Connecting with People is the Main Motivation for Visiting a Gallery

A new study states that cultural organizations are facilitators of shared experiences.

The authors come to this conclusion following surveys that asked people what was the best thing about the visiting a museum or gallery. They discovered that there were two main strategies in visiting cultural organizations: “what” and “with”. The first one focuses on content and the “with” strategy is about social interaction.

In other terms, the surveys revealed that spending time with friends and family were more valuable for visitors than content. It means that the best thing that cultural organizations do is connecting people to one another. This applies not only to visitors but also to staff. If you want to make visiting your institution more pleasant for people you should engage volunteers and frontline staff to communicate with the audience.

Of course, the quality of content is important. Moreover, learning something new is the main justification for visiting a cultural organization. One might argue that people can interact with each other elsewhere. But it is the content that provides special experience and type of sharing it.

To conclude, the research discovered that museum-goers who prefer to spend time with friends and family would more likely return to the institution. The data shows a significantly higher percentage of this group re-visiting the institution compared to other groups. So, this is a reason to use more resources not only providing content but also connecting people to one another.

More information: http://colleendilen.com/2016/07/13/the-value-of-shared-experiences-within-cultural-organizations-data/

 

 

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