Whether you are a museum curator, managing director or operations manager you will have noticed that millennials and museums don’t seem to mix. Why is this?
The term millennials, according to the US Census, refers to anyone born between 1982 and 2000. A millennial might be a young person about to attend university, a young professional, or a parent of young children. Considering the range of different lifestyles amassed within the term ‘millennial’, why are millennials and museums not working together?
In her article “How to get Millennials into your Museum”, Amanda Smith argues that millennials live in a world consumed by technology and social media. When all the information anyone could ask for at the touch of a screen, millennials want something more from a museum than exhibition boards and static images. They also want their experience to be immersive and authentic. With such a tough bill to meet, millennials and museums just aren’t mixing
Jo Reid, managing director of Calvium, argues that, for millennials and museums to pair, museums should consider changing how their exhibitions are displayed. She talks of a need to move away from static galleries and permanent exhibitions to temporary experiences and travelling pop up pieces. She points to the success of National Trust’s Balfron Tower 1960s style iconic pop up exhibition and states that other museums need to follow suit.
How can a museum continue to fulfil its role as an educator while providing an interactive and authentic experience with an appeal for millennials and other generations alike?
Digital Signage
Pen and paper, print and boards are not a medium that millennials relate to. In a digital age you need to be using digital signage if you want your 18-to-30-something users to feel at ease. There are other benefits to this medium too. A wall of interactive tablets with all the information held within an exhibition will mean that a number of users can view information at the same time, and in a culture where people are not prepared to wait around, this medium works well.
Video Walls
As Amanda Smith stated, millennials now expect to be completed immersed in an experience, and this experience needs to be authentic. For most museums there is not a endless supply of funding to allow for a large-scale exhibition piece with all the installations needed to return users to a past event. An affordable and easily installed answer to this problem is a video wall. A video wall can bring a space to live without an extortionate cost.
Virtual Reality
If you want the millennials who enter your premises to become completely immersed in an experience and to relate to the medium used, you cannot go wrong with the use of virtual reality.
Completely surround your users to bring them back in time, or through space, and millennials will be beating down the doors of you museum to get in.
Cost effectiveness
The use of digital media is extremely cost effective. There is no need to source expensive items to create an authentic experience for your guests, digital imagery will do this for you at a fraction of the cost. You can change the imagery for different installations without having to pay for new equipment each time.
Pop-up events
If you decide your museum would benefit from some pop-up events, digital media solutions can provide you with a portable yet effective display which will captivate not only millennials but every generation who visits your project.
Lamasatech has experience in providing interactive displays for museums. Take Woodhurn Museum as an example. Three unique projections were used. One brought users back into the mineshaft through the use of videos walls. In the second Lamasatech filmed, directed and edited an interview with two ex-windermen to bring their stories back to life. With the third projection, archived video and audio were developed into a timeline, all of which was digitally enhanced as needed by the Lamasatech team.
If you want to put your museum on the to-do list of any millennial, speak to Lamasatech about your digital technology needs!
