How to Involve the Community

Community involvement is a boon to museums. Museums should be connected with their surrounding community. One way to do this is through field trips, which is outlined in another article. This article will focus on other ways of involving their community. A quick overview of strategies includes: 

• Making yourself open to the community

• Allowing some exhibits to be free

• Creating spaces for gatherings

Being open

Being open to the community can tie in with the other strategies. Being available to the community can help foster a bond between local visitors and museums. Museums that want to create a bond to their local community should host events that can attract visitors. This could be a speaker coming to talk about local history. For example, there could be an exhibit about notable people who were from that town, or state if the town is too small. Even if a museum only runs broad exhibits that may not be related to the local town specifically, they can still offer different prices for visitors who live in the same town as the museum, to incentivize them to visit the museum more often at a more affordable price.

Free exhbits

The next step to this would be to make some exhibits free, or partially free. This can be done by having windows on the street level that can allow people walking by to get a view at some parts of the exhibit. This is similar to what stores do when they put a small display by their windows, encouraging window shopping and hoping to get people interested enough in what they see to go into the store and spend money. In this scenario, the museum is hoping that people will see enough of the exhibit to be willing to spend money to see the rest of it. A museum can also make some exhibits entirely free. An easy way to do this is by making outdoor exhibits, which are also easily accessible, which is another way to attract visitors.

Gathering spaces

Museums can also create spaces for people to gather freely. This can be combined with the second suggestion. For example, you could make an outdoor exhibit, such as the large arch outside of the Gateway Arch Museum. You could then place benches and picnic tables around the area, and entice food vendors to open up stands near the area, to make the area good for gathering. Museums can also create spaces in their building. There could be a lobby that has tables for people to gather at, which may also have some smaller attractions to look at without needing to enter the rest of the museum.

Conclusion

For any museum looking to attract a local audience, involving the community is a necessity. This also allows for word-of-mouth advertising to happen. If a museum is beloved by its local community, it is likely to have a better reputation. This can also increase the effectiveness of fundraising events for museums, as people will be more willing to help out if they have a connection with the business. Depending on location, the viability of some strategies may differ. A museum located in an area with constant rain may not be able to use outdoor exhibits. Museums should look at their circumstances and decide which strategies fit their needs the best.