Overview

As a governing body of a municipal museum, learn how to comply with the Exhibition Standard and the Interpretation and Education Standard outlined in the Standards for Community Museums in Ontario.

Standards enable community museums to:

  • provide the appropriate care and management of collections
  • meet visitors’ expectations
  • be accountable and transparent to the community, funders and donors

Exhibition standard

A community museum’s exhibits provide an important link between the community and its heritage.

In the planning and presentation of exhibitions, a museum must strive for accuracy of information, relevance to the community, effective communication, opportunities for learning and engagement, and the safe display of artifacts.

Program planning and evaluation — exhibits, public programs and events

A museum’s exhibits are an important source of information about its community’s heritage. When planning and presenting exhibits, museum staff should:

  • provide accurate information
  • ensure exhibits are relevant to the community
  • effectively communicate with the museum’s audience
  • provide opportunities for learning and engagement
  • display artifacts safely

Interpretation and education standard

A community museum’s interpretation and education programs should:

  • allow the community to interact with museum collections
  • connect with audiences of all ages, interests and abilities
  • serve as a resource for your community
  • complement other sources of learning in your community

Public programs: making museums matter

Public programs — including exhibits — should serve the evolving needs, interests and priorities of a museum’s community.

Public programming can provide:

  • more ways to interpret the museum’s collections
  • learning opportunities designed to meet the needs of targeted audiences
  • more chances for visitors to engage with the collections, exhibits and other audience members
  • a forum for community input to help create meaningful exhibits, events, and activities

Public programs: staff responsibilities

The staff member responsible for creating programs must create a plan that responds to the needs of the museum’s visitors. This requires an understanding of the museum’s audience, backed by research. The program planner should be familiar with:

  • target audience
    • current community or societal interests, needs and issues
    • learning preferences
  • age-specific abilities of your audience
  • learning objectives of specific school curriculums, badges and other programs

Tip: Audience learning styles

To help plan a program or exhibit, it is helpful to see it from at least four types of perspectives – or learning styles – as identified by 4MAT.footnote i

Ask how people with different learning styles would view the exhibit, and plan for them.

Why

Imaginative people spend time reflecting, seeking personal meaning and involvement. They are focused on personal values and making connections.

What

Analytical people are interested in information, facts and ideas. They like to know what the experts think.

How

Practical people like thinking and doing. They are happiest experimenting, building and creating usable ideas and items.

What if

Dynamic people like doing and feeling. They are constantly seeking hidden possibilities and exploring ideas to create original adaptations, they learn by trial and error and self-discovery.

A museum can also identify individuals from its community to participate on a planning committee. The committee would contribute ideas and perspectives to a topic or theme being considered.

Planning checklist

There are several factors to consider when planning an exhibit or program, including:

  • goals and objectives
  • program concept
  • target audience
  • budget
  • roles and responsibilities
  • research
  • logistics
  • marketing
  • program integration

Goals and objectives

When developing a new program, it’s helpful to first list the museum’s goals and objectives. These should support the museum’s mission and strategic plan.

Goals should:

  • be limited (between 3–5 goals) and specific
  • identify the specific target audience – consider demographics (for example, age, gender, ethnicity, education, geography), interests and availability. Resist the urge to denote the ‘general public’
  • describe the intended visitor experience
  • outline the themes or collections that the program will explore

Objectives should be SMART:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Attainable
  • Relevant
  • Time-bound

Types of program objectives include:

  • Internal or operational. These are usually quantitative. Examples include:
    • increase attendance by a certain percentage
    • appeal to a specific age group
    • a fundraising target at an annual fundraising event
  • External or visitor experience. These are usually qualitative (words, descriptions and/or emotions). Examples include:
    • visitors to the exhibit will learn about 1815–2015 household and industrial waste disposal practices; the social changes that influenced them; and suggest ways to reduce waste
    • grade 3 students will compare pioneer tasks, tools and how they were powered, with comparable modern tools we use today
    • participants in the bread-making workshop will use 19th century process, ingredients and tools, including a brick oven, to bake three kinds of Pennsylvania-German breads

Program concept

Generate an idea

A theme(s) for public programs can come from an existing exhibit, collections or from a museum’s visitors or partners. Classroom teachers or group leaders may have suggestions that connect their needs to the museum’s museum collections and approaches.

Determine the format

Program learning experiences can be:

  • structured, which means the experience:
    • is delivered in a scripted way by a guide or in an exhibit
    • has a clear path or storyline
  • unstructured, which means the experience:
    • is delivered in an inquiry-based or conversational style
    • uses labels designed to engage the reader with the objects or ideas presented

Program delivery

A museum program can be delivered by staff, self-guided by visitors, or both.

  • staff-driven efforts include guided tours, demonstrations, performances, lectures and workshops
  • visitor-driven efforts include the use of audio guides, gallery information, activity sheets and computer terminals with suggested links.

A museum can also provide more interactive options such as discovery boxes, a hands-on table and places to ask questions or share thoughts online.

Duration

A museum will need to determine if a program or exhibit will be:

  • short-term, designed to complement one or more of:
    • a community or historic event
    • a seasonal celebration or theme
    • a temporary or travelling exhibit
  • long-term:
    • to further develop a theme in a “permanent” exhibit or historic site
    • to support a curriculum
    • to support an ongoing community need or interest

Location

Where will the program or exhibit take place? Potential locations include:

  • the museum
  • a venue in the community, as part of a community event
  • online (for example, virtual exhibit, social media conversation, YouTube demonstration, heritage video, performance or lecture)
  • at a pop-up event or exhibit
  • as a travelling exhibit
  • as part of an outreach kit or program

Target audience

To help connect with the target audience, consider:

  • audience knowledge
    • what does the audience know about the topic or theme?
    • what will they want to know?
    • what issues are of concern to the community?
  • group size
    • will the target audience visit or participate in groups (for example classes, bus groups, seniors’ centres), as families or as individuals or couples?
  • values and interests
    • what are the values or interests of this audience (in general)?
    • will the program be designed to reinforce existing values or to change an attitude?
    • what does the museum want the audience to think or talk about after they have participated?
  • physical abilities
    • what are the physical abilities of the target audience?
    • what are their conceptual abilities (for example, for different ages of children)?
    • what are their communication abilities, (for example, is English their first language)?
    • are they hearing impaired, do they suffer from memory loss or have attention-deficit disorder?
  • geographical area of origin
    • will this be a program for a local audience or of specific interest to tourists?
    • will they plan to stay for a long time, repeat visits or just a quick drop-in?

You may also want to consider including members of your target audience in your planning process, as individuals or representatives from community/cultural groups.

Budget

Is revenue generation one of the organizational objectives?

Expenses

Determine:

  • Will staff, volunteers need training or research time to develop and deliver the exhibit and related programs?
  • What will it cost to bring in training or can this be provided by another municipal department or community partner?
  • What are the costs for research, development, and implementation of the program (for example facilities, materials and programming supplies, technology, equipment, human resources, marketing)?
  • Are there transportation costs for presenters or if the program is held off-site?

Revenue

Determine:

  • What is the cost for participation (estimate number of participants), project grant or foundation support, partner or sponsor support?
  • Will there be sale of refreshments, publications or other program-related revenue?

Note: don’t forget to include costs for these as expenses.

Roles and responsibilities

Determine who will be responsible for what, and by when. Don’t forget to include time and responsibility for:

  • volunteer recruitment
  • confirmation of outside participants
  • staff training
  • preparation of program materials such as hand-outs, pre-threading needles or other workshop/class activities
  • finding suppliers and ordering supplies for hands-on activities
  • pilot testing particularly for ongoing programs such as curriculum-based programs, marketing/communication
  • What needs to be done first; next?
  • When to schedule meetings for all involved
  • Who will be responsible for project coordination or management

Communication is key.

Research

Objects

Determine:

  • what objects in the collection, and the information collected about these objects, will contribute to the concepts of the program and appeal to the target audience
  • what objects can be touched
  • what artifacts might be reproduced to allow use such as trying on, performing an activity or playing a game

Stories

Glimpses of the individuals behind the history or concept engage the audience and may lead to programming opportunities such as re-enactment of a local historic event, a dramatic reading, play or puppet show, or visitor engagement opportunity to share their stories in response.

Determine what personal or local stories, anecdotes, biographies or folklore can bring the program or exhibit to life

Audience

This is key to the success of a program. For school programs see tip below. The museum should identify what it needs to know about its target audience and how to find out.

Images

People are drawn to images of people. Images can include photos, maps, graphics, moving images, political posters or cartoons.

Determine:

  • if there is a compelling image that will communicate the theme
  • if there is an idea that can be reproduced for marketing purposes and/or enlarged as the focal point of the exhibit, performance or programming space
  • If images be reproduced to illustrate a lecture, introduce a tour, include in an activity guide or takeaway information booklet

Sound

Songs or speaking voices can be particularly evocative of an era or theme. Determine:

  • the popular music of an era, of a war or issue (for example temperance, protest movement, civil rights)
  • a recorded voice that is symbolic of a time or idea
  • songs that might be reproduced in a songbook for a sing-along or to accompany a performance

Logistics

It’s all in the details. This part of the planning ensures that the visitor experience will be positive, from first contact with the organization until after they leave.

Think about how to make each contact pleasant and welcoming, including:

  • registration process
  • signage/directions
  • parking
  • washrooms, are they clean/are there enough?
  • accessibility
  • food
  • seating
  • licenses
  • permissions or notifications required (if any)
  • weather contingencies (or plan B) for example if your expectation was for most visitors to be visiting outside, welcome them to come inside to look at exhibits instead

Be sure that programs start and end at the scheduled time and that an event and all its participants are ready to go at the time advertised and continue until closing time.

Marketing

The more a museum knows about its audience, the easier it will be to market a program.

Find out where the target audience looks for information about leisure activities. This could be:

  • in the newspaper — what publication?
  • on the radio — what station?
  • online — which website?
  • posters at their religious institution, community centre or library
  • direct contact from the museum, by e-mail or invitation

Use key words or phrases that will accurately describe what kind of experience the program will provide. The language should reflect the experience the audience is looking for, for example:

  • intellectual stimulation
  • hands-on activities
  • “fun for the whole family”
  • a unique experience they can talk about with their friends later
  • an opportunity to meet new people
  • a way to earn a new badge or meet curriculum outcomes that can’t be achieved as well in school or at a meeting
  • learn more about their community or celebrate the achievements of an individual or group. Participate or sit back and take it all in?

Program integration

Consider how the exhibit will be connected to other aspects of the museum operation. For example:

  • Can it be used as part of school programming, special events?
  • Have you thought about online content and social media?
  • How will this new exhibit assist or interfere with capital work, maintenance?
  • Have you left enough time for the collections and conservation work?

Measuring success

Success is achieved when a museum meet the objectives it has set down for itself and its audience. Specific quantifiable objectives are much easier to evaluate than qualitative objectives.

Qualitative objectives can include:

  • Percentage increase or decrease in revenue or attendance
  • sold-out limited capacity events such as workshops, lectures, day camps
  • number of mentions in the media or social media
  • new partnerships or sponsorships established
  • outside funding support, such as a grant or foundation secured
  • number of memberships sold at a “friendraising” event
  • number of new local visitors

An institutional objective might also identify what paid and/or volunteer staff will do for the benefit of the institution, its brand and its reputation (see Logistics above). This type of self- evaluation can be done with a questionnaire for staff and volunteers, after the event.

You can find examples of staff self-evaluation questions in the AMA Standard Practices Handbook and in Creating Great Visitor Experiences.

Measuring objectives

Measure objectives against results to determine what worked well and what needs improvement.

A museum should be careful that it is not measuring just to measure something. The evaluation must tie directly to its objectives and SMART goals. This may mean that objectives will be harder to determine and an evaluation harder to design, but it will more accurately measure success.

Tips: measuring audience success

Objectives for an audience can also be evaluated qualitatively. This can be challenging when reporting back to stakeholders and funders – particularly government bodies – who look for quantitative results that can be interpreted as ‘impact’.

When applying for financial support, look at their grant objectives to determine what will need to be measured (for example number of tourists reached; number of communities a travelling exhibit reached; amount of clicks on a virtual exhibit).

Do

  • develop an audience survey that includes questions directly linked to objectives.
  • build an engaging question into an exhibit or program
  • ask a provocative question on a chalkboard, whiteboard or bulletin board placed at the end of an exhibit and encourage visitors to respond using post-it notes, chalk, markers, paper and coloured pencils
  • sample questions:
    • Who is your community hero? Why?
    • What will you do to help the environment?
  • use an exhibit or event takeaway to determine whether the participant was engaged in the topic or theme
    • how many people asked at the front desk for game instructions?
    • how many “Want to Know More?” sheets were picked up from activity stations, in an exhibit, from the presenter or workshop instructor?
  • ask your front desk or interpretive staff/volunteers about audience feedback. They are the ones who answer the questions and engage visitors in conversation

Don’t

  • don’t rely on visitor comment books as evaluation tools.
  • don’t ask personal questions drawn from surveys used by marketers (age, education, salary)

Tips: success with schools

  • Review the school’s curriculum. Curriculum documents provide information about content and audience which is useful in program planning and evaluation. Teachers and principals will want to see how a museum’s program or exhibit is relevant to what students are learning at school.
  • Provide a summary or description of the program outcomes that the students will be demonstrating, doing and thinking. Standing at the back of the class and observing students is a rare and valuable opportunity for the teacher, so in helping the teacher measure success, a museum is also measuring the success of its program.
  • Identify two or three definite outcomes for students that rather than several that can’t be verified.

Note: recently, all Ontario elementary and secondary curricula have undergone major reviews and modifications. Increasingly, the curricula are placing greater emphasis on critical thinking, inquiry models and discipline-specific skills. These documents should be studied thoroughly. Consultation with teachers is a must.

Tips: evaluating success

To help determine the success of your school, education-focused or badge-related program:

  • ask participants about what they already know during the “warm up” or introduction of the program; then ask them to share with each other what they did and learned during the during the “cool down” or summary
  • provide the teacher/leader with an evaluation form at the end of the program that asks them to assess whether or not their students were provided with the opportunity to accomplish the promised outcomes, whether they were satisfied with the program and if they can recommend improvements

And finally, it is not enough to conduct program evaluation. An organization must learn from it. To this end, consider:

  • writing and circulating a report on what worked for a particular exhibit and/or during the year, what did not and what should be done differently next time. What modifications might be made to an exhibit to help it meet the intended outcomes?
  • meeting with all participants to capture their feedback and suggestions for improvement

Celebrate the successes and, even more importantly, learn from the less-than-successes and plan for success next time.

Recommended resources

  • Alberta Museums Association. Standard Practices Handbook for Museums, 3rd edition. 2014. Information on audience-focused planning, production and evaluation of museum exhibits, education programs, public events and activities. Program planning and evaluation p.p. 265-298 and exhibits 336-374.
  • Anderson, Gail, ed. Reinventing the Museum, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2012. A number of articles useful to this topic organized under headings such as: The Role of the Museum: The Challenge to Remain Relevant; The Role of the Public: The Need to Understand the Visitor’s Perspective; The Role of Public Service: The Evolution of Exhibits and Programs.
  • Canadian Museums Association, Ethics Guidelines (2006)
  • The Center for the Future of Museums (CFM) helps museums shape a better tomorrow by exploring cultural, political and economic challenges. CFM monitors cultural, technological, political and economic trends of importance to museums equips museums to help their communities address the challenges of coming decades builds connections between museums and other sectors.

CMOG standards resources

Education

  • Castle, M. Christine. What Difference Did It Make? Using Outcome-Based Planning & Evaluation.

Exhibitions

  • Castle, M. Christine. What Difference Did It Make? Using Outcome-Based Planning & Evaluation.
  • Moore Museum. Moore Museum Accessibility Plan.
  • Pankowski, Kathryn. Evaluation Techniques for Museums with Few Staff and No Money.
  • Freeman, Ruth and Paul Martinovich. The Evolution of an Exhibit Community Museums Travel Exhibits. Ontario Museum Association, 2001.
  • McCarthy, Bernice. 4MAT Learning Styles. Using just four learning styles makes this an easy to apply approach for planning a museum exhibit.
  • McLean, Kathleen. Planning for People in Museum Exhibitions. Washington, D.C. Association for Science and Technology Centres Inc., 1993.
  • McLean, Kathleen and Wendy Pollack, eds. Visitor Voices in Museum Exhibitions. Washington, D.C. Association for Science and Technology Centres Inc., 2007. Includes case studies, some from Ontario, and information about how to begin and benefit from visitor contributions and dialogue and concluding with “What Visitor Voices Can Teach Us”.
  • Museums Association. Museums Change Lives. July 2013. Examples of audience-focused objectives and linked evaluation from a variety of UK museums.
  • National Association for Museum Exhibition (NAME). The Exhibitionist. Spring 2005. For exhibits in small museums.
  • Serrell, Beverly. Framework Assessing Excellence in Exhibitions from a Visitor-experience Perspective. Left Coast Press, Inc. 2005. An easy to use tool for a regional museum network to learn how to plan an exhibit from the point of view of the visitor’s experience: comfortable, engaging, reinforcing and meaningful.
  • Simon, Nina. Museum 2.0. A blog that explores the ways that the philosophies of Web 2.0 can be applied in museums to make them more engaging, community-based, vital elements of society.
  • The Public Medievalist. Why you hate that museum and how to fix it. A short, informative blog post about why your exhibit might not be “successful” from a visitor’s perspective.
  • U.S.S. Constitution Museum. Family Learning Forum. Evaluation. This section has articles on The Power of Evaluation, Types of Evaluation and Evaluating Prototypes. Additional sections on Family Learning and Programming are worth exploring too. See Resources section for presentations, reading lists and sample forms.
  • Weaver, Stephanie. Creating Great Visitor Experiences A Guide for Museums, Parks, Gardens, and Libraries. Walnut Creek, California, Left Coast Press, Inc. 2007.

Footnotes