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Making visitors curious

The more curious we are about a topic, the easier it is for us to learn new information about that topic. But it turns out that once our curiosity is piqued by topic A, we will also retain information about topic B more easily. This should motivate us to make our exhibitions and exhibits as curiosity-inducing as possible.

And how do we do that? Literature can provide us with some tips. Ask a question. Start with surprising but incomplete information. Give different materials to different visitors so that they only get the entire picture by collaborating. Introduce a conceptual conflict that visitors have to resolve. Etc.

But what does that mean in practice?

Exhibition makers with backgrounds in teaching and learning, designing, and writing will give short introductions into what makes them curious and how they make their visitors curious. The session will continue with a collective discussion involving all participants – what are your experiences? What has worked, what has not?

Facilitator

Photo of Gérard Cobut
Gérard Cobut
Executive & Education Officer
Fondation Entreprise / Institut FUP
Brussels
Belgium

Session speakers

Ian Russell
Ian Russell
Director
Ian Russell Interactives
High Peak, Derbyshire
United Kingdom
Twitter
This is the Information Age. Our obsession with information has blinded us to a potential imbalance in the way we communicate science. When we only evaluate our exhibits against measurable gains in cognitive learning, where is the recognition for other exhibits that win hearts and minds for science? Illustrating his arguments with many examples, Ian Russell will show how ‘information overload’ can crush curiosity and how ‘mystery’ can promote it.
Henrik Sell
Former Deputy Director
Natural History Museum, Aarhus
Aarhus
Denmark
Very few of a museum's visitors come to learn something about a specific theme. They will primarily visit a museum to get an experience often in the company of family or good friends. A museum visit is a social experience. Therefore, the exhibits are made for conversation, wonder and debate. Exhibitions shall provide an overview of a topic and give the guests inspiration and curiosity to go out into nature and experience more or go home and read more about the issue in books or on the web.
Ana Alexandra Valente Rodrigues
Assistant Professor
Fábrica Science Centre
Aveiro
Portugal
Twitter
The CIEC – Science Education Integrated Centre is creating an area of science with modules/activities aimed at understanding global scientific concepts and phenomena, but from the visitors’ reality and local context. The CIEC gives (local) visitors the opportunity to explore scientific concepts and phenomena contextualized in their own environment, thus also raising their global curiosity.
Anna Schaefers
Curator Text and Language
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz
Berlin
Germany
Twitter
A curious visitor is a happy visitor is a visitor we can win for the sciences and scientific thinking. So how do we create an atmosphere that fosters curiosity in our exhibitions? Through amazing images, exhibit design, or challenging interaction with those exhibits? Anna will bring samples from the new „Look, that’s the Earth“ exhibition at the Copernicus Science Centre planetarium.
Yuri Matteman
Head of Education
Leiden
Netherlands
Twitter
“We will discover biodiversity together” – this is Naturalis’ educational motto. There is always more to be enthusiastic about, more to learn and more to investigate. Curiosity is at the basis of this. In our educational activities we use curiosity to get people from ‘wanting to know’ to ‘wanting to understand’. In the session we will show how we do this with our dinosaur activities for families and students, in close collaboration with the most curious people we know, the scientists.
Orna Cohen
Co-Founder
Dialogue Social Enterprise GmbH
Hamburg
Germany
Visions on curiosity, at the border of psychology and exhibition development