Modified: 2015-01-15 21:15:32
Three words sit at the heart of all the best interpretation: RELATE – PROVOKE – REVEAL.
Thus, interpretation that people cannot relate to will be sterile; the ambition is to provoke thought, not dictate; as a result of such provocation, meanings will be revealed.
Information is not interpretation (although all good interpretation is supported by well-researched content). Nor is interpretation a one-way process of communication. At its best, it is a three-way conversation between the museum/ site and its visitors and amongst visitors themselves. This is most effectively achieved through a series of primary, practical approaches, including:
• Make use of visitors’ knowledge and interests
• People understand best through doing
• Use questions
• Vary your content through structure
• Plan and evaluate
The paper will take these basics and apply them to help develop the 21st century audience experience in museums. Personalisation, participation, the stimulation and integration of user generated content and, particularly, the triggering of the age-old technology of conversation will all be considered.
The paper will conclude with a discussion of what this all means for digital media strategies. Is a combination of new media and long-established interpretive principles the best way to develop a profoundly different, much more participatory visitor experience – one that involves creating new and more meaningful opportunities for engagement?
Graham Black
Graham Black is Professor of Museum Management and Interpretation at Nottingham Trent University. He describes himself as both an academic and a practitioner and believes this crossover enriches his work in both fields. He has worked in and with museums for over thirty years. In that time exhibitions on which he has been interpretation consultant have won every UK museum award, including the prestigious £100,000 Art Prize twice. His debut book, The Engaging Museum (2005), is now in its eleventh reprint in English. His follow-up, Transforming Museums in the 21st Century (2012), is also a ‘best seller’.
Graham is committed to both transforming the museum experience for traditional audiences and reaching out to new audiences. Of the latter, he says “As a teenager growing up on the Shankhill Road in Belfast, the Ulster Museum changed my life. I want to give the same opportunity to others”.
