Case Study – UCL Museums Student Engagers
“Exactly the sort of thing university museums should be doing” (visitor comment)
UCL Museums Student Engagers are a group of PhD Research
students working in the three public museums at UCL to talk to
visitors about their research and make links with this and objects in
the museums. This experimental project is an example of public
engagement within the university that enhances the experience of
visitors to the museums and the UCL student experience.
The aims of the project are
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to raise awareness that the museums are part of University College London
to engage the public with current research, which demonstrates the relevance of
museums
to increase the skills of university students to engage with the public, providing
research students with an experimental space for public engagement
Overview
Student Engagers stand in the museum spaces and approach visitors, introducing
themselves and their work. They invite visitors into conversation about their research and
answer questions as they arise.
Some Engagers use objects in the museum collections or other props such as sound
recordings or images related to their research.
The majority of visitors that the Engagers speak to are under 35 years old. Many of these are
tourists. Out of the UCL students that they engage there are more undergraduate than
postgraduate students.
Topics of conversation vary widely within the overall subjects, every conversation is
different depending on the visitor’s interests.
Background
The project was developed and set-up with funding from UCL’s Public Engagement Unit
although it is managed by UCL Museums. Work began in February 2012 with 8 research
students. Further recruitment took place in January 2013, there are currently 9 Student
Engagers.
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As well as working in the Museums, the students developed a website and maintain a blog
there and a Twitter feed. The website and blog posts interpret individual museum items
from the perspective of one or more of the research projects, and are a resource that
Engagers can refer to when talking to visitors if they want more information.
Outcomes
Evaluation has been done using an online survey completed by Student Engagers following
visitor interactions. In the 6 month period May-October 2013 details of 779 conversations
were recorded involving 1410 visitors.
The average length of interactions is 12 minutes, showing that visitors want to have a
detailed conversation. The longest conversation was 2 hours long. Two thirds of all
engagements centre around the student engager’s own research, demonstrating that the
engagers don’t just provide visitor services information but actually discuss UCL research
and how it relates to the collections.
As a result of working with UCL Museums, the Student Engagers curated an exhibition,
Foreign Bodies, drawing on their research and objects from the collections.
They ran an over-subscribed public event, Landscape, in the Museums, and they contribute
to UCL Museums events, such as the popular Treasure Hunt.
The students have all developed skills through this work, such as how to engage with a wide
range of different people, how to plan and organise events, how to work with objects.
Their regular interactions with the public enhance their research, partly through making
them think more broadly about it, as reported in the evaluation e.g. “This conversation
influenced my research by suggesting new analyses of vocalisations”, “Got some interesting
views on Greek culture/history/historians from an Egyptologist’s perspective.”
Students feel that they benefit from thinking in a more interdisciplinary way as a result of
working with other research students from different faculties.
Visitors gain insight into the collections, into the work of a university and the students’
research topics. As reported in the evaluation, conversations are often in-depth and long,
fulfilling interests the public have and they enjoy being part of the conversations, e.g. “chat
about Aristotle as a zoologist”, “visitor interested to learn more about mental health”,
“talked about media representation and stigma”, “chatted a lot about Ancient Greek and
Chinese history”.
Visitors often mention that they did not realise these are university museums, so the work
fulfils the aim to raise awareness of this.
The Museums benefit from visitors having positive experiences that often lead to repeat
visits. They gain insight into their audiences through data collected by Engagers on the
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backgrounds and interests of visitors, and from student feedback about working with the
collections e.g. how interesting visitors find temporary exhibitions.
New Activity
The Foreign Bodies exhibition was a big project for the Student Engagers and they learnt a
lot about the way museums work as well as how to structure a narrative for a display using
objects and text, and how to translate their own research into a visual display.
The Student Engagers developed a successful model for events in Landscape that will be
used in future. Students have developed individual talks/events by pursuing their own
interests with particular collections and are marketing these in connection with the
Museums.
Successes
This scheme maximises our offer by making great use of exisitng elements
ACHIEVEMENTS IN 1 YEAR
13 research students have participated and benefited from the project so far
NUMBER OF SESSIONS / SESSION HOURS: we don’t have this?
1600+ VISITORS ENGAGED
1100+ CONVERSATIONS
46 ORIGINAL BLOG POSTS
BLOG ANALYTICS: HOW MANY PEOPLE, RETURNING VISITORS, WHERE ARE THEY
FROM
I need more time to get the blog analytics.
The way forward
We have learnt that the kinds of interactions the Student Engagers create are beneficial to
them in terms of skills and experience so we want to continue the work in future years. For
future recruitment we have learnt that we need to find people who can thrive in an
experimental environment, not just people who are good communicators. We also
increased our focus on recruiting people with potential as much as experience because one
of the aims of the work is to develop students’ skills.
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We can analyse evaluation and disseminate findings, especially to other university museums.
We can give more feedback to UCL Museums staff about visitors, their interests, audience
profile.
Resources
blogs.ucl.ac.uk/researchers-in-museums
@ResearchEngager
email researchersinmuseums@ucl.ac.uk
www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/whats-on
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Comments from Gemma Moore
NO learning is included here – what have we learnt:
What have students learnt – skills, influenced their research
What have institutions learnt – museums –
What’s the effect on the audiences
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What are the benefits?
What would we improve?
Structure:
Mention that case study is drawn from evaluation data and what this was
NEXT TIME – evaluation on what student engagers think – a focus group to collect officially
the kinds of info they are sharing about their experiences already
SAY EXPLICITLY WHAT THE EVALUATION WAS – OPINIO DATA, CONVERSATIONS/FEEDBACK
WITH STAFF
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