Audiences

Through numerous research and evaluation projects AMARC has developed a good understanding of audiences, their needs and their behaviour, both at a macro level (general audiences) and a specific audience level.

• General Audience Information
• Specific Audience Information
  • Children aged 0 - 5
  • Young People and Museums
  • Indigenous Youth and Museums
  • Older Audiences and Museums
  • Families in Museums
  • Museum Audiences with Disabilities

General Audience Information

• Who Visits Museums? (PDF 80k)
  Museum visiting is not evenly spread in the population. However, audience research shows that the demographic characteristics of museum visitors has remained fairly stable, both over time and across studies that have been undertaken in many different countries. This paper outlines general characteristics of museum visitors.
• What Do People Want From a Museum Visit? (PDF 92k)
  Through analysing a number of evaluation studies conducted by AMARC we have found that visitors have many needs when they visit a museum. This paper outlines a range of issues for museum visitors.
• What Do People Do When They Visit A Museum? (PDF 87k)
  Audience research has a long tradition of studying visitor behaviour relating both to the whole-of-visit as well as specific exhibitions. This paper summarises general characteristics of visitor behaviour from the literature and AMARC studies.

Specific Audience Information

Children aged 0 - 5

The young audience is a key growth market for museums, both in increasing visitor numbers and revenue, as well as in facilitating a love of learning from museums at an early age. Young children are interested in the world around them, they are creative, active, inquiring and eager to learn. Museums have vast collections in areas such as natural and social history and cultural heritage and many focus on providing enjoyable and playful learning experiences. Putting these together, opportunities abound for museums to engage and inspire preschoolers into further investigations of their world.

A discussion paper (2002) outlines how museums are responding to the needs of early learners and explores potential opportunities for partnerships and projects that can inform the processes by which museums can engage this key audience.

• A summary of characteristics of this audience and their carers from AMARC studies (PDF 92k)
• QUT Museums Collaborative website
  http://www.fed.qut.edu.au/ec/museums/col.html
• Melbourne Museum Infozone Learning Resource Centre
  http://infozone.museum.vic.gov.au/finding/flrc.html

Young People and Museums

A number of research projects have been undertaken into young people and museums. A literature review of these studies found a number of common themes. From this, a bibliography of youth studies has also been developed.

• Literature review (PDF 131k)
• Bibliography (PDF 134k)

Audiences documents are only available in PDF format. The FREE Acrobat Reader is required. If you have trouble accessing the PDFs on this page, please email Lynda Kelly.