I recently had the great fortune to be involved with the creation of a first of it’s kind Interpetive Centre.
Speaking in very general terms, usually, when you start creating museum exhibits you dig through your collection and figure out what you want to show. You group artifacts together in some meaningful way and you build up a complete exhibit around them.
We tried something different.
Being an Interpretive Centre, there was a clear mandate for education. The importance was not on ensuring that this, or that artifact was displayed, but rather that visitors left having met some sort of learning objective.
This changes everything.
Learning objectives borrow from the world of education and curriculum. And, if you’re ‘SMART’ about them, they can be very powerful. No longer is an exhibit on Drugs and Substance Abuse about showing chemicals, and paraphernalia. It’s about educating about the short term, and long term effects (good, and bad). It’s about ensuring that someone who leaves can recognize and identify a particular drug so they know what’s being offered to them if they find themselves in that situation. It’s about providing strategies to say no, if that’s what they choose.
It’s about empowerment.
This is the kind of exhibit that doesn’t just start with ‘Why’. (To display a collection of drug related artifacts and documents)
But, it has to start with the right ‘Why’. (To leave a visitor empowered to make a choice about substance abuse)
