All play!

Oh happy day! What I learned from Fish! and Fish Tales! about being playful and lighthearted is dovetailing nicely with some of the (fun!) reading I've been doing about voice, text and learning. It would seem that having fun has a couple of benefits. We learn more! We remember more! We want to repeat fun experiences! A story about this:

I recently visited another museum with my family. Having just read about characteristics of family museum learning, I gave myself permission to let go of the museum professional role (in other words, I opted NOT to constantly critique my experience), and just enjoy. I was there, after all, to spend time with my family, have a positive experience with my family, and possibly learn something. In that order of importance. I laughed my whole way through our couple of hours there. I laughed because we were so absolutely like the family groups I had been reading about, and I laughed because we were playing and being silly together. A couple of lessons:

1. Visiting an exhibition with a 7 year old is like being in a closed room with a super bouncy super ball. Or in a garden with a bumble-bee. "Mommy, what's that?" "Well, dear, that's a..." "OH LOOK AT THAT!!!" And off she runs...
2. Scanning is the only way to read text. Scanning is hard when the text is dense and complicated.
3. Having a good time, and retaining positive feelings about the experience is more important than retaining the exhibition's content. Because now, we want to go back, and I will tell other people we had a good time.

What I think this means for Peace is that I now have some literature and personal experience to back up that point in our work manifesto about wanting to create a positive - and dare I say - even fun experience for our visitors. And that is no laughing matter!

My fun reading list:
Playing with the Past, by Jon-Paul C. Dyson, in Connecting Kids to History with Museum Exhibitions, D. Lynn McRainey and John Russick, Eds, (Left Coast Press, 2010)

A Lighter Approach to Warning Labels: Creating Cooperation through Humor, by Florence Bramley, (1994) originally in Visitor Studies, 6(1), 60-6, available:
http://historicalvoices.org/pbuilder/pbfiles/Project38/Scheme325/VSA-a0a4n7-a_5730.pdf

Laugh a Little, Learn a Lot: Making Your Message Stick, by Florence Bramley (1993) Visitor_Studies, 5(1), 99-104, available:
http://historicalvoices.org/pbuilder/pbfiles/Project38/Scheme325/VSA-a0a4t9-a_5730.pdf

Hilke, D. D. (1989). Strategies For Family Learning In Museums. Visitor_Studies, 1(1), 120-134
http://historicalvoices.org/pbuilder/pbfiles/Project38/Scheme325/VSA-a0a1o2-a_5730.pdf