Client: Leibniz Association
Preventive conservation playfully mediated How do you inspire children and young people to visit museums? With interactive and entertaining technical solutions that address the […]
Preventive conservation playfully mediated
How do you inspire children and young people to visit museums? With interactive and entertaining technical solutions that address the target group. Within the European Cultural Heritage Year 2018, IJsfontein developed a playful multi-touch-table application for the eight research museums of the Leibniz Association.
The project is intended to arouse the young target group’s interest in the scientific exhibits, create understanding for the special handling of collection objects and promote awareness of the relevance of conservation and preservation.
Low-threshold, entertaining introduction to a complex topic
Preventive conservation is a field of action for museums for the long-term preservation and care of art and cultural assets. By recognising and avoiding or reducing harmful influences, an optimal environment is created for the respective cultural object.
In order to master this task, knowledge of the materials and production techniques used, of the given environment and of the possibilities for improving the situation is required. By assuming the role of an expert for preventive conservation, players inevitably deal with the aforementioned content and get to know the necessary fields of preventive conservation in an abstract way.
The main challenges lay in the heterogeneity of the target group. After all, 8-25 year olds should be picked up and enthused at the same time. Furthermore it was necessary to find a low-threshold, entertaining introduction to the complex topic of the eight different museums.
The result was a collaborative game with a fun factor, in which the players alone and in a team slip into the role of “keepers”. The aim is to protect objects from the collections of the participating museums against harmful influences such as light, humidity, temperature fluctuations and insects.
“We played through all the objects – four of us with a very fit 16-year-old student trainee. The game is really fun and serves the intended target group, teenagers to young adults well.” (Employee Museum of Natural History Berlin)
Experience for yourself!
The game can now be played in the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt. The other research museums will follow: The German Mining Museum in Bochum, the German Museum in Munich, the German Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven, the German National Museum in Nuremberg, the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Mainz and the Zoologische Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig in Bonn.
