At present, the “museum fever” among young people continues to heat up. On social media, more and more young people share the experience of punching in museums. Offline punching in exhibitions and online visiting museums have become a leisure, social and lifestyle for young people.
A short video platform “2023 Museum Data Report” shows that people who love watching museum-related videos after 00 account for a larger proportion than other ages. According to the statistics of relevant platforms, among the people who pay attention to museum information, the total proportion of people aged 18-30 is nearly 50%.
In addition to paying close attention to the dynamics of museums online, visiting museums offline has gradually become a fashion among young people. According to the data report released by the National Museum of China, in 2021, the audience of the National Museum under the age of 35 accounted for over 50%. In 2022, China Youth Daily and Zhongqing School Media launched a questionnaire survey for college students all over the country, and collected 992 valid questionnaires from 154 universities. The survey results show that 89..72% of the respondents have been to the museum, 42.04% of the respondents go to the museum once or twice a year.
Enthusiasm for museums is the recognition of traditional culture.
Compared with other cultural activities such as watching performances and listening to concerts, the cost of visiting museums is really “good and cheap”; The environment of the museum is usually full of charm and rich cultural atmosphere; Stay indoors from the weather. Choosing a museum as a place to travel on weekends and holidays can not only gain knowledge, but also discuss and communicate with like-minded friends. After that, you can also share beautiful photos of cultural relics on social media and bring back special cultural and creative products … All kinds of “benefits” make many young people fall in love with the “exhibition-watching socialization” of visiting museums.
A museum is a big school. Many young people walk into museums to explore the charm of history and culture and give themselves a spiritual “nutritious meal”. Some people want to quickly understand the history of a city and explore the cultural heritage of the city. “The museum is a window to know a city. If I want to know a city, I will definitely visit the local museum.” Li Yizhan, a junior at Wuhan University, said. Some people are trying to supplement their knowledge system with physical data. “I have talked about Oracle Bone Inscriptions, bamboo slips, etc. in the professional class, but I have never seen the real thing. After I came to the museum, I found that it was not the same as I thought.” Yang Ziyao, a graduate student at Beijing Normal University, said.
Many young people were touched by the historical stories behind the cultural relics in the museum and gained cultural experience and emotional resonance through time and space. “In the museum, time and space seem to be severely compressed, and it takes a day to walk through thousands of years of history, which is shocking. Looking at the exhibits, I can’t help but imagine how the ancients used them. ” Li Yizhan said excitedly.
Young people are keen to visit museums, which reflects their recognition of traditional culture. They have a strong interest in the life style, ancient life picture and spiritual world of the ancients, and have a strong thirst for knowledge about where the Chinese nation came from and the origin of Chinese civilization. All these prompted them to walk into the museum and consciously understand the profound historical background of the Chinese nation.
How do museums attract young people?
It is an important responsibility of the museum to let people, especially young people, understand and fall in love with traditional culture. Therefore, innovating communication means to attract more and more people to “approach” the museum, then “walk into” the museum, and finally “fall in love” with the museum, which is the proper meaning of the museum’s work.
In October, 2021, the State Council issued the Notice of the 14th Five-Year Plan for Cultural Relics Protection and Scientific and Technological Innovation, pointing out that it is necessary to “implement a number of demonstration projects for the construction of smart museums and study and formulate relevant standards and norms; Promote the museum to develop online digital experience products and provide new cultural travel services such as immersive experience, virtual exhibition hall and high-definition live broadcast. ” In May 2022, the general offices of the General Office of the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council issued “Guan”.Opinions on Promoting the Implementation of the National Cultural Digitization Strategy, clearly put forward that we should make full use of cultural and educational facilities such as museums to build offline scenes of digital cultural experience.
Develop digital IP, make small programs and apps, widely use digital technology of cultural relics, carry out various online and offline interactive activities, and develop various cultural and creative products for tourists to take museum culture home, shoot documentaries, and participate in cultural and artistic variety shows … In recent years, innovative cultural relics and museum narrative methods have emerged constantly, making the cultural relics collected in museums “alive”, entering people’s lives and entering young people’s “memos”.
Recently, the National Museum launched the exhibition “Counting the Rhinoceros Statues”, which comprehensively used artificial intelligence, infrared sensing, AOA positioning, augmented reality and other digital means to display the wrong gold, silver and moire bronze rhinoceros statues in the collection. This kind of “culture+technology” exhibition, which uses digital technologies such as AR and VR, is sought after by the audience, especially the young audience.
Online, the museum actively develops small programs and apps to break the time and space restrictions and realize the “never closed” of the cloud museum. For example, the “Cloud Tour Dunhuang” applet launched the world’s first new generation of “super-time participatory museum”-“Digital Sutra Cave” project, so that young people can experience the history of the Sutra Cave in an immersive way. The National Museum has also developed virtual digital intelligent people “Ai Wenwen” and “Shu Gu Jin”. At present, Ai Wenwen has unlocked the intelligent voice explanation function.
Some museums also use social media as a window for publicity and display, and actively “circle” young people. The language of some official social media accounts is humorous and full of “stalks”. They frequently produce “cultural relic expression packs” and often interact with fans. Museums with a “net sense” have pulled themselves away from the “Z generation” and attracted more young people into offline museums.
In addition to regular exhibitions, some museums have also carried out interactive workshops, lectures, exhibitions and other activities that young people love. Beijing Xuannan Cultural Museum brings a new model of “exhibition+drama experience” to young people with the immersive guide drama “Xuannan Scholar”. During the immersive performance, the audience can feel the historical events such as Yangjiao Mountain, bus writing, the Reform Movement of 1898, Xuannan newspaper industry and so on. Tianjin Museum staged an experimental drama “Entering the Land of Snow Scene and Cold Forest” based on “Map of Snow Scene and Cold Forest” in the museum. Some museums combine the popular forms of “script killing” among young people to launch “script tours”, such as the script tour of “Looking Back at Chang ‘an on Jinsha Night” developed by Jinsha Site Museum, the real-life script killing of “Searching for the Ancient Yunnan” by Yunnan Provincial Museum, and the immersive game of “Battle of Guanyin Mountain” by Guangzhou Museum …
The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics pointed out in the “Beijing Museum City Construction and Development Plan (2023-2035)” (draft for comment) that “encourage non-“.Inherit and innovate the material and cultural heritage, and carry out activities such as museum research and overnight museum. ” In recent years, some museums have extended their opening hours to night, and young people have more options to visit museums at night. Some museums have taken this opportunity to carry out theme activities such as “Sleeping in the Museum” and “Fantastic Night in the Museum”. For example, this year’s “Fantastic Night at the Museum”, a night-stay project for historical and humanities museums held by many museums in Luoyang, combines elements such as “immersive drama”, “script killing” and “camping” popular among young people, attracting museum lovers from all over the world to go to Luoyang to punch in.
Cold thinking on the craze of museums
While more and more young people are pouring into the museum, some experts and scholars are worried: Are young people just for the fun? Is it a cursory visit, leaving a fleeting impression, or has it really learned historical and cultural knowledge and gained self-improvement?
To let young people capture the fruits of civilization from the museum, a treasure house of human culture, it is necessary for museums to strengthen their academic research on cultural relics, and to dig and explain their intrinsic values and historical and cultural backgrounds in depth, instead of blindly paying attention to the “heat”, “popularity” and “sensational effect” of exhibitions. Shi Jixiang, director and professor of the Museum Development Research Center of the School of Archaeology, Jilin University, observed that some museums are exhausted in order to achieve the index of the number of exhibitions. “Nowadays, there are more than 30,000 historical exhibitions and exchange exhibitions launched every year, and it is irresponsible for the public to hold exhibitions in a hurry before the museum has thoroughly studied’ things’.”
Shi Jixiang emphasized that the innovative integration form of cultural tourism in museums is worthy of recognition, but it is equally important to grasp the scale. Whether it is digital means such as AR and VR, or the “high-value” exhibition area where photos are punched in, or activities such as “script tour” and “overnight museum”, all kinds of creative planning should serve the content of the exhibition and should not “upstage”. “Some technical means only stay in stimulating the eyes, but they are not very helpful for people to understand the historical background of the exhibits. Such digital products will become a mere formality.” He reminded that at present, many museums contract such projects to technology companies or cultural companies, but they can’t leave it alone when outsourcing, and they should properly explain the cultural connotation of cultural relics.
In the final analysis, the goal of interactive experience is to spread cultural relics knowledge. “Shantou” may attract people into the museum, but what really touches people must be those moments when they feel, feel and move about history and culture. Shi Jixiang repeatedly stressed that museums should understand and serve the audience, and more importantly, it is necessary to enhance the audience’s cognitive ability and give full play to the function of museums as cultural institutions, which will positively lead and enhance young people.
In short, a solemn and sacred museum can be grounded, but it should not be over-entertained-a museum is not a playground or entertainment place after all. He Yunao, director of the Institute of History and Natural Heritage of Nanjing University..It is pointed out that the museum should carry out the activation and utilization of cultural relics and the integration of literature and tourism on the basis of not deviating from the characteristics of professionalism, academics and science.
“Cultural relics are dignified. Simply pleasing the audience in a popular way will weaken the status of cultural relics and the function of museums. Cultural relics themselves cannot be’ funny’.” He said, “catering seems to win the audience, but it also loses another part of the audience.”
Experts unanimously said that the museum and the audience should interact in a two-way way way. In addition to the museum’s need to strike a balance between attracting young visitors and being loyal to the museum, young visitors should also be knowledgeable, such as doing some homework in advance before the exhibition, so as to learn more from the exhibition and have a “heart-wrenching” in-depth dialogue with cultural relics.
(Reporter Li Yun Wang Xiaoyu)