Museums
“Museums have been very important to me since I wandered, as a teenager, along the SouthBank in London and happened into the Hayward Gallery where Diane Arbus’s work was on display. Her photographic portraits haunted me – I realised the life-changing, life-enhancing power of an exhibition. I’ve been visiting museums and galleries ever since.”
Dea Birkett
Follow @culturekidsie
Dea is director of CultureKids, an Irish-based not-for-profit that advises museums, heritage sites and visitor attractions throughout Europe how better to include and welcome children and families. Her clients include Flanders Tourism, National Museums Ireland and Galway2020. She was previously founder and director of Kids in Museum, the UK-wide charity working with museums, galleries and heritage sites to make them more welcoming of children and families. In this role she established the Family Friendly Museum Award, the largest museum award in Britain. She also developed and ran Takeover Day – a day on which young people are given meaningful, powerful, decision-making roles in museums. It grew to be the biggest initiative ever with young people in museums in the UK.
‘Dea is a guerrilla in the museum world.’
Arts Council England Director
Dea on museums
How Can we Make Child Friendly Museums?
First published on Rocca Gallery on 2 December, 2019
Think of a museum, and you might still imagine rows of glass cabinets, hushed chapel-like galleries and a forest of Do Not Touch signs. This traditional museum design has been a barrier for family visitors, requiring reverent silence while they wander around echoey rooms of obscure unloved objects. But over the last decade, British museums have made huge strides to become more welcoming of families, using zoning and other strategies. Since my young family was thrown out of the Aztec exhibition at the Royal Academy, London, over ten years ago for being “too noisy”, leading to the foundation of the charity Kids in Museums, museums have worked hard at attracting and including all ages. The stuffy silent museum of your imagination is changing. […]
Why I don’t believe in a code of behaviour for museums
First published in The Telegraph on 12 April, 2014
The wagging finger continues to waggle back and forth, as the debate over children’s right to access and enjoy a museum – first launched in the Telegraph last month – tuts on. On the one side are those, like me, who say museums should be for the under-aged just as much as the middle-aged. No one age group should have a monopoly on our masterpieces. On the other are those who want children to be shrunken adults, only appreciating art in the most restrained and scholarly way, if at all. It would really be better if they stayed at home. […]
Should children be banned from museums?
First published in The Telegraph on 5 August, 2014
Jake Chapman, one half of controversial artist duo the Chapman Brothers, has called parents who take their children to museums “arrogant” and the taking of children to art galleries “a total waste of time” […]
Connect:
Dr Dea is co-director, with Rebecca Mileham, of TextWorkshop , working with museums, heritage sites and visitor attractions to help them to tell their stories and bring text alive.
“Rebecca and Dea are to text what Trinnie and Susannah are to fashion!”
TextWorkshop participant
Textworkshop delivers workshops in writing labels, panels, guidebooks and more, as well as bespoke work with organisations including Bristol Museums, Natural History Museum, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust and the Science Museum.
“Very useful. Terrific techniques. A good structure to work to. Feel more confident now.”
“This workshop will help me create text in a completely different way.”
“Thanks for one of the most interesting and useful training days I’ve been on in ages.”
And Dea and Rebecca’s favourite workshop participant comment:
‘Dea and Rebecca are hilarious!’