aMUSEment

One such is the fragile connection between the museums and their audiences, with a decreasing ability to attract specific demographic groups. As recent studies have shown, professionals across the museum sector identified young adults (aged between 18 and 29) as the demographic group least likely to attend regularly museum programs in Central-Eastern Europe [Cultural statistics, Eurostat, 2019.].

This can be explained partly by the lack of practices of audience involvement, and creative practices such as gamification, which has been proven to increase the attractiveness of museums for younger generations. These practices can further ensure the flexible and swift response of museums for adapting their collections’ presentation, accessibility and relevance to not just different demographic groups,
but can further help them to create sustainable practices, adaptable to new emerging social and economic needs of audiences, as well as unforeseen crises such as a pandemic.

In this context the upskilling of museum professionals in the practices of gamification, as well as in including their target groups already in the process of designing their programs becomes crucial. Through these practices, museum can not only attract more visitors and make their programs more diverse, but they can further ensure that their programs are attuned to the specific needs of their audiences, ensuring their participation on multiple levels, from designing the programs itself, to a more participation-focused visitor experience.

Yet in order for techniques such as gamification to make lasting impact, they need to collide with strong educational agendas, ensuring gamification to be an enhancement for promoting a deeper knowledge, rather than just luring visitors into museums. As such, instead of viewing these techniques as mere marketing opportunities, we strongly believe that they rather have to become integral assets of museum education and programs in general, through the upskilling of museum professionals themselves.