The collapse in tourist traffic caused by the health crisis has profoundly destabilized the visitor development strategies of heritage sites in France. In Ile-de-France, the Louvre Museum has seen its visitor numbers fall by 72% in 2020 compared to 2019, 77% for the Etablissement public du Musée d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie and 75% for the Château de Versailles. 46% of experts consulted as part of a World Tourism Organization survey believe that a recovery in international tourist flows can be envisaged, at the very least, by 2024. Regional heritage sites are also affected, but to a lesser extent. In any case, this significant drop in international visitors is forcing heritage sites to adapt their audience development strategies towards national and local visitors. After maintaining links with their audiences at a distance in 2020, museums and monuments are increasingly involved in creating dedicated offers for local audiences, in order to maintain and develop their attendance. To design attractive and adapted offers, participative design methodologies are being developed. The aim is to build proposals in close collaboration with partners and the public, in order to best meet their needs and expectations. This month, we take a look back at the various forms of collaboration already at work.at work in some museums, but also in places dedicated to innovation
1 – The origins of participation and consultation: the key role of ecomuseums and society museums
In a previous article, we discussed the gradual emergence the gradual emergence in the 20th century of public involvement in the governance and life of museums. The figures of Paul Rivet and Georges-Henri Rivière at the Musée de l’Homme and the Musée national des arts et traditions populaires are particularly enlightening in these participative museological approaches.
In the 1970s, these design approaches involving professionals and end-users were gradually developed with the creation of ecomuseums in connection with regional nature parks (1967), and then, in the 1980s, with the broader concept of society museums. ICOM’s first definition of eco-museums is revealing of the participatory aspect of these rural projects: “a museum that is fragmented, interdisciplinary, demonstrating man in time and space, in his natural and cultural environment, inviting the whole population to participate in its own development”. (To find out more, read L’environnement et la participation au musée: différentes expressions culturelles des sciences).
In this respect, as the joint report by the OCIM and the Fédération des Écomusées et des Musées de Société (FEMS) reminds us, projects involving local residents are at the heart of the raison d’être of ecomuseums and museums of society, whichare the bearers of social values and identities present in their definitions. For example, 35% of respondents (there are now some 180 museums of this type in France) offer participatory workshops to pass on techniques and know-how.
The ecomuseums have worked towards participation that goes as far as the creation of concerted governance. This is the case of the Creusot ecomuseum, which appears to have been the first museum in France to include users on its management committee and scientific and technical committee. This project has enabled local residents to become subjects, actors and recipients of their own heritage (see L’Écomusée Creusot Montceau: a metaphor for an exemplary model). In this way, local residents were invited to help design the exhibitions and enrich the collections by contributing objects and stories. The high point of this policy of consultation was the creation of a permanent exhibition in 1974: L’espace de la Communauté urbaine à travers les âges.
Today, the participatory vocation of eco-museums is sometimes called into question, as Hugues de Varine, one of the instigators of this movement, points out that, in the 2000s, these museums are now faced with “institutionalization” and a lack of “resources” not conducive to an ambitious policy of consultation with local populations(see his interview).
Despite this mixed picture, libraries, museums and monuments are increasingly drawing inspiration from the consultation practices developed in eco-museums to design mediation projects with their audiences.
2 – Museums, monuments and libraries: towards concerted design approaches for audiences and non-audiences alike
For some years now, heritage sites have been setting up co-design workshops with their audiences, and even systematically mobilizing user committees to guide and develop their mediation policies.
By way of example, the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), which has just set up a Public Relations Department (2018), is looking to make its user community a permanent feature. This community is regularly mobilized through committees, which provide opportunities for the establishment to gather feedback on its public policy, conduct interviews, test new systems or co-create new projects with its users. L BnF staff are regularly involved in these committees, as are exhibition curators, to better understand the needs and expectations of the public and anticipate any new projects. These surveys are also the subject of regular feedback to the library’s teams and made available to the public on its website.
To recruit participants for these committees, BnF, depending on its needs :
- Mobilize local audiences,
- Use your visitor database,
- Calls on readers’ representatives (elected for 3 years), social networks or external service providers to identify audiences who are less familiar with the library.
Recruiting participants for focus groups via social networks and emailing was used, for example, during the development of the exhibition Tolkien, Voyage en Terre du Milieu. In February 2018, the BnF launched a call for volunteers aimed at potential visitors based on two criteria: a relationship to Tolkien’s work (connoisseurs or not) and a link with the BNF (regulars and novices). Four collective brainstorming sessions involving groups of 10-15 people (selected from the 300 volunteers who applied) were set up to help the exhibition curators choose the works to be exhibited, and the project managers finalize their preliminary work. In addition to the success of the exhibition (70% of the public were under 35), the results of the exhibition reception report highlight the importance of integrating fans in advance of the exhibition in order to bring in new audiences and enrich the links they have with BnF (the vast majority had never been to an exhibition in the Library).
Following the example of the BnF, the Musée Dobrée in Nantes, which has been closed for over 10 years, has regularly called on a range of partners (local associations, schools, etc.) to conduct citizen workshops and define the project, offerings and programming of the future museum (scheduled to reopen in 2022).
Inspired by these examples, {CORRESPONDANCES DIGITALES] is initiating a similar co-design process with the Musée National de la Marine. With a view to the museum’s forthcoming reopening, mediation tools, tours, workshops and educational resources will be shared (and sometimes created), validated and fine-tuned in close collaboration with teachers, educators and social and disability organizations. Between September and December, no fewer than 6 workshops are planned.
The inclusion logics at work in various heritage sites are also particularly emblematic of collaborative models developed in other places or innovative players, such as third places, fablabs, coworking spaces or incubators. The major challenge of these places is to animate an active community committed to the realization of citizen, societal, environmental, entrepreneurial, educational or cultural projects.
3. Innovative players: leading and innovating with your community
Particularly inspiring for heritage sites, these innovative venues will, for example, develop dedicated programs or events to recruit and unite an active community around a project.
The creation of programs enables us to provide long-term support for a variety of projects. Since its creation, the Signes de Sens association has developed a particularly rich and diverse network of partners: libraries/media libraries, bookshops, accessible publishing houses, financial partners (regions, corporate foundations, patrons) and specialized associations (communication relays), etc. Starting in 2017, various workshops were held with these partners to create a universal accessibility program for young audiences: the Education Jeunesse Accessibilité (EJA) PROGRAM. Each of these players has worked to develop this project, and the creation of such a community is helping to actively lead the program. The project now involves some thirty libraries and is supported by the Cultura store network (73 stores in France).
Another way of mobilizing people is through events. Innovative venues, for example, use this process to attract, mobilize and involve their communities in citizen or entrepreneurial projects. Such is the case of the Villette Makerz fablab , a multidisciplinary space located in one of the follies of the Parc de la Villette. During the week, the venue offers space and resources to a professional community (coworking space, makerspaces, projects, etc.) and, at weekends, deploys programming for the public of the Parc de la Villette (workshops, events, exhibitions, etc.). Thanks to a targeted communication campaign, Villette Makerz is able to create a variety of events to mobilize its community, its partners (for example, the prevention association on the Villette site) or the weekend’s family audiences, depending on the project to be carried out. In 2019, as part of a project to which {CORRESPONDANCES DIGITALES] had contributed, the fablab had, for example, tested and adjusted a workshop offer for 11 Conti-Monnaie de Paris with family audiences frequenting the venue on weekends.
Whatever the contribution format, co-design and rapid prototyping methods derived from design thinking are often mobilized. Schoolab, for example, regularly trains students in the use of these methods, based on projects entrusted to it by partners. Step by step, students are invited to observe and gather information from potential users of a project. At this initial stage, ideation and rapid prototyping workshops are held to explore concrete avenues for implementation. These ideas are then presented and consolidated in close collaboration with our partners. These methods encourage greater empathy with users, to better understand their needs and constraints. What’s more, they enable us to rapidly turn ideas into prototypes, which can then be tested for their relevance to the target audience.
The health crisis revealed the capacity of heritage sites to innovate and adapt to the crisis (see the health crisis, an opportunity to innovate). The recomposition of cultural venue attendance following long periods of closure, the conquest of new audiences during periods of confinement, and the collapse of international tourism all call for a rethinking of their relationship with audiences and, more broadly, their relationship with their missions.
To a certain extent, between transmission and innovation, public participation can help bring museums, monuments and libraries back to the heart of their missions. Anthropologist Maurice Godelier insisted on the importance of not separating the public from the collections: “Garder, c’est pas séparer les choses des personnes parce que dans cette union s’affirme une identité historique qu’il faut transmettre”. The conservation and dissemination missions of heritage sites could therefore be enriched through consultation with their audiences and, more broadly, by taking into account societal aspirations to participate. According to the report Inventing Museums for Tomorrow, 57% of 15-24 year-olds feel they can take part in designing exhibitions (versus 49% of the general population). The onus is now on cultural professionals to support this desire to participate, according to their stakes, means and constraints.
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Baudouin DUCHANGE and Antoine ROLAND
