Dear All
Techniquest recently returned from a 5 month tour of exhibits, shows and
workshops called CommQuest in South Africa. CommQuest was a partnership
between Techniquest and the Commonwealth Secreteriat.
During my time out in SA I was interested to see that there were slight
differences in the way that the people there reacted to the exhibits.
Inspired by this (and fulfilling the requirements of my OU MSc course!) I am
doing a mini-project looking at how successful exporting interactive
exhibits is to countries where the expectations and cultural backgrounds may
be very different.
I am looking for anyone who has toured with hands-on exhibitions to other
cultures to obtain some observations on how successful they were or whether
there were any conflicts. For example, we noticed that the small Zulu
children were initially terrified by our Parabolic Mirror as they believe
mirrors to attract lightning and evil spirits. Also, there is a culture of
group learning which meant that the children were reluctant to explore the
exhibits as individuals but preferred doing the activities as a group.
If you have any personal experiences of this that you would be willing to
share, or know of any useful references then I would be very grateful to
hear from you!
Look forward to hearing from you on, or off, the list!
Best wishes
Wendy
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|