The student club as a tool for attracting youth audience to museums

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The student club as a tool for attracting youth audience to museums

V.E. Gordin, I.A. Sizova,

E.K. Dementyeva,

A.N. Kudelkina, M. Dike

Abstract

The authors describe the possibility of using a differentiated approach based on vocational education in the field of art and culture as a new criterion for attracting youth audiences to museums in the digital era. A distinctive feature of the differentiated approach in the activities of museum student clubs is the targeted impact on various groups of young people, taking into account their age and level of art training in the development of museum programs. In order to assess the applicability of the differentiated approach to working with young people in museums, the members of student clubs of the two largest museums in Russia, i.e., the Hermitage and the Russian Museum, were surveyed. Expert interviews with the staff of the student clubs were also conducted. Based on the results of the analysis, the authors identified three groups of the young people, which were designated as “interested,” “advanced” and “proficient.” The criteria for dividing into the groups were differences in the educational level of the students in the field of art and culture. This division allowed to determine the forms of the most attractive museum events for the identified groups of students. The results of the study may be useful in working with the youth audience in other museums.

Key words: youth audience, student club, museum programs, visitors' loyalty

Аннотация

Студенческий клуб как инструмент привлечения молодежной аудитории в музеи

В.Э. Гордин, И.А. Сизова, Е.К. Дементьева, А.Н. Куделькина, М. Дайк

Описываются возможности использования дифференцированного подхода на основе профессионально ориентированного образования в сфере искусства как нового критерия привлечения молодежной аудитории в музеи в цифровую эпоху. Дифференцированный подход в деятельности студенческих клубов основан на применении адресного воздействия на различные группы молодежи с учетом их возраста и уровня профессиональной подготовки в сфере культуры при разработке музейных программ. Использовался анализ опроса членов студенческих клубов двух крупнейших музеев России - Эрмитажа и Русского музея, чтобы оценить применимость дифференцированного подхода в работе с молодежью в музеях. Проведены экспертные интервью с сотрудниками студенческих клубов. В результате анализа выделены три группы молодежи, обозначенные как «интересующиеся», «продвинутые» и «профессионалы». Разделение по группам основано на различиях в образовательном уровне учащихся в сфере искусства. На основе предложенной классификации определены формы наиболее привлекательных музейных мероприятий для выделенных групп молодежи. Полученные результаты могут быть полезны для работы с молодежной аудиторией в других музеях.

Ключевые слова: молодежная аудитория, студенческий клуб, музейные программы, лояльность посетителей

Introduction

Attracting a youth audience to museums is seen today as a pressing issue. Mokhtar and Kasim (2011) note in this regard that “today's youngsters are tomorrow's potential museum professionals and audiences”. In this context, museums face the important task of not only identifying formats for working with youth audiences but also creating a differentiated approach to various groups of young people, depending on the level of their professional interests and human values. In this study, we actualize the differentiated approach as a targeted impact on various groups of young people, considering their age, level of art training, and social affiliation in the development of museum programs. This approach is consistent with the cognitive and interpretative models of audience study proposed by P. McManus (McManus, 1996). The former model requires that certain information or ideas should be delivered to the audience using a certain set of products in order to ensure that the message embedded in the product is properly “digested”. The latter model assumes that the process of interpretation is mediated by many factors, such as previous experience, social affiliation and visitors' interaction (Dementyeva, Kudelkina, 2019).

The youth audience is one of the most intensely studied categories of museum visitors. The problem of attracting young people to museums has been analyzed with various factors taken into account, including: their motivational aspects of visiting museums and desire to be included in museum processes (Sharp, 2014; Xanthoudaki, 1998), professional interests and need to be socialized (Mellemsether, Mulle, 2016; Kinghorn, Willis, 2008), active use of AR technologies (Nechita, Rezeanu, 2019) and sensory devices in museums as well as digitalized interactionVillaespesa, E., & Stack, J. (2015). Finding the motivation behind a click: Definition and implementation of a website audience segmentation. Museums and the Web. 2015, April 8-11. (Ting et al., 2013). However, the differentiated approach, depending on the level of professional artistic interest of young people, has not yet become a widely applied method for studying the field of museum work.

The need of the youth audience for modern forms and approaches and, consequently, the fundamental educational museum programs based on excursions and lectures are combined with innovative and creative projects. This, in turn, makes the search for new forms of work with young people in museums more relevant. One of these forms is the creation of student clubs affiliated with museums. Sometimes the participants of such student clubs include high school students and students of secondary vocational schools. It is important to note that the student age in Russia falls within the range of 18-24 years, which corresponds to the United Nations definition of the young age as the period of 15-24 years.International Labour Organization (2015). Global Employment Trends for Youth 2015: Scaling up investments in decent jobs for youth. Geneva: International Labour Office.

Student clubs for working with youth are created, first of all, taking into account the specifics of the student audience, which is actively looking for new information and ways to communicate with their like-minded fellows. Not the last role is also played by the desire of students of creative areas of arts and humanities to improve their artistic professional level by studying museum collections. Besides, students, unlike other groups of young people, are very focused on the educational format of interaction with museum staff: they consider clubbing as a means of expanding their educational process.

The purpose of this study is to explore the museum student club as a new form of work with the young adult segment of the museum audience. The study is conducted to answer the following questions: 1) What formats of work do modern museums use to communicate with young people? 2) What museum services does the youth audience prefer?

Main idea

In this study, we rely on the theory of the Interactive Experience Model developed by Falk and Dierking (2016). This model is based on a visitor-centered perspective and the notion that experience and subsequent learning are context-dependent.

The Interactive Experience Model starts with a personal context, which consists of elements that shape the visitor's personality, such as psychology, biography, character, etc. This context is characterized by the three elements:

1. The first element relates to expectations and motivation. Each visitor has a certain background, consisting of previous experience, personal expectations regarding museum exhibitions and exhibits, as well as accumulated memories and impressions. Given these characteristics, museums can create contextual links that positively affect visitors' satisfaction.

2. The second element includes existing interests, knowledge, and beliefs. In order for a museum to receive positive feedback from visitors, it must to take into account that each visitor perceives new information through a personal filter consisting of unique knowledge. At the same time, only the information which is already familiar to the visitor is successfully assimilated. Therefore, museums must differentiate between the type of information and the way it is presented.

3. The third element implies the possibility of choice and control over what is to be learnt, as well as where, when and how. Museums deliver information through an informal environment, i.e., free-choice learning, in which clients can autonomously direct and self-control the personal learning process without any coercion. The information should be attractive and interesting for visitors.

Therefore, the authors used the following components of the museum visitor's experience: education, aesthetics and entertainment. In connection with the development of digital technologies, another component was involved, i.e., escapism, or an escape from reality (Figure 1).

The authors of this study consider the student club as a new tool for attracting a youth audience to museums. At present, the functions of museums are continuously expanding both owing to the need of society for a museum as a cultural center and creative hub. Museums seek to attract, inform and provide a meeting space, often to entertain, and at the same time maintain a high cultural status.

L.A. Hachatryan and A.A. Chernega (2012) studied the factors affecting the propensity to visit museums and found that, for the youth audience, one of the main factors in visiting a museum is to obtain additional knowledge as it emphasizes the traditional educational function of the museum as a social institution. It was also found that the attention of young visitors is even more attracted by novelties of art and modern cultural life. About 20% of the visitors would go to the museum for flash mobs, performances, shows, social and advertizing campaigns. Only about 15 percent of people would go to a museum for the sake of communicating with a certain group of people (the so-called “intelligent party”). As for the sphere of interest, museums can attract visitors with the opportunity to learn about novelties of art and cultural life (60%) or gain additional knowledge (30%). Young museum-goers would like to see enclaves of modern cultural life in museums. Most of the youth audience also noted that further development should be associated with the concept of a “living” museum. Young people would like to see not “layers of dust on the shelves” in the heritage institutions but interactive elements, for which it is necessary to move from the principle of the former museum elite snobbery to the principle of complicity (Hachatryan, Chernega, 2012, р. 170). It is desirable that every visitor should have the right to leave their mark on the museum not only in the guest book (Dementyeva, Kudelkina, 2019).

To attract young people, a museum exposition should take into account the needs of the didactic process, and the content presented should be arranged in a predetermined order: have a clear structure, support the conditions for communicative presentation by various means, i.e., multimedia aspects of a museum exhibition, and produce certain cognitive and emotional results in a group of young visitors. It must be remembered that “the ivory tower” museums are long gone.

Figure 1. The interactive experience model. Source: the authors

A modern museum is an interactive place that does not allow young visitors to be passive spectators but involves them in a dialogue, stimulating their requests or searches for answers. The exhibition should affect all the senses of a young person (hearing, sight, smell, touch). If a museum is to be successful, it must consider the expectations of 21^st century young persons living in a civilization of information and knowledge (Alejziak, 2011). In addition, the museum is becoming a place where young people can satisfy their needs for professional artistic expertise, improve their skills through non-formal education and also acquire non-core, interdisciplinary knowledge. Museums today offer new ways to connect culture and education.

A. Timokhovich and S. Filenko (2019) believe that involving a youth audience in the consumption of a cultural product is an urgent problem for museums. Therefore, the museums need to:

(1) introduce gaming technologies into the process of active consumption of a cultural product;

(2) open discussion platforms and arrange regular meetings with the authors of expositions, conduct training seminars and public lectures, as young people want to have the opportunity to express themselves and discuss something with their friends and like-minded people;

(3) involve young people in the creative process for self-expression;

(4) change (on a regular basis) the exposition and report it on social networks;

(5) ask (as is recommended) opinion leaders (bloggers, representatives of universities) to inform the youth audience about events in museums and involve them in the process of consuming a cultural product;

(6) use different methods for influencing different senses directly on the museum site;

(7) expand the content space of the museum (as needed), thereby providing an opportunity not only to consume the cultural product on the territory of the museum but to participate in other activities.

F.A. Saleh (2005) also studied the factors affecting visitors and developed a research model. The study found that physical factors were not so important to visitors. The determinants of expectations were aspects related to the quality of experience. J.H. Falk (2013) identifies five factors that motivate different categories of people to visit museums:

(1) researchers: the motivation is curiosity, the goal is to find interesting content;

(2) guides: the motivation is accompanying other people (e.g., a school group); the goal is to share with someone the experience of visiting the museum and to tell the relatives about an interesting event;

(3) professionals/amateurs: the motivation is the desire to deepen their knowledge;

(4) experience seekers: the motivation is to erase a museum from the list of must-visit; the goal is to gain new experience;

(5) recharge seekers: the motivation is to escape from the hustle and bustle of modern life.

At the same time, learning by museum means should not only give pleasure but also form a certain level of professionalization. Thus, K. Coffey (2008) argues that museums should turn “from exclusive to inclusive places, from places of education to places of study”. L. Kelly (2004) also considered museums as spaces of “free choice or an informal learning environment”.

The main idea of this study is to establish the difference in motivation and reasons for choosing a museum club between three groups, namely “interested”, “advanced” and “proficient”. (How the groups are defined will be discussed later.) In addition, the study defines formats and services of working with youth using the Interactive Experience Model. The authors also analyze the results of the development of museum programs aimed at various groups of student club members associated with their professional background.

Methodology

In this article, we use a mixed method, which includes surveys of experts and direct users (students). In 2018-2019, the HSE Laboratory of Cultural Economics in St. Petersburg, with the support of both student clubs, conducted a sociological study. The study consisted of two surveys.

1. A survey of the leaders of the Hermitage Student Club and the Russian Museum Student Clubs intended to determine the major goals, objectives and primary work formats. The questionnaire contained 10 questions aimed at clarifying the opinions and assessments of experts regarding the age limits of the museums' youth audiences; the presence of differences between teenagers and young adults in terms of the development of the museums' product development; the main motives for young people to visit museums; the need to develop special museum products for young adults; the need to actively attract young people to museums and their collections; the most interesting museum programs for young people; the need for special programs for professional youth audiences; and the importance of allocating in the organizational structures of the museums separate departments for working with youth audiences. In addition, certain museum programs were evaluated on the basis of their orientation towards different groups of the student clubs.

Expert interviews: The first stage of the study involved three expert interviews. An expert interview is one of the varieties of in-depth interviews. Its main feature is the competence of the respondent acting as an experienced expert in the field under study. The heads of the student clubs in the Hermitage (head of the youth center, female, museum experience over 30 years) and the Russian Museum (student club leader, male, 43 years old, museum experience over 20 years) and a specialist from Tretyakov Art Gallery (head of the educational department, female, museum experience about 30 years) were the respondents of the expert interview. Our decision to invite them for the interview was based on the assumption that they were the best informed on the needs and preferences of the youth audience in terms of consuming cultural products. They occupied positions involving both direct communication with the students and the development of strategies for interacting with them. The data collection phase was followed by data analysis.

To further analyze the interaction of the museums with their youth audiences, we used the Interactive Experience Model. The model reflects the four elements that form the basis of interaction between a company and its customers: educational, entertainment, escapist and esthetic experiences. The educational experience means that the product should be sold not just as such but together with the educational part represented by museum collections. The entertainment experience implies shifting the focus to the process of gamification between museums and their audiences. The escapist experience refers to the process of digitalization, which is expressed in the expansion of the museums' access to the Internet to overcome spatial and temporal restrictions on the consumption of museum products and services. In this case, we are talking about a virtual museum. The esthetic experience means a form of promotion that develops consumer loyalty. Thus, the list of museum formats of communication with young adults will be divided into four parts according to the four elements of the Interactive Experience Model.

2. A survey of the members of the Hermitage and the Russian Museum Student Clubs contained 12 questions, which could be divided into three categories. The first set of questions was designed to identify a sub-segment of the respondents, i.e., proficient, advanced or interested. There were three questions in the block, converted into two binary separation criteria. The first criterion examined whether the respondents had attended any specialized additional schools or courses in the field of cultural and art education. According to the second criterion, the major field of education of a respondent was supposed to be in the cultural field. In this criterion, there were two questions related to the school or university that the participant was still attending or had attended before. The second group of questions examined the sub-segments in terms of specific consumption characteristics of cultural products. There were three open questions in the block.

In answering the first question, the respondents were supposed to explain why they had chosen the section they were visiting. The respondents were asked to clarify how they would like to communicate with the museums. The third question asked what topics the respondents would like to learn in the museum student clubs. The third set of questions concerned the socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents.

Club members' surveys: As a result of the surveys, three groups of club members were identified, designated by the authors of this study as “proficient”, “advanced” and “interested”. The division was based on differences in the cultural background and education of the students. The algorithm for dividing into the groups is presented in Table 1.

Table 1