Transforming Museum Experiences; Changing Audience Perceptions

THE CLIENT

National Museum of Singapore

WHAT WE DID

Stakeholder consultation & engagement
Audience research & engagement
Storytelling & strategy
Experience & interpretive design
Implementation & date collection
Impact assessment

National Museum of Singapore Engagement Strategy

The National Museum of Singapore (NMS) is the nation’s oldest museum and a significant cultural and architectural landmark. As a custodian of Singapore’s historical artefacts, NMS is dedicated to preserving and sharing the stories of Singapore’s rich history and culture with both locals and visitors. NMS aims to foster a museum-going culture in Singapore and to be recognised as the nation’s leading arts and cultural institution for education, entertainment, and social engagement.

HOL partnered with NMS to develop and implement audience engagement strategies tailored for the general public, with a strong focus on families and school children. The objective was to transform NMS into a modern and dynamic venue of choice for both Singaporeans and tourists, aligning with NMS’s vision to become a cornerstone of national history and cultural heritage.

IMPACT

School children and family groups engaged

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Venue of choice

In Singapore

Setting the bar

For museum programmes in Singapore

Through a carefully crafted approach, HOL helped to enhance the visitor experience at NMS, particularly for younger audiences. The strategies implemented not only encouraged children to enjoy their time at the museum but also nurtured a future generation of museum-goers who would continue to engage with the arts and culture scene as adults. Feedback from educators highlighted that the workshops and learning journeys seamlessly complemented classroom lessons, adding immense value to the overall educational experience.

Within a year of launching the first programme, schools were booking these learning journeys a year in advance, with near-full calendars by the beginning of each academic year. Over a ten-year period, our programmes reached over 150,000 school children and 200,000 family groups. The family programmes, designed to be interactive and engaging, became a popular choice for weekend and school holiday outings, helping to position NMS as a preferred destination for both educational and recreational visits. The sustained success of these programmes, many of which were fully subscribed with waiting lists, solidified NMS as a go-to venue for family and schools. The positive outcomes also sparked interest from other museums in Singapore, leading to the replication of HOL’s engagement style across other institutions under the National Heritage Board and the Museum Roundtable.

SUMMARY

Move hearts, change minds

One year after we launched our first programme, schools began to book these learning journeys a year in advance. By January or February, the calendar would would be heavily populated.

ABOUT THE CLIENT

National Museum of Singapore

The National Museum of Singapore (NMS) is Singapore’s oldest museum as well as a cultural and architectural landmark. In addition to being a custodian of important historical artefacts, it is also dedicated to telling stories from Singapore’s history and culture.

Challenge

A need to reverse trends

In the past, going to museums in Singapore was not as popular as it is now. Average Singaporeans generally found museums boring and didactic, and they considered the content too highbrow for their liking. Parents with young children were not motivated to bring them to museums for family outings. Most children had their first museum encounter through school excursions. However, some schools were reluctant to include museums as part of their students’ learning journeys. These challenges made it difficult for museums to be seen as the venue of choice. NMS saw a need to reverse these trends and redouble efforts to nurture future generations of museum goers.

Research

Audience insights and engagement strategies

As part of our research, we spoke to two main groups of decision makers. The first group were teachers – we wanted to know what would motivate them to include museums as part of their students’ learning journeys. The second group were parents – we wanted to find out why they were not motivated to bring their children to museums.

Our insights about museums:
Potential for rich storytelling

We know that museums are ideal venues for learning journeys because they offer ample opportunities for the exploration of authentic materials i.e. artefacts. They also have resource experts and curators with deep subject expertise and real-life experience in atmospheric contexts (galleries).

Audience research and insights:
What do the teachers think?

Teachers generally preferred programmes that complemented classroom learning and reinforced topics in the syllabus. When selecting learning journeys, they looked for programmes that would give the students opportunities for experiential exploration.

Schools typically booked learning journeys once or twice in an academic year – just before the end of the school year, or after the mid-year exams. The subject heads would make recommendations to Heads of Departments (HODs) about which learning journeys to book.

Audience research and insights:
What do the parents need?

Most parents were not museum-goers, so they avoided going there for family outings. Moreover, families with young children typically have unpredictable schedules, so they had trouble joining fixed-time, docent-led tours at the museum.

Parents who did bring their children to museums found it challenging to help their children engage with the museum content. This made museum visits less exciting and meaningful for both children and adults, so parents were unwilling to make repeat visits.

It was hard to get young children to understand museum etiquette. Parents had to struggle to get their young children to comply with rules such as keeping voices low, avoid running, or touching exhibits. Some parents could have felt frustrated or embarrassed by their children’s behaviour.

Solution

A sustainable visitor engagement strategy

Starting with the schools

Reaching our target audience: Getting the timing right

A new way to engage

Experiential storytelling

User-directed programme: Fun and flexible for the family

image of Angeline hosting a programme in National Museum of Singapore.

Didactic and passive audience engagement in Singapore museums used to be the norm. In 2005, Angeline Tong had just returned to Singapore after graduating from Harvard University with a Master of Education in Human Development and Psychology. That year, she founded HOL to drive a new kind of audience engagement for Singapore museums.

With her insights into audience psychology, Angeline developed an audience engagement style that was fun, educational, and experiential. Over some 10 years, HOL’s audience engagement brought at least 150,000 students and 200,000 family groups to the National Museum of Singapore.

Through careful research and evaluation, we determined that our initiatives should first target the school ecosystem, starting with the teachers and the school children. If we succeeded in making their time at NMS fun and enjoyable, children would be more likely to ask their parents to bring them there on family outings. This was also in line with the resource capabilities of NMS, who wanted to manage their limited resources by focusing on one target audience at a time. As a group, the schools were more homogenous, in the sense that they had many similar requirements. With this in mind, we started looking into how the programmes could meet the needs of schools, so that we could help them enjoy their museum visits.

Understanding who the decision-makers were at the schools and communicating with them at the right time was crucial to getting sign-ups for the museum programmes. We engaged the subject heads first because they were in charge of making recommendations to their HODs, who were key decision makers in booking the students’ learning journeys. We also ensured that marketing materials were sent to key stakeholders at the right times, so that we could catch the decision makers at the right time during the school calendar year. For example, the marketing materials should reach the subject heads when they were sourcing for suitable programmes for students’ learning journeys.

NMS had a broad range of audience groups in mind: preschoolers, primary and secondary school students, and families. To cater to the needs of each group, we filled the NMS’s engagement calendar with a variety of activations for different times of the year. During the school term, we focused on topics in the school syllabus for programmes. Then, at the exam periods, we organised programmes for preschoolers. And, during the weekends and school holidays, we planned programmes for families.

image of interactive workshop based on the ancient stories in Journey to the West and Ramayana

To change long-held misconceptions about museum content, we needed a new style of audience engagement that would be fun, experiential, and educational all at once. Our first programme was ‘Out of the Box’, an interactive workshop based on the ancient stories in Journey to the West and Ramayana.

image of the programme and student performances.

The programme featured storytelling, exploration of objects, lively discussions and student-led performances. Students applied what they experienced and put up a puppet show. This primed their interest before they entered the NMS puppetry gallery and helped them engage with the exhibits in more meaningful ways.

Following the success of the initial programme, we developed additional programmes that were experiential in nature to target different age groups and cohorts – including upper primary and secondary school students. We focused our strategy on encouraging exploration, creation, and reflection. At the same time, the students were able to pick up soft skills such as teamwork, communication, as well as speaking and presentation.

For families with young children, especially if they were new to museum visits, we created programmes where they could drop in anytime for a museum experience. This gave parents and children an initial taste of the fun they could enjoy as a family with the flexibility they needed. A positive first impression meant that they would be willing to make repeat visits and consider museums for family outings.

We also created a family adventure kit and treasure hunts that families could utilised for self-directed exploration. Parents could use the information provided to engage their children. Such materials proved to be popular with parents, as they were empowered with knowledge to help their children make sense of the content in the galleries. It was no longer intimidating for parents; these activities also promoted family bonding and made family outings at the museum enjoyable.

We have received very positive feedback from students and teachers on their experiences. We hope that together with HOL, we can continue to make the museum a choice venue for learning.