Today's children will face increasingly harsh environmental conditions and health risks, yet they are excluded from conversations about it. How can children be included in this conversation? What learning environment tools and experiences can we provide to them? New Children's Museum's of the Pauls Stradiņš Medical History Museum in Riga will explore these questions using One Health approach.
National
Latvia
{Empty}
Mainly urban
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Paula Stradiņa Medicīnas vēstures muzejs Type of organisation: Other public institution First name of representative: Kate Last name of representative: Zilgalve-Masjukeviča Gender: Female Nationality: Latvia Function: Project coordinator Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Ukrainas neatkarības street 1 Town: Riga Postal code: LV-1050 Country: Latvia Direct Tel:+371 67 222 665 E-mail:kate.zilgalve-masjukevica@mvm.gov.lv Website:https://mvm.lv/en
The Pauls Stradiņš Medicine History Museum opened in 1961, and at the time was the first museum in the Soviet Union dedicated specifically to the subject of health and medicine. At the time of its foundation and up to this day, the permanent exhibition of the museum has mainly focused on the story of the historical development of medicine and medical science, but excluding personal experiences, for example, stories of patients, or how people with different spectrum of senses experience the museum. Since spring 2021, the museum has initiated a fundamental re-definition process to carefully rethink its role as a public institution and building, and what stories, experiences, and questions it highlights through its exhibitions, the public programme as well as the museum's physical spaces.
The Museum's current and future outlook emphasizes openness and community engagement, sensitivity and care towards each other's needs in the society, and the need to consider planetary health as part of the conversation about the health of humans. Today's children will face increasingly harsh environmental conditions and health risks, yet they are excluded from conversations about it. How can children be included in this conversation? What learning environment tools and experiences can we provide to them?
Re-defining its outlook, the museum, involving the local community and school, has started work on a completely new, unique learning center for children set to open in 2024. Titled ‘One Health’, the permanent exhibition of the new Children’s Museum will be set in a museum's extension, partly repurposing and transforming its former auxiliary rooms as well as integrating the museum's garden in the parkour of the exhibition. The new extension of the Children Museum will be designed by renowned local architect Brigita Bula in close cooperation with the museum's team.
One Health
Care
Chidren
Environmental Change
Inclusion
The Children's museums objectives regarding sustainability are to 1.) make maximum use of the potential of the existing premises, building only what is functionally necessary to ensure accessibility and sustainable operation; 2.) build its content around the concept of "One Health" addressing both planetary and human health as joint values; 3.) explore ways how can a museum become an inclusive, sustainable space for learning about health literacy and care (especially to younger generations) and how can future generations use this knowledge to build a sustainable, inclusive society. The synergy between - physical space, used method and the content of the project are the cornerstones of the Children's museum that can be used by other musuems and heritage institutions that are undergoing redefinition process.
The museum has started work on launching the Children’s Museum as a unique contemporary center for health literacy among per-teens housed in a beautiful reconstructed extension of the existing museum building. The upcoming museum, will be transformed by making maximum use of the potential of the existing premises, building only what is functionally necessary to ensure accessibility and sustainable operation. Besides that the museum will be integrating and using not only the exhibition space, but also an outdoor space, thus binding together the historical building of the museum, the new extension and garden. The new museum's building will accentuate aspects how environmental conditions affect human experience and senses using both - a) tangible space creation techniques (contrasts between narrow/wide, high/low, smoother and rougher surface); b) intangible elements (contrasts between lighter and darker spaces and similar). The synergy of the building and the content of the exhibition are the aspects that other similar institutions are encouraged to explore.
The goal of the transformation of the Children's Museum is for it to become the first pre-teen oriented museum in Latvia, that offers:
1) Meaningful form for the content about health and care in a wider scope of understanding;
2) Safe and inclusive, transformable environment for learning, exploring and reflection for children, their companions and educators;
3) Usage of a synergy of the museum building, surroundings and content and as a part of the learning experience.
Using the synergy of its space, including building and garden, content and innovative learning methods developed by the team of curators and educators, the Children's Museum will examine health as an element uniting humans and ecosystems and care as a fundamental of sustainable society. The exhibition will provide a novel way how, using experience and tools provided by the museum, children can learn about health and care in a wider meaning
How can inclusive learning tools for children be designed so that they can be used by as many people as possible, regardless of their physical conditions? How and with which formats can school children be integrated into the process of developing an exhibition? How persons' with different spectrum of senses experience the museum - these and similar questions are in the core of the transformation of the programmes of the museum. Museums used to represent "one sided"communication of history, for example "the cult of doctors", but not patients perspective.How could we change that with personal and more inclusive (including special needs) stories using One Health approach? How people with different spectrum of senses experience museum? How One Health approach and care can develop key competences of children?We are aware that children can get carried away with experiments and games, but how can engage them with the collection items? How medicine museum can create an inclusive content and form for children? These and similar questions are in the core of the transformation process of the museum. Being still at the beginning stage of this project we are still developing the methods and approaches, we are also willing to share the lessons learned with others.
Besides that the museum's ticket policy is friendly to all visitors, for example, tickets cost 0,70 euro for students and 2,50 adults, family ticket costs 5 euro, but the guided tour from 5-10 euro. Garden is available free of charge.
Re-definition of the museum also means its opening towards the local community. This opening takes place in a threefold way:
1.) The museum and its surroundings opens up for locals as a space, that was previously not used, for example, its garden is now open for the general public as a place where to spend lunch break or part of a workday;
2.)The museum's programmes look at ways of engaging the local audience (participatory workshops, discussions and engagement of schools, using innovative audience development methods, events and outreach tools) as well as respecting diverse opinions.
Although the new Children's museum branch will open only in 2024, the work with the local community has been a significant part of the museum's programme since the beginning of the re-definition process. Until now the Children's Museum's development has involved a wide range of participants - not only museum's staff of all levels, but also, for example, policy makers, state administration and children from the pilot-school. The pilot-schools' involvement in the development ensures that the needs and interests of the target audience of the Children’s Museum are well represented, meanwhile providing an opportunity for pupils of the pilot-school to put to practice the values embraced by the learning process - care and strong sense of community.
In September 2022 the Health Minister of the Republic of Latvia D. Pavļuts emphasised: "The knowledge and skills that our children will have of caring for health, both their own and that of people around them, is a matter of survival for Latvia. We have one of the worst public health records in Europe, and people lose their lives and health due to non-infectious diseases with causes rooted in poor health literacy. We have developed a number of health literacy campaigns for schoolchildren in the recent years, and it has become obvious that we are not going to solve the problem without systematic involvement from schools. At the same time, the Ministry of Health cannot afford to wait, and we continue to make use of the tools that are available to us. For this reason we are now joining forces with the museum to create an educational centre where, thanks to art and creativity, children will be able to gain insight into subjects that parents and teachers may sometimes find problematic to broach".
The museum is a public institution working under the Ministry of the Health of the Republic of Latvia, therefore the development of the Children's museum is a direct cooperation between the museum and the Ministry.
One of the goals of the raising of the level of personal, social and learning competences in the context of a lifelong learning is to improve health conscious, future-orientated life management. The team of the museum believes that there is no global shortage of children’s museums created by grownups. The museum has invited pupils from nearby schools to contribute to the content development process of the Children's Museum, asking them to highlight the questions that are topical for them and involving them in the co-creation process of the museum.Besides that the architectural team of the museum regularly discuss the project with the staff of the museum of all levels. The content development of the exhibition is led by artist/designer duo "Kolektīvs", but museums' team gathers enthusiastic team of experts with previous experience of organising of art events. Such multidisciplinary approach has helped to shape learning objectives of the museum - to provide an inclusive, innovative, aesthetic, functional and sustainable learning and community center for children, their companions and educators. A safe environment where children aged 5 -13 (pre-teens) will be able to gain insight into subjects that are of major importance for them (health, including planetary one, care, community in the wider context of the One Health, selection of which is recommended by their peers), but that adults may find problematic to address. Meanwhile, using innovative pedagogical methods, the museum aims to develop key competencies of children (personal, social and learning) and provide practical, applicable tools for use in life. We imagine the new Children's Museum as an environment where both - the space and content is a part of the learning experiences.
Innovative redefinition method:
1.) There is no global shortage of children’s museums created by grownups; for this reason, the Medicine History Museum has invited students of the DOMDARIS school to contribute to the innovative content development process of the children's museum. The school’s involvement in the development does more than just ensure that the needs and interests of the target audience of the Children’s Museum are well represented: it also provides an opportunity for the students to put to practice the values embraced by their school ‒ responsibility, growth and a strong community.
2.) Innovative approach towards building: combines reuse of the existing space, involvement of the garden and building of the museum as one joint experience.
3.)Innovative audience development - started already ahead of the building process of the museum - involving schools, designing outreach tools that can visit pupils outside the capital of Latvia, involvement of the target groups in workshop sessions, modernising temporary exhibitions and public programmes of the museum.
4.) target audience of pre-teens as a unique age group.
PSMHM in its redefinition process takes inspiration and learns from such institutions as Deutsches Hygiene Museum Dresden and other museums with a complex heritage, that have managed to turn it to become community loved centres for learning. We hope that the methods (including audience development and learning methods, public programme development) used PSMHM and questions addressed by its programmes can be used in other institutions.
One Health is the key concept taken in consideration in this project.One Health is a collaborative, multisectoral, and transdisciplinary approach — working at the local, regional, national, and global levels — with the goal of achieving optimal health outcomes recognizing the interconnection between people, animals, plants, and their shared environment.
Activities taken in the project are:
1.) mapping of the needs of the museum and its audiences (all level staff of the museum, audience of various ages);
2.) mapping of health related questions that children have had, but parents have found difficult to answer;
3.) coproduction of the content together with children from the pilot school;
4.) cooperation between architect and all levels of the staff in the development of the project of the Children's museum;
5.) regular communication with the ministry of health;
6.)involvement of the NGO's in various capacities (co-development of participatory workshops, consultation and other) in the development process of the project;
7.) creation of new audience reach tools including educational outreach tools, that can travel outside the walls of the museum;
8.) respect to the existing environment (old building, garden and surroundings).
Today's children will face harsher environmental conditions and health risks, but they are often excluded from conversations about it. They will also be the ones who will have to coordinate a response to challenging environmental conditions (by caring for themselves, others, animals and environment) and need better competences to do it.Health literacy of children, their understanding of inclusiveness, care and knowledge of sustainable development is more important than ever.
Health conciousneof children,their understanding of inclusiveness, care and knowledge of sustainable development is more important than ever.
However, the current data on knowledge - not so optimistic. The study published in 2020 by the Center for Disease
Prevention, "Study of Health Habits of Latvian Students", shows that among 11-year-olds, only 23.3% had sufficient physical activity (at least 60 minutes a day), with a tendency to decrease as children get older. The museum's exhibition and educational programme primary targeted to the local audience in an inclusive manner will provide a local solution for health consciousness and social skills of children.
Next steps for the development of the project are:
1.) Communication campaign in social networks, inviting parents to share questions about body, health, traumas and similar, that partents have found problematic to answer. This campaign includes also feedback given by the museum - blog entries, soc. media stories, interpretation of museum stories. Benefit- audience and content development)
2.) Development of an outreach tool (learning box) that will travel to the schools in Latvia (activity depends on the funding); (Benefit - health education for approximately 30 regional schools, audience development, use of innovative learning methods)
3.) Workshop for museum employees and designers, that are interested in work with children "what museums can learn from computer games" ( benefit content development and learning method development for teams of museums).
The initiative contributes to raising the level of personal, social and learning to learn competences is to improve health conscious,
future-oriented life management of humans, that respects the health of themselves other humans, animals and our planet.
