National Museum of Singapore engagement strategy

National Museum of Singapore

National Museum of Singapore engagement strategy

Changing the public’s minds about museums with a new kind of audience engagement

The National Museum of Singapore (NMS) is the nation’s oldest museum and a cultural and architectural landmark. It is dedicated to telling stories from Singapore’s history. HOL collaborated with NMS to develop audience engagement strategies and fun and experiential experiences that engaged the public, including families and school children.

What we did

Stakeholder research
Experience strategy
Engagement strategy
Content strategy
Interpretive strategy
Activation strategy
Implementation
Project management
Engagement data collection
Lead generation

Challenges

Audience engagement in Singapore museums in the mid-2000s was often didactic and passive. Many Singaporeans thought museum visits were boring and unstimulating. Schools were reluctant to choose museums for their students’ learning journeys. The NSM needed to nip the problem in the bud and redouble its efforts to cultivate new generations of museum-goers.

Insights and strategy

For our user research, we spoke with:

teachers, to identify what would attract them to book learning journeys at the museum
parents, to find out why they were not taking their young children to the museum

Here’s what we found out:

When booking learning journeys for the school term, teachers would look for programmes that could reinforce topics in the syllabus and complement classroom learning. Among other criteria, they looked out for experiential exploration. Museums, offering opportunities for exploration with authentic materials (artefacts) and in-depth expertise (curators) or real-life experiences (personal accounts) in atmospheric contexts (galleries), were in fact ideal choices for learning journeys.
Schools typically booked learning journeys either once at the end of the school year or twice a year after the exams. Subject heads were usually the ones who would make recommendations to their Heads of Departments (HODs) on which learning journeys to book.
As for parents with young children, most adults in Singapore were not regular museum-goers themselves. That was why they were unlikely to take their children to museums for their family activities.
Families with young children found it hard to visit the museum on fixed-time docent-led tours, given their unpredictable schedules. At the same time, they found it challenging to engage their children in appreciating the museum content on their own. Hence, they did not find their visits exciting or meaningful and were unwilling to make repeat visits.
For active young children, following museum etiquette, such as keeping their voices low, not touching exhibits and not running about, was difficult. Parents, on the other hand, might be embarrassed by their children’s behaviour or would find it tiresome to have to continually remind their children.

Solutions

People were not going to form a museum-going habit overnight. We would need a long-term and sustainable approach to cultivate a new generation of museum-goers. That was why we started with schools. If we were to help students enjoy their time at the NSM, they would ask their parents to bring them there more often. At the same time, we would also need to help families enjoy their museum visits.

Targeting the right contacts at the right time was crucial to getting sign-ups. We engaged the subject heads – the ones who would recommend learning journeys to the HODs who made the decisions – to promote the programmes. We also ensured that marketing materials were sent to them at appropriate times to ensure higher sign-ups.

The NSM had a broad range of audiences: kindergarteners, primary and secondary school students, and families. To cater to the different needs of its various audiences, we took a page from the hospitality industry’s book and filled the NSM’s calendar with a variety of activations for different times of the year. For example, we focused on topics in the syllabus for programmes during the school term. During the exam period, we organised preschool programmes. As for the school holidays, we planned programmes for families.

To change long-held misconceptions about museums, 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 Journey to the West and Ramayana. The programme featured storytelling, handling objects and lively discussions. The students would also apply what they had experienced and put up a puppet show with puppets and backdrops made by themselves. Only then with their interest piqued, they would move on to enjoy the NSM’s puppetry gallery more meaningfully.

For families with young children, especially if they were new to museum visits, we created a 3-hour programme where they could drop in and experience the NSM. This initiation gave parents and children a taste of the fun they could enjoy as a family. Through this, they would find that museum visits were not intimidating at all and be willing to return again for family outings.

We created a family adventure kit, which families could rent and use to follow an hour-long self-directed programme. Parents could use the information provided in the kit to engage their children easily. This flexible activity proved to be popular with parents, as they were empowered with knowledge to help their children make sense of the content in the galleries and enjoy it more.

Impact

Most obviously, the children had a fantastic time at the NSM! The teachers also gave feedback that the workshops complemented their classroom lessons. Before, learning journeys to museums were unpopular. 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 already be full.

These audience experiences changed the public’s minds about museum visits and enabled the NSM to become a venue of choice for schools and young families. Our activations reached at least 150,000 school children and 200,000 family groups over 10 years. Some programmes were in place for at least 5 years, with many having a waiting list. This style of engagement was also subsequently replicated in other museums under the National Heritage Board and the Museum Round Table.

“HOL focuses on delivering quality workshops and learning experiences for students. Angeline is familiar with museum education, and their workshops use a participative and experiential approach to get students to learn about Singapore’s history. HOL’s facilitators take a lot of pride in providing the best learning experiences possible every time, and we have received very positive feedback from students and teachers on their workshop experiences. We are very happy to have HOL as one of our vendors to deliver quality educational programmes at the National Museum of Singapore, and we hope that together with them, we can continue to make the museum a choice venue for learning.”

Mr Iskander Mydin
Deputy Director
National Museum of Singapore