Next steps for Mini Wonders, our Early Years Innovation in Museums programme
Yesterday, policymakers and museum sector professionals met at Tate Britain to hear about the initial learnings from our Early Years Innovation in Museums programme, Mini Wonders.
Mini Wonders is a research and development programme that aims to explore how museum spaces, and access to great art and culture, can support child and family development and increase the number of children who are ready for school across the UK. The programme has been jointly created and funded by Art Fund, through a legacy grant from the Foyle Foundation, and Nesta.
The event at Tate Britain explored how museums and cultural spaces can facilitate positive developmental outcomes for children under five, highlighting the value of museums in the early years ecosystem and their role in their local communities.
On the panel of speakers were Jenny Waldman, Director, Art Fund; Ravi Gurumurthy, Chief Executive, Nesta; Kate Fellows, Head of Learning and Access at Leeds Museums and Galleries; Sarah Cattan, Director of Fairer Start Team, Nesta, and Professor Crispin Day, project adviser and lead developer of successful evidence-based parenting programmes.
Panellists shared emerging insights from the evidence-informed programme as well as the huge potential for scaling this innovative work across museums and galleries throughout the UK.
Takeaways from the event
Museums are powerful partners in supporting early childhood development
Jenny Waldman, director of Art Fund, emphasised the vital role museums play within communities and the growing potential for museums to support early childhood development.
To quote a participant who attended a Mini Wonders session: “We've never been to a museum. We've done lots of other things, but we've never been to a museum. So, it was really good, a different kind of environment. So now [my child] talks about the museum and he knows... it's a fun place to go.”
Jenny also highlighted the impressive scale of the programme’s pilot phase, which has already engaged 16 museums across the UK, including Ulster Museum in Belfast, National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, and Great North Museums in Newcastle.
Kate Fellows, Head of Learning and Access at Leeds Museums and Galleries, one of the participating organisations, shared case studies of families who have been involved in the programme, highlighting “Those simple things that make a difference, and result in families saying things like, '[my child] really thrived here, and we enjoyed being together, can we come back?'”
Museums are special places, and there is wider, intangible benefit that comes from this programme, and that’s the sense of abundance that you feel in a museum space.
The sense of play, the sense that this becomes [visitors’] space and becomes owned... Extending people’s sense of what is theirs is a hugely important factor.
The importance of an evidence-informed approach
Sarah Cattan, Nesta’s Director of Fairer Start Team, spoke on the importance of embedding evidence into the programme’s design: “Our work is strongly underpinned by the wealth of evidence that shows that all babies and children need stable and caring relationships, and stimulating experiences, to thrive.”
Professor Crispin Day, a clinical psychologist and adviser to the project, highlighted the unique opportunity that museums provide for addressing childhood development challenges, saying, “We do have some of the fundamental tools that are extremely effective at giving children, no matter what their circumstances, the best start in life... and they are most effective when families get to use them early.
“That’s exactly what Mini Wonders is designed to do, and why it’s making a vital contribution.”
The potential to scale Mini Wonders
Concluding the speeches, Ravi Gurumurthy, Chief Executive of Nesta, shared the ambitious vision for the future of Mini Wonders:
“The dream of getting to 400 museums and 40,000 children is plausible, and we can build the rigorous evidence... it’s unusual to see something that’s both potentially hugely impactful on people’s lives, but also scalable and can reach the people that need it.”
Are you interested in hearing more about Mini Wonders, and how it is evidencing museums as powerful partners to support early childhood development?
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