Visitor Stories as the Link to Other Cultures
Here we come to the topic that launched me into this fascinating career: uses of technology that encourage compassionate awareness of other cultures. It’s the bridge that carried me from Harvard Ed School to Boston Children’s Museum, through the Teen Tokyo and Kids’ Bridge exhibits.experience is an essential part of the exhibit. This experience, and the stories that come out of it, I think are the link sought after in so many children’s museum cultural exhibits.
For the “Take Me There: Egypt” exhibit at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, we ask visitors to choose a photo from the exhibit and talk about it, emailing their story home or to a friend. And for “Song of Korea” at the Austin Children’s Museum, we invited families to sing a song in their native language. One of my all time favorite visitor-recordings was in Playspace at Boston Children’s Museum: a mother and pre-school daughter from Taiwan sang a traditional tune together, the daughter spontaneous and free spirited as the mother sang in the background scaffolding her daughter’s exploration. Translates well no matter what language you speak…
