Instructor and Ph.D. candidate, Rebecca Friend, wrote for the Canadian Museums Association’s magazine, Muse. A short excerpt has been included below while the full article, “Considering Children in Museums” is available online.
Children have long been seen as an integral audience for museums. The 2021 report Trust and Value: The Role of Museums in Canada in the Twenty-First Century, produced by the Alberta Museums Association with contributions from museums and heritage associations across the country, documented that 96% of Canadians saw educating children as a museum’s most important role when asked in 2012. Almost all Canadian respondents (92%) also believed that children should visit museums.
Across Canada and beyond, children are targeted as museum visitors and solicited as participants in programming initiatives. While this approach has been successful in bringing young people into museum spaces, some scholars and museum practitioners have begun questioning whether there are ways to engage children in museums as more than receivers of knowledge and programming initiatives, but as potential partners and co-producers.
Moving Towards a ‘New, Critical Children’s Museology’
Leading this call is public historian, cultural anthropologist, and independent curator Monica Eileen Patterson. Her work argues that children have a great deal to offer museums – but only if they are recognised for the contributions they can make. Her research and curatorial practice seek to develop a new, critical children’s museology, through research and co-curation with children. For Patterson, this means that museum content and programming should be developed not only “ for and about children, but also by and with children in ways that engage them as valued social actors and knowledge-bearers.”
These types of initiatives are informed by recent trends in participatory museology, and long-standing practices in children’s museums that prioritize children’s active engagement, freedom, and enjoyment. But Patterson is adamant that these approaches should be applied to museums and galleries of all types, not just those designated ‘for children.’ While the field of Museum Studies has seen calls for a ‘new,’ ‘critical,’ and even ‘post’ museology that look for ways to break down elitist and exclusionary museum practices, Patterson’s work reminds us that children should also be included in these democratization efforts.
As a doctoral student at Carleton University myself, I study how young people are considered across Canadian museums – both as content in collections and exhibitions and as collaborators in programming and curatorial initiatives. My work is indebted to scholars like Patterson who are vocal in highlighting young people’s museological potential. Our research together has sought out examples of how museums are collaborating with young people to make innovative changes to their offerings, and the following section spotlights a number of museum projects that do so in new and innovative ways.