We Are Family!

FAMILY DAY IN MUSEUMS OF SERBIA AS A TOURIST OFFER

In 2017, the Center implemented the project We Are Family! Family Day in Museums in Serbia as a Tourist Offer (Mi smo porodica! Porodični dan u muzejima u Srbiji kao ponuda turističkih agencija). The project was supported as part of the PERFORM project of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, carried out by Helvetas and the University of Freiburg.

The concept of family days in museums as an offer not only of museums but also city tour organizations and travel agencies is becoming increasingly popular in the world. It was conceived based on empirical data, that showed that cultural treasures and contents provided by museums are much easier for children to adopt if they are in the company of a close adult, for example, a member of their family. Because of this, we researched museum offers in Serbia intended for children and families, as well as the interests of parents to spend a day with their children in one of the local museums in Serbia.

• One in three museums in Serbia are only periodically visited by pre-school children with their family, while these visits are frequent in one in four museums; while two-thirds of museums considered visits of very young children in the organization of a preschool institution as frequent or very frequent.
• One in four museums regard visits of school children with members of the family as frequent or very frequent, while almost all museums regard visits to museums organized by schools as very frequent (to which school excursions contribute a lot).
• Special exhibition tours for children are organized in 72.2% of the examined museums of Serbia.
• Children’s workshops are organized in 94.7% of the examined museums.
• In 88.9% of the examined museums, the children’s workshops correspond to what is presented at children’s exhibition tours.
• Drama workshops are organized in 19.4% of the examined museums.
• Musical or recital workshops are organized in 8.3% of the examined museums.
• In 99% of museums, the organization of children’s programs depends on the enthusiasm of the curators-pedagogues/museum educators and homeroom/regular teachers.

Considering that PERFORM launched the call to connect scientific institutes and research institutes with the economy, a test tour was organized together with the agency For See—a visit of researchers from the Center and the Institute of Economic Sciences with their children to the National Museum of Kikinda and the “Tera” Museum within the Kikinda factory “Toza Marković”.