Let’s Get Physical (Crafting Valuable Experiences, Part 2)
As educators, we often focus on visitors’ intellectual experiences, but the physical context of a person’s experience in our museums is the starting point of their learning journey. In this episode, we consider the number thing we must do in order to convince a visitor to take an intellectual risk with us and we talk through some simple ways to improve the physical context of our programs and tours.
Key Takeaways:
When visiting a museum, people expect to experience things in the physical context, a personal context, in a social context, as well as an intellectual context.
Visitors cannot take an intellectual risk if they feel physically unsafe or uncomfortable.
Improving physical wellbeing makes your entire site more inclusive.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode
This episode (and the workshop it is based on) is influenced by a few books I highly recommend to all my museums friends. You can get your own copies by clicking the links below, or you can read my reviews on my Bookshelf page. (As always, thank you for using my affiliate link. Affiliate commissions help support this site and the work I do with museum educators. You can read my full disclaimer here.)
Transcript
[00:00:00] Hi, I am Rachel, a resource expert and career coach for museum educators who are stretched thin, but long to fall in love with their world-changing work. After over 15 years with my own hands in the glitter, I know how it feels when your Board thinks your work is childish because you work with children.
I know how hard it is to lead a tour on a difficult subject, and I know the frustration of waiting on a school bus that is 20 minutes late or worse, 10 minutes early as I'm heading towards the second half of my career. I find myself with a passion to help my fellow educators reverse the chronic state of being overworked and underappreciated so that they can reclaim their creativity and emotional energy.
Join me and my museum buddies as we share our best tips, tricks, and techniques for modern museum education.
Hello and welcome back to the Modern Museum Education Podcast. My name is Rachel and I am your host. I'm so excited that [00:01:00] you are back again for another episode, especially because what we're gonna be talking about today, I think is something that all educators ought to really consider carefully, but it's one of the things that we overlook a lot of the time.
But before we do that, there are a couple of things I wanna make sure that you are aware of.
If you have not yet gone to my website, modernmuseumeducation.com, I would really encourage you to do that.
You can find all kinds of free resources there,
a lot of blog posts,
show notes for the podcast. And I've just added something that I think is going to be really beneficial for you.
And that is my bookshelf. So if you go to ModernMuseumEducation.com/bookshelf, you can find my recommended resources for museum educators. Right now I've got, I think there's four books on there that I have reviewed, and there's links to them on my website so you can [00:02:00] find them easily. Uh, three of the books that are on there I'm gonna talk about today.
The other book is what I talked about. In episode two, which is "Knowledge to Narrative".
So I, my intention is to continue to add more books and resources that I think will be helpful.
So if you are looking for something particular, you really, you maybe you feel like there's a gap in your knowledge or you're wanting to kind of shore up some of your pedagogy, or you're looking for some better best practices,
my intention is that you can go to that page on my website and find. Exactly what you're looking for. So, um, I hope that that is helpful.
So please go check that out. ModernMuseumEducation.com/bookshelf.
And of course, that link with all the other resources that I mentioned today will be in the show notes for this episode, which you can find at ModernMuseumEducation.com/podcast/ 004.
Okay, so let's dive in to [00:03:00] today's topic. All of this information comes from a workshop that I do for museum education and interpretation departments. Oh, ps. If this is interesting to you and you would like me to come to your site and do this workshop in person with your staff, or we could do it on Zoom as well, then you could find information about that.
Also, guess where on our website, modern museum education.com/services. And go to professional development. That's what you're looking for there because I actually do this workshop in person and it has been very impactful for the interpreters and historians that I have done this with in the past. So if you wanna find more information out about that modern museum education.com/services.
Okay. Back to what I was saying. So if you have not yet listened to or watched episode three, "Museums are like Silly Bandz," you might wanna stop this episode [00:04:00] and go back and listen to that one because for the most part, you know, podcasts I, I, I think you should be able to listen to them in any order. But in this case, this episode really follows the train of thought,
from episode three, and so I think it would be helpful if you haven't heard that one yet to listen to that first, it sort of sets the stage for what we're talking about, but if you don't have time or you're not interested, let me quickly recap for you what we talked about in that episode. So there is a spectrum of museum work that all museum professionals kind of fall along this, this spectrum somewhere in terms of what we believe the primary role of the museum to be.
And I, I really broke this down in episode two where I was talking about the history of museum education. There is a very distinct difference between the, the end goal of what curators do and the end goal of what educators do. Neither one is better [00:05:00] than the other. They're just different, and they have the same results in mind.
It's all about improving the public in some way, maybe giving them access to more information. Or helping them to experience transformation. But the way that we go about this work is different depending on where we fall on the spectrum. So curators tend to fall on the side of the spectrum that deals with the, um, the objects themselves, the artifacts, the artwork, um, the research, the knowledge, right.
And educators fall on the other side of the spectrum. Which is all about the people and their experience and, and what they're kind of doing on our site. So, like I said, it's important that we have museum professionals sitting along this entire spectrum. That's what gives us a holistic museum experience.
But for the purposes of this particular information, I would like you to at, if you don't, even if you don't naturally sit here, I'd like you to [00:06:00] try to imagine yourself way over on the education side of the spectrum, way very close, even to the experiences side, like as far to the experiences side of things that you can get.
That's where I want you to kind of situate your mind as we talk through these things today. As a reminder, I am pulling a lot of this information from three particular books. The first one is "Come, Stay, Learn, Play". I'm not gonna talk about information from that book as much today. That was really in episode three, but again, I would highly recommend it.
This what I'm talking about today really comes from "The Value of Museums", which is written by Dr. John Falk, and it was published in 2022. And as I said last time, this book, y'all just. Just, just buy it. It is the best book. It is such a fantastic resource for museum professionals. If you are feeling at all discouraged about [00:07:00] the work that you do and the value of it and what it means for people, read this book.
It will make you feel so much better about what you do and how you do it. You can find a link to it, of course, as I mentioned on my website. Or you can find the show notes for this episode and you can get the link there as well. So in that book, "The Value of Museums," Dr. Falk sets out a model for what visitors are expecting and what they experience when they come onto our site.
And he sort of arranges this information in four quadrants. There is the personal, the intellectual, the physical, and the social. So I took that information and I compared it to what I was reading in Andrea Nalls book "Come, Stay, Learn, Play". And kind of combined the two sort of sets of information, because what I realized is that Falk's model with the personal and the intellectual, those two quadrants of a visitor's experience [00:08:00] fall along the transformation economy.
But a person's social and physical experiences fall along the experience economy line. So, I wanna start by talking about the experience economy, and then the next episode we'll transition and talk about the transformation economy. So again, if you didn't listen to episode three and you are a little confused about what I'm talking about, hit pause, go back and listen to that, then come back here and I think it will make a lot more sense for you.
Okay. So in terms of what visitors want when they're on our site, and what we want visitors to experience when they're on our site, we really have to remember that every decision a person makes is inspired by their primal desire for wellbeing. And this is the [00:09:00] primary argument that John Falk makes in his book, "The Value of Museums." That museums
can meet a person's wellbeing needs on every level. This is so fascinating because in conversation with museum professionals, we always sit only in our minds. We think the value that we offer is intellectual. We want people to learn when they're on our site, and we expect them to learn, and we expect that they are coming to us to learn.
But what John Falk argues is that visitors are experiencing, and in some cases expect to experience all kinds of things that have absolutely, I was gonna say absolutely nothing to do, but that's not true. Um, they're expecting to experience things that are tangentially related to what they're learning.
They're [00:10:00] expecting to experience things in the physical context, a personal context, in a social context, as well as an intellectual context. And I really think that museum people forget that way too often. So let's dive in and talk about what we can do as museum educators to increase enjoyment in the physical
context of a person's experience on our site. Okay, let me say that again. So if you're multitasking, stop for a second. Come back and listen to what I'm saying because it sounds complicated, but it's really not. The first thing that you need to consider here as we have this conversation is what does physical wellbeing has to do with a museum visit?
So when I do this workshop in person, we stop right here and we have a conversation [00:11:00] about this question. We answer it out loud. We write it down. What does physical wellbeing have to do with a museum visit? There's lots of answers here. , So think for yourself, what is the physical context of your museum's experience?
Is it outdoors or indoors? Does it have central heat and air? Are there benches for people to sit on? Where are the restrooms located? Where are the water fountains located? Is there a place for them to get food? Is there a place for them to get coffee? Surprisingly, that's a really important consideration for visitors.
Um, they always wanna know where can they get their coffee. , Is there a place for, , children? Is there a place for senior citizens? Is it easy to navigate? Are there stairs? , All of these questions are important. Now, here's the thing for educators, interpreters [00:12:00] guide docents. For the most part, we don't have a whole lot of control.
Over the site's physical aspect. Now you might be in a situation where you, um, maybe you're a small museum and you actually do have some big input into the physical aspects of your site. But, uh, for a lot of educators, you know, this is not something that we have a lot, um, of impact on in terms of changing, you know, when I worked at the museum where I was at for 16 years, despite eventually becoming.
A department director and a vice president there, I still couldn't, like, I didn't have the freedom to say, we should put a bench right here. Um, we need to put bathrooms right there. I mean, I, I was able to say we should put some bathrooms over there, but I couldn't just make that happen. Like I couldn't just snap my fingers and boom, there's bathrooms.
Um, that was outside of my control. But [00:13:00] there were things I could do to help visitors be more physically comfortable within the context of what already existed. So this is what I want you to think about. I'm not trying to encourage you to get frustrated with your administration or your board or where the money is stuck and it's not flowing in.
You know, man, we should put benches here, man. We should put water fountains here. That's not what I'm, I'm looking, and this is not what I want you to do. What I want you to do is think for yourself as an educator today. How can you improve your visitor's physical wellbeing when they're on your site within the limits of what already exists physically on your site?
So think about that. I'm gonna give you some examples here in a few minutes, but I wanna show you. If you're, if you're watching this on YouTube, you'll see it. Um, again, if you're listening, um, I'll just [00:14:00] try to kind of explain what I've got on the, the slides here. But I, I hope that you are all familiar with Maslow's Hierarchy of needs.
Um, if you're not Google it, look it up, but it's pretty, it's pretty standard. It's pretty, um, it's pretty well known by this point in time. So basically it's a triangle. And at the base of the triangle, or, you know, maybe if you wanna think about like as a pyramid, the base of the pyramid here are the, the basic needs that a, a person has to have met in order to reach their highest potential.
So the bottom of the triangle, the bottom of the pyramid, are your basic needs. They are your physical needs, they're your safety needs. It's things like, Food, water, a safe place to be. You have to be warm and rested. You have to feel safe and secure. Those needs are at the bottom of your pyramid. [00:15:00] This is what John Falk is talking about when he says that physical wellbeing and meeting physical wellbeing needs in your museum is not just something you should kind of give a passing thought to.
But it's something that you should really hone in on as a museum professional. You have to meet people's physical wellbeing needs, or they can't move on to enjoy your experience anymore. He writes in his book, without a basic feeling of security and safety, most humans would find it near impossible to partake in other forms of wellbeing, including socialization,
intellectual pursuits and of course personal actualization. In other words, and again, if you are multitasking, come back right now because this is, [00:16:00] this one sentence is worth its weight in gold. People are only willing to take intellectual risks, or for that matter, personal or social risks when they feel physically safe and secure.
So if your museum teaches difficult history, if you deal with hard topics, if you want to make a difference in how people think about the world, if you want to change the way they view science, if you want to improve the way they understand art and culture, you are asking visitors to take an intellectual risk.
They cannot do that if they feel physically unsafe. They cannot do that if they feel physically [00:17:00] uncomfortable. Put yourself in their shoes. If I was trying to tell you something really important, but you really had to go to the bathroom, can you concentrate on what I'm trying to tell you? If I'm trying to tell you something really important, but you're thirsty, do you care what I have to say?
No, you don't because humans were, we're kind of selfish, right? But that's not a bad thing. This is what keeps us alive. This is our primal nature at work to keep us alive, we have to focus on our basic needs first. We cannot stay in an intellectual space if our physical space isn't comfortable and safe.
So this is for me, when I read this, I thought this is the most common sense thing I have never [00:18:00] heard. In all of my years of attending graduate level classes on public history and conference, after conference, after conference, after conference, I've never heard anyone say this, and it makes so much sense.
We should all start here if, if you want people to take intellectual risks with your information, you have to make sure that they feel comfortable and safe. Okay? So what can you do right now to improve your visitor's physical wellbeing on your site? So if we're talking about, and because I am a museum educator and I do focus almost entirely on families and student programming, let's talk about what we can do to improve physical wellbeing experiences for families, children, and students on our sites.
So what are some examples? Well, first of all, you wanna make sure families know where [00:19:00] they can and cannot take strollers. Are there places on their, on your site that strollers are not allowed? They should know that ahead of time. And, you know, along those same lines, where can they park their strollers?
Are their strollers gonna be safe? What should they leave in the stroller? What should they take with them? That kind of thing. Where can they have snacks? Where can they pull their goldfish crackers out? Where can they pull their, you know, sippy cups out? Where can they get their juice boxes out? They need to know this on the front end.
Don't make them guess. Don't make them look for signs that says no food or drink here. And more importantly, don't make them ask. I can tell you from my experience as a parent, it is kind of humiliating to have to go up to someone in a position of authority, like a security guard or a docent in a museum and say, "Can, can my, my kid's thirsty, can, can I give them a drink of water in here?
[00:20:00] Can I, can I give them some juice?" Um, or even worse thinking it's okay. And then being told, "put that away. There's no food and drink in here." Um, then you feel real bad. I had an experience at a. Um, a museum in, um, in New York with my children a couple of years ago, and they weren't even babies or toddlers, they were like elementary school kids, but we had an experience.
We were in a gallery and I was, we were trying to make them more comfortable. And the, the, the security guard in the, in the gallery was very aggressive in correcting us. And let me tell you what I can remember from that experience. I remember the security guard. I don't remember the art. I don't remember what we were looking at.
I don't remember what we were talking about. It completely took me out of the experience that the curators had worked very hard to formulate for me. [00:21:00] I didn't remember any of that. What I remembered was an aggressive security guard. And the point here is not that the security guard was not doing their job, they absolutely were doing their job.
But if it had been a little more clear to me on the front end, no one would've been put in that situation to begin with. So what I'm suggesting here is that you offer at the beginning really clear information. Here's where you can go if you're thirsty. Here's where you can go, if you're hungry. Here's where you can go if you're tired. Here's where you can go if you need to sit down. Here's where you can go if you need a break. Along the same lines I will add that when you think carefully and critically about meeting visitors wellbeing needs you are being more inclusive. The only time I've ever really heard conversations about this topic in terms of like conference sessions and things like that, were in
sessions that revolved around conversations of inclusivity in [00:22:00] the context of creating inclusive programming or inclusive spaces for children who have special needs. You know, things like quiet rooms or visual schedules or social stories. When we create those kinds of resources for our visitors, we are actually meeting their physical wellbeing needs, and I've only ever heard this conversation at that level.
Think, think how amazing our experiences could be if we were approaching every visitor in that way, so that we are making everyone feel super, super included. At the museum where I used to work, it was a historic house museum. It was a two-story building. The the house was, and of course because it was a historic building, there were no elevators.
And when we would bring in senior citizen groups, it was, it could be very frustrating for [00:23:00] our interpreters because they felt like, they were immediately bombarded with guests saying, "do I have to climb the stairs? Do I have to climb the stairs? Do I have to climb the stairs?" And it would frustrate the guides.
When I did this workshop with them, we talked about why visitors were so obsessed with the staircase and whether they had to climb it or not, and we put that in the context of of their physical wellbeing needs. They are very concerned about their safety. And their comforts on a physical level. They cannot, they literally cannot progress to learning anything if they're concerned about the staircase and whether or not they have to climb it.
When we put that in context for the interpreters, I, I watched light bulbs just go off across the room over all of their heads and, and it all of a sudden, It made that interaction that happens all of the time, less frustrating for the [00:24:00] guides, less frustrating for the interpreters, less frustrating for the educators.
They realized, oh, these, these people aren't being rude. They are, they're on a, they're on a primal level trying to feel safe in a place that they've never been before. We know, as the guides, that of course they don't have to climb the stairs, but this is the house that we spend hours of our life in.
They've never walked in these doors. This is a new place for them. Everything about it feels a little uncertain, feels a little bit, you know, it's new, it's novel. That can be exciting for some people, but it can be scary for other people. And we need to acknowledge that new places can be scary for visitors.
This is something we see with kids all the time. It's a new museum. They've never been there before. They're a little uncertain about what they're going to see, what they're gonna expect, where they're gonna go. Um, and you need to, you [00:25:00] have to make them feel comfortable on the front end, right off the bat, or they cannot progress any further along the learning journey that you have planned for them.
Okay. So I hope that makes sense. Let me say this again. This is a quote from Dr. Falk's book. "People are only willing to take intellectual risks or for that matter, personal or social risks when they feel physically safe and secure." All right, friends, so we're approaching the 30 minute mark on this episode. So I think what I'm gonna do is just stop right here and we'll pick up with the social context in the next episode. There's actually so much more we could talk about in terms of a person's physical experience on our site. So maybe we will revisit this conversation at some point in the future,
but I hope that this episode has inspired you to think more critically about the way that people, particularly children and families, interact with your museum and your programming in a [00:26:00] physical way. If this episode has inspired you in any way. I would love to hear from you. So please go to my website, ModernMuseumEducation.com and reach out to me there.
Let's get a conversation going about the ways that we can improve and maybe even intentionally design experiences to not only create more physical comfort for children and families, but also to enhance their physical wellbeing when they're on our property.
Thank you so much for joining us. If this episode has been helpful to you or interesting, please take a minute to like, subscribe, and leave a review which will help other museum educators find this resource. As always, if you would like to work with me more directly, have any questions or would like to be a guest on the podcast, you can find links to all that and more on my website, ModernMuseumEducation.com.
I'll see you back here next time. And in the meantime, please remember that your work is not childish, just because you work with children.