ACTIVIDADES DE PROMOCIÓN DE LA LECTURA Y DESARROLLO DE LA EXPRESIÓN O/E

  Figure 6.4: Visitor interviewees’ responses to the question, ‘How did you feel when you participated in those  0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 Percentage

Felt powerful and valued the opportunity to have a say Felt happy/positive/familiar/ comfortable/fun Felt powerful/positive but expressed some cynicism Felt cynical or

concerned Felt frustrated by technical malfunction

Follow-up questions 4, 5 and 6 were asked of participants who provided an affirmative answer to question 3, ‘Did you participate in any of the interactives?’ For a few reasons, these questions were mostly not asked over the course of the fieldwork: they were not relevant to non-participants, the researcher sometimes overlooked them, they felt gratuitous or repetitive based on the visitors’ previous answers and sometimes visitors wanted to keep the interview brief and move on to the next exhibit or finish their visit. As such, these questions consist of smaller sample sizes and the frequencies and percentages are less reliable. However, the comments from the visitors who did answer these questions were often insightful and pertinent to the study and, thus, are included in this thesis.

Interviewees responded positively when asked how they felt when they participated in the interactives, saying they felt powerful and valued the opportunity to have their say (34.9%) or felt happy or other similar positive sentiments (34.9%) (see Figure 6.4 and Table 6.11). The feeling of having agency and feeling powerful as a result of having their say in a museum was strong among interviewees across different age categories, occupations and education levels:

P1: Well, it gives you a little frisson of ‘yes, I want to say that’, doesn’t it? I got to say the biggest problem with Australian democracy is that we got to vote for Tony Abbott. It gives you that tiny sense of satisfaction, that little moment of something coming on in your brain that says ‘yes’.

Male, aged 55–64, professor, Anglo

P26: I actually found it quite powerful, writing in big letters on a wall. I wrote something about equality and being a democracy and that it’s so important. Just writing it in big letters was just so empowering, that someone would walk in and see that message that I’d written. So I quite liked that because you wouldn’t do that normally. You know, writing on walls, especially in a heritage building. To be given that freedom to do that was quite

empowering.

Female, aged 35–44, engineer, Italian/Burmese

P116: I just felt good because instead of needing to be 18 above, I got a chance to choose what I want.

RC: How old are you (to P116)? P116: I’m 11.

RC: How old are you [to P115]? P115: I’m eight.

RC: How did you feel?

P115: I felt like a part of everyone else because it’s not like we’re voting, but it’s like we’re getting a say and stuff.

Male, aged under 17, Anglo (P116)

and female, aged under 17, Anglo (P115), household occupation technician

P26’s comment that she was empowered by the idea that someone would see her comment about a topic that was important to her echoed M9 and M7’s comments that visitors wanted their

contributions to be visible in the museum (see Chapter 5). Note also how P115 and P116, who were eight and 11 years old, respectively, felt empowered and included through the opportunity to

make a choice and have a say in a museum environment—the engagement of young people at MoAD was a goal for the museum director.

A small number of visitors said they felt frustrated because the participatory activity did not work, in particular the digital interactives that were often frozen or not uploading material. People were also disappointed when, for instance, the ping-pong balls had run out and they could not vote. This shows the importance of maintenance and ongoing support for participatory exhibitions and validates the comments and concerns made by internal museum staff during the museum professionals’ interviews about participatory exhibition’s demands on resources (see Chapter 5). Just over one in 10 visitors (11.6%) who answered this question expressed cynicism about the invitation to participate and have their say even if they found the experience a positive one. This was the first example of visitors assuming or asking if their comments about democracy and Australian politics and politicians were going to be forwarded to politicians or other decision- makers. In total, 29 individual interviewees (20.7%) across the 16 interview questions asked if the visitors’ contributions to the Power of 1 would be forwarded to decision-makers, often politicians. These responses recurred throughout the interviews and became more specific, and were not anticipated by anyone on the development team (including the researcher). No-one ever conceived that the influence of the Power of 1 could expand beyond the institution’s walls. Many visitors, however, saw the potential for the museum to affect change and make a difference. Comments made by P71 (below) are just some of the multiple examples of the visitors’ expectations or assumptions that the comments they wrote or read would be forwarded to politicians or other decision-makers. This could have been because they were participating in the Old Parliament House building. As further discussed in Chapter 8, visitors perceived that the exhibition experience was a legitimate forum—a ‘public sphere’—for canvassing and capturing citizens’ views about politics, democracy and current affairs, and became a continuing theme as illustrated by these comments:

P71: I thought, ‘Well, what’s going to happen to this if I put this information out there?’ Because if it actually does make a difference, then that would be a good thing but if it’s just going to go back into the file somewhere ... I was curious about where it was going to end up.

Female, aged 45–54, public servant, mixed race

P117: Part of you sort of does the whole, ‘You know, I’m doing this for nothing’, as from the point of view where no-one is going to read these and, you know, it’s not like the comments that you make will go anywhere. But then on the flip side, as I said, it certainly got us talking about a lot of things.

Female, aged 35–44, technician, Anglo

The cynicism expressed by P117 reflects the feelings of powerlessness towards politics and politicians in Australia (Evans, Halupka and Stoker 2014; IGPA 2014), and demonstrates the need

for museum participatory experiences to avoid token participation (Pateman 1976) and include a response mechanism within the museum experience to encourage participation as outlined in the CLEAR framework (Lowndes, Pratchett and Stoker 2006).

Table 6.11. Visitor interviewees’ responses to the question, ‘How did you feel when you participated in those  interactives?’ 

Q4 How did you feel when you participated in those interactives?

Frequency Valid (%)

Valid Felt powerful and valued the opportunity to have a say 15 34.9

Felt happy/positive/familiar/comfortable/fun/satisfying 15 34.9

Felt powerful/positive but expressed some cynicism 5 11.6

Felt cynical or concerned 4 9.3

Felt frustrated by technical malfunction 3 7.0

Felt nothing 1 2.3

Total 43 100.0

Missing Did not ask 97

Total 140