Lifelong learning in Museums: A European Handbook - Network of European Museum Organisations, 2006
This handbook grows out of Lifelong Museum Learning (LLML), a two year project funded by the European Commission between October 2004 and December 2006 within the framework of the Socrates Grundtvig programme.
Who is this handbook for?
This handbook is designed to support museum and gallery staff, especially those who have responsibility for education, interpretation or access, ensuring that learning opportunities, exhibitions, and resources are genuinely open to all. It is also for those educators who are more familiar with methodologies and practice relating to schoolchildren and would like to expand education activities to include adults. The publication is aimed at a broad European audience, with a variety of specialist training, expertise, experience, and status within their organisations. Some sections will be more relevant than others, depending on individual situations and needs. In the same way, some suggestions for good practice will be easier to implement than others.
This publication assumes that readers would like to see equal opportunities placed at the heart of museum provision, to open up access and to invite wider participation, and offers some suggestions and examples for how to achieve this. These include a more proactive approach to visitor research and outreach initiatives, a commitment to understanding how adults learn and what they wish to achieve from learning within the museum environment, and a willingness to identify and remove institutional barriers that may hinder non-traditional visitors from making use of the learning opportunities and resources a museum can offer.
We hope this handbook will be used as a tool to help programme planning and delivery as well as longer-term strategic planning. We also envisage its use within training contexts, as we acknowledge the value of targeted, relevant training and also of sharing practice with colleagues, both in one’s own country and internationally, through continuing professional development and informal networking. We welcome readers’ views on this handbook, as well as on future sector training needs. Contacts can be made to the leading partner or to any of the project’s partners.
Full text: PDF (3.5 MB)