Fighting ‘Museum Fatigue’
Source: Museum Hack.
The New Age Of Innovation: Speaking About Museums In Malmö, Sweden, Museum Hack, 26 August 2015
Last week the founder and CEO of Museum Hack, Nick Gray, gave a talk at The Conference in Malmö, Sweden. The main focus was about how storytelling can transform a museum’s experience to re-engage audiences. The Conference focused on three main themes: human behavior, new technology and how to make innovation happen. It was a great opportunity to share perspectives and transform the way we collectively look at storytelling in the museum.
In the talk, Nick covered key topics, such as:
- What modern audiences love;
- How to use storytelling in the museum;
- How gossip, games and guides make our tours different; and
- Why entertainment needs to come before education
The following is a snippet from Nick’s talk:
What we’re providing here is not a museum tour, this is a museum adventure, right? People today, this is the ADD generation, I’m on my phone every two to three minutes, that’s what we have to compete with.
Have you ever been at a museum and instead of looking at the art, maybe after twenty or thirty minutes, instead of thinking about the art and how the art affects you, you start to think about how a cup of coffee would affect you. Or a big glass of wine.
That’s a real thing, ladies and gentlemen, it’s called “museum fatigue.” And we’ve developed some activities and exercises to combat that, “fatigue fighting exercises.” We will do yoga in the modern and contemporary gallery. We will run up the stairwells. We will pass out candy in the hallways. We’ll have a big glass of wine on our nighttime tours. We’ll do shots of espresso.