Hands On! The International Association of Children in Museums brings together museum practitioners working with children in children’s museums and classic cultural institutions. The mission of the association is to professionalize the museum offer for children, and to share good practices and experiences. The organization supports cultural institutions as places important and attractive to children from various social groups and taking into account their specific needs.
How was Hands On! started, what exactly does it do and what does Miffy bunny have to do with all of this? Read on!
How did it start?
Hands On! started its activity in 1994. Initially, it was an informal network consisting of directors of several museums. They tried to develop and promote the concept of a museum for children. This network was formalized in 1996 at a conference in the Netherlands. In March 1998, the European association Hands On! Europe Association of Children Museum. The founders of HO! Europe were representatives of museums: Museu das Criancas (Lisbon), Hotel ‘Het Reispaleis’-Wereldmuseum (Rotterdam), Musee des Enfants (Brussels), Zoom Kindermuseum (Vienna) and Het Kindermuseum (now known as Tropenmuseum Junior, Amsterdam). From the very beginning, the mission of this organization was to define the needs of the youngest recipients of culture. Efforts were also made to designate the role of children’s museums as important centers of education and development.
From the beginning of the 1990s, more and more museums for children began to appear in Europe. It also influenced the development and change of mindset in many traditional museums. Children began to be perceived as equal recipients of museum activities. There are many high-quality educational programs for children in traditional museums. Some of them have opened special wards for children. In connection with this process, Hands On! decided to open up to all worthwhile programs for children. Not only in children’s museums, but also in other traditional museum institutions. The organization has updated its profile and name to Hands On! International Association of Children in Museum and has been operating as such since 2014.
Hands On! mission and vision
Hands On! supports the role of the museum as a place that stimulates children’s curiosity and imagination, and where free play fosters creativity and gaining new skills and knowledge. The association is involved in activities aimed at the professionalization of all museums that are open to children. It does so not only in the design of exhibitions and the creation of educational programs, but also in areas such as financial and personnel management. Hands On! acts as a global leader, spokesman and knowledge base for organizations and institutions that deal with the cultural education of children and their families.
The aim of the association is to raise awareness of the presence of children in museums, to speak out loud about how important and valuable it is to participate in culture from an early age and to improve the ‘visibility’ of museums for children and traditional museums with an offer suitable for families. Hands On! supports the sustainable development of its members – museums and cultural institutions around the world – by, inter alia, collecting statistical data on children in museums to track existing and emerging trends, and by creating a knowledge base and tools to support the work of museums in this area.
Children in Museums Award
Children in Museums Award is a joint project of Hands On! Association of Children in Museum and the European Museum Academy. The prize is awarded once a year to the most interesting facility, exhibition or museum initiative aimed at children under 14.
The jury appreciates the artistic level of museum undertakings, their creativity and innovation. It also takes into account how a given exhibition or educational program can change the way people think about the museum as such. The value is going off the beaten track and thinking outside the box. What is also important is the impact of a given project on small recipients and how a given activity fits into the context and issues of the place where it is carried out.
The winner receives a cash prize of EUR 5,000 and a Miffy statuette – the hero of the iconic children’s books by Dick Bruno. Miffy is a passing award and goes to a different location every year. Thanks to this, he wanders around the best museums for children from all over the world. Last year, he witnessed children’s games and activities at the Keppel Center for Art Education in Singapore – winner of the 2018 award. The award for 2019 went to Kër ImagiNation from Dakar. It is a center of creative education for children, the first of its kind in Senegal and the whole of West Africa.
This year’s nominees also include the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews – for activities aimed at families with children. The excellent exhibition “In King Matt’s Poland” (about which we wrote on our blog – http://bit.ly/2pcooVN) was also appreciated.
Conference “All Inclusive!”
Hands On! it also develops other important initiatives, the most important of which is the organization of international conferences. They are a space for the exchange of knowledge and experience for museum practitioners from around the world. This year’s conference was hosted by the Junges Museum Frankfurt. The meeting was held under the slogan “All Inclusive! Museums as places for ALL children ”.
We had the great pleasure to participate in this conference. We discussed, among other things, how to meet the specific needs of various groups of children’s recipients. These are groups of different ages, representing various social strata or national minorities, as well as children with specific needs. We also considered how children’s museums can use their collections to impart knowledge about cultural heritage.
An important topic of this year’s conference was also innovative educational tools and formats. They are an opportunity to develop the museum’s offer, but at the same time constitute a challenge for many traditional institutions. The conference was accompanied by workshops and study visits to Frankfurt museums.
Over a hundred representatives of cultural institutions participated in the conference. They were employees of children’s museums, traditional museums, science centers, as well as non-governmental organizations from all over the world. Polish museums also had a significant representation and could share their experiences and boast about their own achievements in the field of family education and the organization of exhibitions for children. It must be admitted that our domestic institutions keep pace with Western trends and in many respects are not inferior to foreign institutions at all.
We will regularly tell you about what we discussed at the conference and what conclusions it led to in a series of articles. Preview soon on our channels. We will also describe the most interesting museum initiatives for children, about which we had the opportunity to hear at the Hands On! Conference.
More about Hands On! You will find it on the association’s website.
The participation of a representative of the “Rodzic w Miasto” Foundation in the conference was possible thanks to financial support from the National Institute of Freedom – Center for Civil Society Development (PROO 5.1a).
