How Reykjavík Art Museum Gave 600 Teenagers a Voice on Climate Change

By combining a revived community programme with time-based art and a carefully designed welcome, the Reykjavík Art Museum found a way to reach the teenagers who weren’t coming — and discovered that trust, comfort, and a little fun go a long way.

Museums have long wrestled with the question of how to connect with teenagers. The Reykjavík Art Museum had a more specific version of that problem: of the roughly 9,000 students visiting each year — a significant number in a country of fewer than 400,000 people — only a small proportion were teenagers. And most of those who did come were secondary school art students: young people who already felt at ease in a museum setting.

“We rarely ask how young people experience museums,” says Ariana Katrín Katrínardóttir, the museum’s Education and Mediation Manager. “Do they feel welcome? Do they feel seen? Do they feel trusted?”

Those questions shaped a summer project that brought 600 teenagers into the museum to explore climate issues through contemporary art — and in doing so, offered some practical lessons about what sustainable museum education can look like in practice.

Reviving a Forgotten Programme

The project was built on an unlikely foundation: a faded institutional memory. In the late 1990s, the Reykjavík Art Museum had run a summer project in collaboration with the Reykjavik School of Work, a long-standing city programme that offers paid summer employment to most 14 to 16-year-olds in Reykjavik. Teenagers spent a full workday at the museum as part of their summer placements. The project ran for five years and then, with staff changes around 2000, quietly disappeared — leaving behind no documentation, only memories.

One of those memories belonged to Katrínardóttir herself. As a teenager, she had participated in the programme. A single day in the museum, she says, changed her relationship with art entirely. That personal experience was proof enough that the project was worth reviving.

The Reykjavik School of Work — which dates back to the 1940s and has grown into a central feature of the city’s youth culture — provided the structural backbone. Teenagers arrived at their usual workplaces in the morning and travelled together by public transport to the museum. This wasn’t just a logistical convenience; it was a deliberate equity decision. Young people who couldn’t easily reach the city centre on their own were not excluded, and they learned a practical route to the museum that might make it feel more accessible for future visits.

Art Made for the Climate Emergency

The exhibition at the heart of the project was Höfuðskepnur, or Elements — a show curated by Markús Þór Andrésson that brought together contemporary Icelandic artists responding to environmental change. Iceland, where glaciers are visibly retreating, is not short of artists with something to say about ecological fragility. The works ranged from emotional responses to disappearing landscapes to more scientific approaches to mapping possible futures.

The exhibition was curated with teenagers explicitly in mind. The aim, Katrínardóttir is clear, was not to frighten. “We didn’t want to present a dystopian future,” she says, “but to invite reflection, dialogue, and agency.” The diversity of approaches in the show meant that different young people could connect with different works on their own terms — and when asked to critique what they saw, they did so with honesty, thoughtfulness, and, often, surprising depth.

Designing for Trust

Getting teenagers through the door was only part of the challenge. Making them feel genuinely welcome was another.
The museum made sure front desk staff were informed about the project and prepared for large groups of young visitors. Some staff had initial reservations; those concerns were addressed openly. The physical environment was adjusted too — sofas and beanbags were brought in, and educators took a deliberately informal, occasionally humorous tone. The goal was a space where teenagers felt welcome rather than monitored.

The educators themselves were chosen carefully: art-trained teachers with significant experience in youth centres, comfortable both with teenagers who hold strong opinions and with the kind of open-ended conversations that don’t resolve neatly. Climate change, identity, the future — these are not topics that lend themselves to tidy conclusions, and the project didn’t try to force them into one.

The mediation approach drew on critical art education. Teenagers were given short introductions to artists’ intentions and then encouraged to explore the exhibition freely, form their own views, share them, and listen to others. The emphasis throughout was on process rather than outcome.

Making Without Wasting

In the afternoons, participants turned from looking to making. But the creative component came with a sustainability constraint built in from the start: no object-based art. Instead, the project worked with time-based practices — video, performance, and happenings. The emphasis on process over product meant full creative freedom without generating unnecessary materials or waste. Sustainability, in other words, was embedded in the methodology rather than bolted on as an afterthought.

At the end of the summer, videos and images from participants’ work were exhibited as part of Reykjavik Culture Night, with all participants invited back to the museum for a closing celebration. The exhibition gave the work an audience and gave the teenagers a reason to return.

What Other Museums Can Take Away

Katrínardóttir distils the project’s lessons into four principles, each deceptively simple.

Be welcoming. Sustainability begins with people. Young visitors notice immediately whether they are expected or merely tolerated, and that perception shapes everything that follows.

Be comfortable. Physical comfort enables deeper engagement. If people can sit, relax, and settle in, they stay longer and think more carefully.

Be fun. Play does not undermine serious topics — it builds the trust that makes serious topics possible. In this project, teenagers connected artworks to Minecraft and internet culture. Meaning was still being made.

Be trusting. Teenagers are capable of engaging with complexity. Trust them with difficult art and difficult ideas, and they will often surprise you.

The project also points toward a broader understanding of what a green museum actually is. Energy efficiency and material waste are necessary concerns, but they are not sufficient ones. “Green museums are not only efficient, they’re generous,” Katrínardóttir says. “They make space for uncertainty, dialogue, and shared responsibility.” If museums want young people to care about the future, the work begins with inviting them into it — not as a passive audience, but as active, critical participants.

Ariana Katrín Katrínardóttir is Education and Mediation Manager at the Reykjavík Art Museum. She presented this work at the Green Museums Summit.