All Access Pass Summer 2015

27 Oct 2015

All Access Pass: Bringing Teens to Museums

The Adler Planetarium, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Botanic Garden, Intuit: The Center for Intuitive & Outsider Art, the National Veterans Art Museum, and the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum opened their doors to teens this summer, providing free admission through Labor Day and encouraging youth to interact with the museums in new ways through the Chicago City of Learning playlists. Digital Youth Network staff helped support the development of the playlists and review of submissions. By completing activities on the playlist, youth were invited to teens-only events.

Our group collaborated to develop four playlists:

• Share Your Story
• Change Your Perspective
• Our Chicago
• Make a Difference

Each playlist includes four activities that help youth think about museum spaces in new ways, such as creating a soundtrack for your visit or crafting a poem from works found on wall text.

Challenges & Successes

The playlists were developed and successfully hosted on the Chicago City of Learning website in a relatively short amount of time. Seventy teens completed 251 entries over the course of the summer. Students and staff encountered a few glitches while using the platform, but the Digital Youth Network team was quick to resolve issues that they could.

During the summer pilot, we did discover that the Chicago City of Learning platform is a barrier for teens. Difficulties with log ins and mobile devices limited participation for teens that we directly worked with in completing the playlists. However, the activities themselves were relatively successful among the teens, particularly in small groups. Some youth reported they wouldn’t necessarily do these activities on their own, but might with family and all generally enjoyed the projects.

In regards to the physical passes, 52 were redeemed by students that were not part of existing teen programs at the museums. These passes only came back to the Art Institute, Adler, and Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. The pass redemption was pretty low compared to the number of passes that were distributed at libraries and large events, including the Teens in the Park (TIP) fest at Northerly Island.

Next Steps

From the summer pilot, we’ve determined three different aspects of this work that we are going to investigate further:

• Admission and marketing: We would like to increase the return of physical passes and are looking to hold focus groups with teens to see what would motivate them to do so. We are also investigating doing a smaller version of this program with one or two targeted marketing strategies.
• Chaperone Guide: The activities were generally well-received and may provide a model for field trip groups or other student groups. A few of our partners will work on developing out a print-based guide for chaperones, which can be used at any museum.
• Online Submission Gallery: One limitation of the Chicago City of Learning platform at this time is a social component for teens to share their work or submissions. We will also investigate how teens might use an online gallery space to either motivate them into the program or provide peer feedback.

Let us know if you’d be interested in learning more about this project, or contributing to the next steps of the project!