’il en soit conscient ou non, l’imagination est une part importante du processus de création de sens parce qu’elle permet de dépasser ce qui est devant soi et de créer des liens, ou de se remémorer des connaissances. L’imagination peut être reproductive, constructive, synthétisante ou schématisante, autant de manière différente de faire sens de l’objet qui est regardé. Toutefois, est-ce que l’utilisation de l’imaginaire pour faire sens est spécifique au musée? Et est-ce que le visiteur la perçoit comme telle? Est-ce qu’il est conscient de son impact dans sa découverte de l’objet?

Pour répondre à ces questions, nous avons posé la question suivante à 40 participants, entre 20 et 60 ans : certains auteurs pensent qu’une expérience immersive au musée ressemble à ce qui se passe quand on lit un bon roman. On imagine des choses à partir de ce qu’on observe ou ce qu’on lit. Qu’en pensez-vous ? Plus de 60% des visiteurs sont en désaccord avec cette affirmation. Pourtant, il aurait été aisé de croire que la similitude entre la lecture d’un livre et la contemplation d’une œuvre, tous deux une expérience du regard, aurait porté les visiteurs à dire que c’est pareil.

Il ressort des réponses qu’au-delà de la physicalité de l’expérience muséale, c’est-à-dire que l’ensemble du corps est requis, l’utilisation de l’imagination est perçue comme plus contraignante dans le musée. C’est-à-dire que les visiteurs sentent que le musée restreint la possibilité d’activer l’imagination devant les œuvres. Ce qui pose une première question : Est-ce que le musée laisse au visiteur la possibilité de créer du sens par lui-même?

Nous sommes ensuite allés voir les moments immersifs pour regarder quel type d’imagination est utilisé par le visiteur et à partir de quel élément de l’œuvre elle apparaît pour cerner les différences avec le livre. Une deuxième question se pose alors : qu’est-ce qui déclenche l’imagination au musée? Et comment le visiteur s’en sert-il? Répondre à ces questions permet de mieux cerner l’expérience du visiteur dans le musée et de comprendre comment il fait sens de ce qui l’entoure dans les salles à travers son imagination.

Flipping European History: From Idea to Audience Evaluation to the Development of a New Digital Toolbox

Ms Laurence Bragard
Project manager, Formal Learning, House Of European History
Mr Guido Gerrichhauzen
Head of Learning and Outreach Department, House Of European History

The House of European History in Brussels, Belgium is the only museum that tells the story of the transnational phenomena that shaped Europe.

Since it opened in 2017, the museum interprets history from a European perspective, connects and compares shared experiences and their diverse interpretations while initiating learning from transnational perspectives.

However, one challenge for the Learning Team was reaching out to European teachers to ensure they can engage with our content. ‘How can teachers use and contribute to our resources if they cannot physically visit the museum?’ and ‘which innovative practices and diverse learning methods can be used?’ were just some of their guiding questions.

To get these answers, the Learning Team carried out a front-end online evaluation with almost 1000 teachers from 27 EU countries, in all 24 official languages of the European Union.

Through the online survey and online community, teachers shared their needs and expectations for the usage of the digital learning toolbox in their classrooms. They also disclosed their recommendations for learning material to teach concepts such as multi-perspectivity, memory, and present-day topics.

The survey results provided rich insights to develop a new digital toolbox, and it became clear the museum should flip European history.

Flipping European history, or perhaps the museum, as a first approach for the digital learning toolbox, inverts a museum’s traditional role as the sender of information and the audience as its recipient.

On the long term, the museum creates context for its audience to design their stories, provide their content, and shape their learning experience. Through different learning methods, such as object-based learning, visible thinking routines, and intercultural dialogue-based learning, teachers and their students can explore a diverse learning offer that they can select and use directly in their classroom.

Designing Mixed Reality Heritage Performances to Support Decolonisation of Heritage Sites

Dr Dominique Bouchard
Head of Learning and Interpretation, English Heritage

Over the past year, English Heritage has been undertaking a ground-breaking research project exploring the use of immersive technology with theatre to interpret challenging narratives around enslavement and colonial power in the National Heritage Collection. The title of the project, “Designing Mixed Reality Heritage Performances to Support Decolonisation of Heritage Sites” is funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council and is a collaboration between English Heritage Trust, Brunel University and the University of Essex.  Focusing on under-represented stories of the legacy of the 18th-century transatlantic slave trade at English Heritage’s Marble Hill House in London, UK the interpretative performances are designed to reveal hidden and uncomfortable histories through imaginative multi-media storytelling and interactive design. MR glasses allow users to engage with digitised artefacts and architectural sites that can provide alternative viewpoints, challenge conventions, and give users more agency in the roles they play. They also enable an embodied engagement with heritage through multi-sensory interactions with digital audiovisual material, broadening the possibilities of digital storytelling. The fusion between live immersive performance and MR glasses can become powerful storytelling and educational tools.

While museum decolonising programmes are now well-established in many places globally, the potential of immersive digital technologies in empowering audiences and curating affective experiences is an emerging area of museological practice. This paper explores how digital heritage performance can aid heritage sites in their endeavour to attract new audiences while critically engaging the public with under-represented voices and viewpoints of contested and difficult histories. Radically, the Mixed Reality project engaged a youth panel as paid consultants to help challenge, inform and engage with both the museological methodologies under development as well as the interpretation of the colonial narratives being explored in the theatrical piece.

It examines how institutional strategies around audience development and learning can provide opportunities to involve communities in co-creative and co-production. While these practices have previously been considered risks to authenticity and institutional expertise, this paper will offer a new risk framework in which these practices are essential strategies for risk mitigation, helping to align the aims of communities with heritage practitioners which are sometimes framed as being at odds with each other. The paper argues that this approach offers constructive and equitable models for collaboration and partnership for heritage institutions and communities.

Approach for Learning: Museum Education and Open Access

Ms Younsoo Lee
Adjunct Professor, Hanyang University

Non-face-to-face activities of the museum become natural in these days, and in this process, the museum actively uses platforms such as YouTube and Metaverse in addition to the museum website, which enables open access without cost and barriers, with users through various channels.

Virtual exhibition viewing appears in various forms. First, a general recorded exhibition viewing video on the museum website or museum YouTube, second, a video that allows users to independently enjoy movement and missions using VR or applying a VR environment, and finally, a video that can be used not only for exhibitions but also for education.

Various mediums were used, especially the metaverse case is premiant. First, it is possible to view the exhibition through the metaverse. Second, it has potential for educational use by extending the exhibition. In addition, museums use existing platforms when utilising the metaverse, but also develop new platforms. Finally, in museum education, a form of mixing metaverse and outreach is sometimes shown. In the case of the National Museum of Korea, other than, the children’s museum continuously develops and presents metaverse programmes. The Children’s Museum of the National Museum of Korea has continuously developed the metaverse world, and the National Folk Museum of Korea is conducting educational programmes through the metaverse. The National Science Museum and the National Tax Museum are also working with many users through the metaverse education programme, and it is interesting that these two institutions are implementing another museum world within the metaverse.

More and more museums are even using online programmes using the metaverse. Accordingly, this study examined the possibility of exhibition and educational use of metaverse as an open access. For wider approach for leaning, open access in museum is a way of accessibility for users.

Period Education and Equity: Take the Red House Period Museum as an Example

Ms Eng Miao Ling
Student, Taipei National University of the Arts

Understanding period involves not only learning the scientific processes behind its formation, but also recognising the issues of period stigma and poverty. In the 21st century, these issues still persist and efforts are being made to achieve period equity through various initiatives.

The Red Room Period Museum, the first non-profit organisation in Taiwan dedicated to promoting period awareness, uses exhibitions, period education, and advocacy to promote understanding and destigmatisation of menstruation across
different genders and ages. This research focuses on the world’s first-period museum, the Red Room Period Museum in Taipei, and employs interviews and case studies to investigate its efforts to promote period education and address period poverty. The objectives of this study are as follows:

(1) To understand the education outreach efforts of the museum through interviews and data analysis.
(2) To gather audience perspectives on the museum through surveys, providing insights for future education initiatives.
(3) To identify and propose possible solutions to the challenges of period education in Taiwan.
(4) Focus on the educational experiences of the Red Room Period Museum in schools, and envisioning the future classroom experiences and impact of the period museum.