Engaging Activities

Expo pavilions can invite visitors to engage actively, to be more than passive spectators, by making choices, playing, and sharing their own hopes and dreams. This can build our shared capacity to co-create futures. Expos aspire to be global gatherings for shared problem solving. The more that visitors engage with pavilion exhibits and connect with each other, the more possibility there is to understand and solve shared problems.

Each country puts itself on display at an Expo. How visitors experience a pavilion isn’t limited to only looking. It is also possible for visitors to engage more deeply  and participate more fully by making choices, interacting with exhibits and staff, voting, playing, and even leaving their own messages for a country or for other visitors. When visitors participate more actively, they can have more memorable experiences. Visitors’ hopes and ideas can be points of connection with each other, staff, and even with people back in the pavilion’s home country.

How?

Exhibits in Expo pavilions can be high-tech, including touchscreens and interactives; or virtual reality headsets. And while great expense can be invested in crafting visitor experience, some of the most memorable experiences are low-cost, and don’t depend on grand displays or the latest technology.

Visitors can engage more deeply and participate more fully by making choices about the content they see or asking visitors to engage by voting for different options, or making a pledge. Visitors could choose the path to take, or which stories to watch or read. Another option to give visitors choice is to use physical objects like flip books to choose content, or tokens for voting.

You can also engage visitors by inviting them to play music on a real instrument or sit and play a game on a real game board. A video game can make play meaningful as a way to understand and solve shared problems. Visitors can make something, write a message, or draw a picture as a way for visitors to imagine the worlds and futures they want, and to share them with each other by interacting in real time through discussions, video connections, or other collaborations. 

Visitors’ own hopes and ideas can be points of connection with the staff, with each other and with people back in your home country. Sharing hopes, dreams, and good wishes can be high tech, but it doesn’t have to be. Sharing visitors’ voices can be as simple and low-cost as note cards or sticky notes, or a space to leave a gift as a simple and heartfelt way to express a connection to your pavilion and with other visitors.