When Students Become Tour Guides: An Experiment in Museum Learning
Climbing up the spiral staircase of the M+ Pavilion, a primary student led a queue of educators from different schools to the exhibition area. He was there giving a tour about an art installation made out of bamboo scaffolding, explaining why he had a hard time appreciating the work — because it reminded him of his tough time as a scout. He associated it with difficult outdoor climbing activities, especially since his classmates were all inside the air-conditioned gallery space, waiting for their turn to present on other artworks .
This tiny tour guide was part of M+’s Teacher’s Event Day, held on 12 December 2019 at the M+ Pavilion and organised by the Learning and Interpretation team. Unlike previous such events, this time the team curated a unique student-led teacher’s programme titled ‘Why are there no paintings in this show?’, inviting primary students to give guided tours in the gallery and share their own art-viewing perspectives. It explored an alternative learning experience in contrast to the curator- or educator-led format, encouraging both primary students and teachers to challenge their assumptions of a museum learning programme. In this article, I will elaborate on our experience and takeaways through four keywords: experimentation, reimagination, respect, and uncertainty.
Experimentation
Why do we want non-formal learning in the museum?
During the Sigg Prize 2019 exhibition, the team decided to run a trial programme that would invite primary students to be the docents during a Teacher’s Event Day. Having been an intern in the Learning and Interpretation team for half a year, this was my first experience assisting in the planning of a student-centred teacher’s programme. Before the event, we had communicated with Yan Chai Hospital Choi Hin To Primary School’s Visual Arts teachers, and held three workshops for seven participating P4 to P6 students at their school and the M+ Pavilion. The students were to lead a guided tour of the exhibition, and teachers were invited to be the audience members and ask students questions about the works. To foster an unfamiliar learning experience compared to their regular classroom education, the usual roles of teachers and students were switched.
A student-led programme was a trial not only for them, but for us too. The students were like a highly reactive element in our otherwise careful calibrations. We had to constantly observe, capture, and facilitate what they were communicating to us to ensure a meaningful, responsive collaboration. For example, a student once mentioned how much she loved the drama class that she was on her way to after one of the workshops. This reminded us that we should try to make sure that the artworks we allocated to each student were personally relevant to them — in this case, the student might be interested in presenting Shen Xin’s work, which includes theatre stage elements. By responding to their personal stories, we were able to co-create a unique learning experience.
Still, experiments in practice are accompanied by unpredictability and errors. For instance, we were so overwhelmed in the first workshop that we forgot to invite students to introduce themselves. However, setbacks lead to further exploration — this ‘mistake’ inspired us to develop a naming activity as part of the workshops, which helped us understand how primary students perceived the artworks.
Reimagination
Why are there pig brains, beef balls, and ants in this show?
In our first workshop, the students instinctively identified a museum as a place with artefacts for learning about history. In contrast, the Sigg Prize 2019 exhibition consisted of a wide range of mediums (including video, site-specific installation, and everyday materials), and artworks that were open to interpretation. It was a chance for the students to reimagine what both a museum and museum learning looked like.
When looking at the same artwork, students had vastly different associations, making clear their imaginations and sensitivities to the outside world. We encouraged them to perceive the works through their senses instead of the exhibition labels. For example, one of the activities was to rename the artworks. Samson Young’s Muted Situations #22: Muted Tchaikovsky’s 5th was renamed Squeaky (《沙沙》) by a student who associated the muted orchestral sounds with walking on sand. To highlight their individuality, we also asked two students to rename the same work. This prompted possibilities of meaning-making and critical thinking.
By allowing a level of autonomy, we witnessed how students not only unleashed their creativity, but also became expressive in sharing their preferences. For example, some felt uncomfortable with certain unconventional materials in the gallery that reminded them of insects or a pig’s brain. There are no rules when it comes to viewing and interpreting art, which is why museums can be alternative learning platforms that contribute to exploration and transformation for both teachers and students.
Respect
Why do I have to listen to you?
Because we’re listening to you too!
Our second meeting with the students started with an interesting question: ‘Why are there only two of you? Where are the other staff?’ Surprisingly, they noticed the absence of two staff members who they had only met once during the first workshop.
Before ending a session, Dicky Yeung (Assistant Curator, Learning and Interpretation) once announced that he would sum up the activity in three sentences. Just as students would normally joke in class, they immediately teased him when he accidentally exceeded this three-sentence limit. This implied that the students were mindful of our behaviour and promises, so we thanked them for carefully listening and focusing. The students, astonished, had not expected us to respond to their jokes with such attention and enthusiasm.
Before the actual tour, we decided to let them get a taste of the responsibility that a docent has. We ran a listening circle and invited each student to raise questions after their peers had shared. No matter how chatty they were, being under the spotlight made them nervous. But knowing that someone was actually curious about what they wanted to say drove them to be more dedicated in communicating with their audiences.
Uncertainty
What if I have no idea how to answer a question from the audience?
The idea of not knowing the answer to a question makes us all nervous. In the last workshop before leading the tour, we imagined together what might happen if they were baffled by a question from the audience. We came up with the idea of answering, ‘I don’t know!’, which made our students giggle. But there is nothing wrong with not knowing something during a process of discovery. Answers aren’t always printed in a book. Still, we prepared notecards with keywords that the students had come up with during the workshops. Rather than wanting them to recite a passage, we hoped this would stimulate them and establish a sense of companionship.
During the actual tours, one student did reply to the teachers with ‘I don’t know’. It was a pleasure to see that there was no awkward silence. Participants instead tried to support the student by suggesting their own opinions and ideas. Perhaps because the event was so informal, everyone was comfortable engaging. An unsolved question led to a connection between the docent and their audience.
An educator commented afterwards that a student-centred perspective made her have a more sentimental attachment to the sharing since, as a teacher, she was rarely allowed to ‘irrationally’ view an artwork without using the curriculum standard. Audiences laughed; they banded together to comfort a student who felt sad about a lonely figure in a video work. We were relieved to see how unassessed conversations outside the classroom successfully opened up the student-teacher relationship, assuring us that this mode of learning is worth pursuing.
Students were not the only ones learning through this programme. They have taught us valuable lessons for the official opening of M+, letting us envision the museum as a place of open-ended learning opportunities for creators, educators, and students. The programme reminded us to listen to young students’ inner voices and observe the world through their perspectives. As facilitators, we should constantly learn, reflect, and question. Rather than them just learning the content of their presentations, we’re grateful if this can be an opportunity for the students to build confidence and their own set of perspectives in understanding the world. The sharing of personal stories and preferences was remarkable, inspiring me to review the possibilities of learning. And for the team, this experience has motivated us to always be as curious as the young students, and to continue pursuing forms of learning and content that can unleash creativity.
