Learning & development communication: Talk to the animals

Talking to the Animals is an innovative partnership aiming to develop museum displays that encourage under-fives and their families to communicate and to interact with the museum's artefacts.

Four establishments are involved: the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent, Peterborough Museum and Art Gallery, the New Art Gallery Walsall and Worcester Museum and Art Gallery. NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts), which funds the project, provides a project supervisor, Jo Graham.

The museums are supported by Stoke Speaks Out, a multi-agency project that looks at the issues underlying children's language difficulties.

Sure Start statistics show that one in ten children in the UK have significant difficulty with their speech and language. In Stoke-on-Trent this number is much higher, in some wards up to 84 per cent.

At the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery we identified a real need to develop displays that nurture and encourage communication.

Through the project we hope to give parents and carers the tools needed to communicate about the collections with under-fives. We hope to make our less confident visitors feel more comfortable in a museum environment and to make museums a more friendly and welcoming place for families with young children, especially those who may not usually visit.

In order to discover which objects and interpretation prompt communication, the first stage of the project was observational research by an independent freelance consultant, Dr Vicky Cave. This examined how pre-school children and their carers interacted with the collections. The report will inform the activities at all the museums to be put in place in 2008.

At the Potteries museum, the research for changes in interpretation has been further developed by consultation with existing Stoke Speaks Out groups, representing a wide variety of local families. We have carried out further observational research in the galleries. We discovered that masks were more effective than puppets at prompting families to talk; costumes were excellent for sustained communication; and books were effective in increasing both communication and 'dwell' time.

Further information

- The research will be disseminated more widely through a project publication which will be available from December 2008. A report of the findings from the family consultations is now available. To find out more about the project contact Amanda Heath, learning development officer at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery

- amanda.heath@swift.stoke.gov.uk

Encouraging communication

General

- Use things that families can relate to in their everyday lives

- Let children get close to exhibits, even if they are behind glass

- Give parents/carers a job to do

- Provide things to touch but make it very clear what can't be touched

Environmental

- Put well-lit seating in the centre of the activity directly next to the related display

- Orientation: make it clear where there are activities for young children, either by an icon or furnishings, or with a leaflet

- Site cases so children can see what is inside while seeing through to their parents on the other side

- Beware of making a space too physical. If you do, parents tend to sit back and let children play

- Don't make a space too noisy by using continuously loud activities or hard surfaces

- Don't let the space be a corridor

Activities

- Avoid activities where children will slip into pre-rehearsed roles

- Provide activities that are open-ended, without specific outcomes

- Stories work well with props

- Foster a sense of achievement

- Encourage visitors to make noises too, as the first step to talking

- Provide several family friendly-orientation boxes around the whole museum, rather than a family room, or carry activities around the museum.