Project Description

Culture and Heritage

Engaging Children and Youth with Culture and Heritage

Children and young people in the majority of countries are considerably more numerous than the adults and where one-fifth of the world’s population will be aged 15–24 years. The stereotypical view that young adults have of museums and built heritage sites as being boring, dictating and being used merely as touring rather than seeing them as a rich hub of stories and accounts in our history. This has been identified as the main barrier preventing young adults attending museums, as young adults view museums as disengaging and firmly structured. The Little Art creates programs that engage children and young people in the heritage and museums.

The Little Art was curating partner in Heritage Now and produced children and young people’s engagement programs. Heritage Now was a two-day festival that celebrates and reflects upon the cultural heritage of Pakistan. The festival brought together professionals from Pakistan and various other countries to discuss pressing issues facing the museums and heritage sector in Pakistan through conversation, performance and art.

Heritage Now included panel discussions, academic paper presentations, exhibitions, crafts and performances, and art-based activities for children – providing an opportunity for people of all ages and interests to interact with our tangible and intangible heritage.

“Connect. Culture” encourages young people to visit museums. The challenges of getting young audiences to engage in the arts via galleries museums and heritage sites include a lack of connection and sense of belonging, the spaces provided, and artistic and learning program and content. Heritage sites and museums must continue to reach young audiences and increase engagement with the visual arts.

The aim of this program is informing, engaging and enabling youth in using the existing cultural spaces artistically, creatively and recreationally. The new fabric of the selected spaces will have multiple themes of content presented in contemporary new media sections inside the museum and heritage sites.

“Engaging Schools and Implementing Educational Outreach Activities at the Taxila Museum” supported by UNESCO. Museums tell generational stories and these stories need to be heard by the children and young people of Taxila city to develop an urge to visit the Taxila Museum and Heritage sites. The project was based on this motivation that was carried out by The Little Art.

Through this project, teachers were trained on effective ways to engage children and young people on learning through heritage and museum resources. Customized to Taxila Museum games were developed for children which were used by the teachers during the museum trips.