Workshop 3:
Navigating Museums and Young People: When it Does Go Wrong

Yaël Filipovic, Jo Higgins

Imagine a museum youth program that engages with over 32,00 young people across 19-years
becomes recognised across the country as a leader in best-practice, has young people contributing to content, programs and policy across multiple museum departments and has a published major impact report that quantifies the success of its engagement methodologies. This is a program most would consider a major success story, embodying the ways youth programs are vital for both young people and museums. Imagine then, the program being cut. Building from our experience contributing to the Young Creatives program at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and working with other museums around the world, we propose to engage in an honest conversation around navigating space between museums and young people and what it means when things do go wrong. What conversations do we need to be having about the critical role of institutional support, appetites for risk, agency and positionality if we’re to ensure long-term support for these programs and young people’s safe participation in them?

This hybrid presentation-workshop will introduce the Young Creatives program and use MCA
GENEXT as a case study for these conversations and present reflections on what learnings we took forward in our respective practices working with and for young people within museums.

It will tackle proposed questions including:

• What does it mean for cultural institutions and practitioners to be collaborative with young
  people and how should we measure its impact? 
• How does the cultural sector need to change in order to enable broader cultural participation
  among young people?

Following a 30-minute co-presentation sharing our experiences (and their legacy), the remaining 30 minutes will invite attendees to participate in a youth-inspired workshop, Assumptions Roulette. Using a playful teen methodology, and bespoke provocations, this conversation starter activity will allow participants to unpack, discover and discuss the opportunities and tensions in working with young people within our cultural institutions.