Schedule

How are museums using play to transform their galleries? At the newly opened Young V&A, we believe play is central to how children and adults learn and engage. To this end, we have embedded play throughout our galleries, in particular the gallery dedicated to play itself! Hear from the V&A Interpretation team how we have created opportunities to ‘play’ with our collection, from on-gallery interactives to graphics that game-ify the displays, loose parts to digital games. We will showcase the new gallery scheme, and some of the key challenges and practicalities to consider when creating playful gallery experiences.

Gallery Children’s Biennale has been one of National Gallery Singapore’s signature event for children and family audiences since 2019. The most recent edition, launched in May 2023, came just after COVID-19 regulations were lifted. How do we revert to tactile play at the museum in a world that is just coming out of the global pandemic? What role does digital play still have in today’s landscape? How do we balance hands-on learning while exploring the possibilities of digital experiences? These are some of the questions we had and will continue to uncover together in our presentation.

The National Museum of Qatar believes that learning can be fun and exciting. It therefore incorporates games and playing in everything it does! Younger visitors and families are core audiences for the museum and therefore providing playful experiences for them that facilitate intergenerational learning has been very central in the museum’s agenda since its inception. Three playgrounds in the outdoor spaces of the museum and six family sections within the permanent galleries are the outcome of our efforts to this point. What did we learn from this effort so far? How can we share the main stories of our permanent galleries in a playful and exciting way with our audiences? This is what we are going to focus on in this presentation and explore together. Please join us as we delve into the significance of play in breaking down barriers and reshaping visitor perceptions of a museum, inspired by local values and traditions.

Using the development of a new outdoor play space and play themed public programme as a catalyst for change, the National Maritime Museum have been investigating how to support play for all ages and abilities beyond designated children’s galleries. Delegates will explore what play is, what it means at NMM and the challenges and successes we have worked through to define this. Delegates will hear about experimental, low tech, rapid response approaches to play including gallery interventions, play training, consultation and a play artist in residence. Working from practice up into policy and how we have brought other teams along the journey in the museum to make it happen.

Collections & Public Engagement Officer Megan Christo and Community Connector Jenny Wang will share their experience co-producing and delivering playful half term events at the Museum that bridge the gap between on-display objects and family visitors. Megan and Jenny collaborated with local Chinese people to decolonise the family programming through object research and playful activities. Each family investigated the histories and stories of Chinese Musical instruments cared for at the museum, sharing their new knowledge with visitors alongside live music from the Silk and Bamboo Orchestra and traditional folk puppetry performed by Jose Navarro.

What happens when an art museum reevaluates its role in a community, not only as a place that displays human creativity, but as a place that is catalyzing visitor imagination and critical thinking through play? The Columbus Museum of Art did just that by developing a participatory gallery that invited visitors to think and play like artists. The research conducted, measured six types of play and how visitors engaged with materials, ideas, and each other. Today, the Grand Rapids Art Museum is spring boarding from that research to develop intentional play outcomes for unfacilitated participatory experiences throughout the museum.

How do you design a space for play? Learn how a unique partnership with the LEGO Foundation led to the design and construction of a space for play during the groundbreaking renovation of the Buffalo AKG Art Musuem. Hear about our successes, mistakes, and ongoing learning lessons as we opened a dedicated space for play in the heart of the museum.

How do you do literacy with kids who can’t read? Share books with book-refusers? Get a class of wriggly primary school children completely enraptured for an entire hour, whilst making their teachers happy? Get kids and parents to play together? Sharing the secrets of our hands-on exhibition design at Discover Children’s Story Centre as it has evolved from flat panel displays to immersive, inclusive play spaces with 75,000 visitors a year, on a tight budget, in the heart of one of the most diverse, deprived and exciting boroughs in London.

When we view art experience as a contemplative pursuit, the implication is that it is a disembodied experience. However, mind and body are inextricably linked when looking at art. The body, as an active partner, responds to the physical and environmental qualities of a work of art in a museum space. A person’s embodiment shapes their experiences in galleries and informs their perceptions of art objects. In turn, works of art offer opportunities for action, whether they call on their original functions or contemporary applications. To quote from our recent publication, Activity-Based Teaching in the Art Museum: Movement, Embodiment, Emotion, “The play of art occurs when we are touched by a proposition, a. .n address, an experience that so captures us that we surrender readily to our impulse to play along” (Kai-Kee, Latina, Sadoyan 2020, 52). When we engage in play with a work of art, we inquire, “What is it asking me to do with it?”

Play, real play, produces pockets of freedom in larger systems. Playful moments within the rigor a museum galleries can be like “temporary autonomous zones,” the term coined by Hakim Bey (aka Peter Lamborn Wilson) to mean “fleeting pockets of anarchy that occur in daily life.” In this session, the speaker shares stories of moments when museum temporarily become something different, from a Lucha Libre wrestling match in the atrium of a Natural History Museum to a Penguin Disco at the entrance to an aquarium habitat, complete with a “fishco ball.” How might this type of temporary remapping via playfulness change the kinds of learning that happens in museum— especially when the goal of such playfulness is not learning at all?