Vibrancy, repetition and movement: posthuman theories for reconceptualising young children in museums (original) (raw)
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In this article, I would like to focus on the tasks of contemporary museums and centres that address their exhibitions to children aged 3-12. It is interesting that over the last two or three decades many museums have fundamentally changed their strategy for disseminating knowledge about different cultural phenomena and science in order to attract young children. Generally, museum exhibitions use different ways of attracting children's attention, but, most frequently, the museum staff create interactive areas that make it possible to strongly focus the attention of young visitors. This educational strategy is partly a consequence of new findings from research into psychology, and it is partly associated with the Froebel tradition (the idea of education through activities), which was disseminated in European countries at the turn of the twentieth century. Moreover, because of software applications and devices equipped with artificial intelligence, interactive areas in museums have become visually more attractive. We would like to present this process of changing the educational strategy of contemporary museums by providing two interesting examples-the Centre for Modernity-Mill of Knowledge and the Museum of Toruń Gingerbread-which were recently established in Toruń. The former makes it possible for children to better understand than they would in a regular kindergarten or school the crucial phenomena studied by researchers in such fields as anatomy, biology, physics, and geology; while the latter involves young audiences in unravelling the "mysteries" of the process of making gingerbread in the past.
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People always felt the need to remember and memorialize their past, and especially the happy moments they shared with a loved one. The best way to succeed such a thing is through the objects that are related to that person or circumstance. By keeping them and being attached to them, the connection to a past experience stays alive. In this way, the object, which is impregnated with emotions, activates the memory and makes it possible to recall vividly that special moment. But since it cannot be relived, the only way to be kept alive is through the objects, creating basically an illusion. This need to preserve or acquire certain things, suggests a potential collection, or maybe an organized obsession (Aristides 1988: 330), which is created to be seen exclusively by its owner and no one else. So, what happens in case that a collection of private belongings becomes a display for a large audience?
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