Educational Concepts in Germany

The administrative department of Stuttgart’s Landesmuseum has vacated its offices – voluntarily – because a museum within the museum is scheduled to open on the third floor in the autumn of 2010: the “Young Castle”, specially designed for children. In our interview, Tanja Karrer, museum education officer at the Landesmuseum in Stuttgart, talks about experiences that stimulate all the senses, about an owl and a ghost as a guide – and about a museum advisory council whose members are no older than twelve.

Ms Karrer, in most exhibitions visitors are allowed to view the exhibits. Any attempt to touch them, however, immediately sets off an ear-splitting alarm. Will things be different in the “Young Castle”?

In our museum the exhibits will certainly not be out of reach in display cases. The most important thing of all when teaching children about culture is to give them sensory access to the objects. In this context, touch plays a particularly prominent role. Hands-on stations are a great way to stimulate all the senses, and may work with smells or use replicas which the children can touch and try out (as, for instance, this is done at the Children's Museum of the German Museum of Hygiene).

Can you give an concrete example?

A real cave – fitted out with furs, cave paintings and hand axes – could be used to bring the stone age to life. The visitors could pick up these objects and, for instance, find out for themselves what it is like to cut leather using a flint stone. The idea is to give our younger visitors a sense of the object and what it is used for.

Guided through the museum by ghost and owl

The “Young Castle” is geared to children aged four to twelve years old. How do you make sure that the younger kids aren’t overtaxed and the older ones don’t get bored?

That is quite a challenge, as four and twelve year olds are, of course, worlds apart. This is why the exhibition will teach at different levels. The younger children need to be stimulated much more by visual means, while the older ones can already read, so texts can also be used to encourage them to discover and try things out. For children who cannot yet read, two mascots will provide help and orientation – an old castle ghost and a small, inquisitive owl will explain the exhibition to them using comics and audio stations.

Learning that has little in common with school

How is learning in the museum different from learning at school?

Just like schools, we have an educational mandate to fulfil. Our approach to learning, however, is quite different. In the museum we have the original objects at our disposal and can really bring history to life, while schools can offer only pictures in text books. We are not teachers, the worst of whom simply hold forth in monologue style and hand out grades. We impart knowledge in a way that is primarily supposed to be fun, voluntary and all about experiencing things at first hand.

We attempt to enter into a dialogue with the children about history and culture, to pick them up in the world they actually live in, and to experience and work on the topic in hand together with them. This is also why we will work together with an advisory council made up of children. After all, when we as adults come up with ideas on our own, we may find that our ideas do not appeal to children.

Children make exhibitions for children

Who sits on the children’s advisory council?

The children’s advisory council is made up of around 15 children aged eight and above, and meets every two months. To recruit children to the advisory council, we present our concept to schools in Stuttgart who then suggest pupils to us who might be interested in joining the council. We would also like to train up some of the children to be young museum experts. Later they may themselves want to offer their peers guided tours of the children’s museum.

Children are the target group of today

For quite some time now, there has been amazingly high demand for child-friendly museums. Why do you think that children are increasingly visiting museums?

It is not only demand that has increased, but also what is on offer. A major transformation is taking place in the museum world: children are no longer being seen as the visitors of tomorrow, but are being taken seriously as the target group of today. Some children have always visited museums; in some cases this has to do with their family and social backgrounds.

Last year, however, our pirate exhibition – a special exhibition designed specifically for children – succeeded in attracting an extremely large number of children who had never been to any museum before, let alone to ours, though I can’t really say why this should have been the case.

Which part of your work for the “Young Castle” are you looking forward to in particular?

I’m most looking forward to working with the target group itself, with the children; to discussing with them how to create an exhibition, and to learning from the children. The days when I sat alone at my desk and thought in theory about the educational levels and contents of an exhibition are well and truly in the past.