Focus on Visitors

Many curators believe that the only thing that counts in an exhibition is the quality of its content. The needs of the visitors are often neglected. To counteract this, the DAAD Cairo Academy organised a 3-day online workshop in october with Dr. Guido Fackler, Professor of Museology at the University of Würzburg/Germany, in which 15 curators from Alexandria and Greater Cairo took part.

In almost all museums there are barriers that prevent many from visiting. With the Method of a Visitor Journey, the museum specialists had to find this out by viewing an exhibition through the eyes of the visitors. After their presentations, the participants had a debate about f.e. high admission fees, unclean facilities, unfriendly staff, confusing buildings and missing or incomprehensible object labels, which discourage people from a museum visit. To avoid these barriers, Judy Rand formulated some years ago "The Visitors' Bill of Rights". "Make me feel welcome" or "Help me understand" are two of ten simple rules, which were discussed in detail to make concrete exhibitions more visitor focussed. Now it is time for the participants to implement these rules in small steps in the museums for the benefit of the visitors.

https://www.daad.eg/en/