Visitors to the Indigenous Australians exhibition

Author(s)

Lynda Kelly
Category

Museullaneous
Published

02 October 2009
Read time

2 minutes

Who visits the Indigenous Australians Exhibition and what do they think about it?

The Museum is planning to develop a new Indigenous Australians exhibition. To inform this development an evaluation of the current exhibition was conducted in during 2009. A total of 167 face to face interviews were conducted with visitors and results summarised below.

The main motivation for visiting the exhibition was either a general visit (47%) 35% or a desire to learn about Indigenous culture, people and history (35%).

98% of visitors understood the main messages the exhibition is trying to convey, described as:

Indigenous culture, spirituality, identity and pre-settlement history
the history of what happened to Indigenous people/ the stolen generation
racism, discrimination, abuse and conflict
reconciliation, the future
educate people and raise awareness of Indigenous Australians
justice, rights and respect

Visitors were asked to describe their feelings after visiting the exhibition and most respondents described feelings centred on learning. They said they felt informed, interested, gained understanding and were curious.
The exact nature of the learning was described as:

88% discovered new information
77% built on existing knowledge
60% refreshed their knowledge
60% remembered things they hadn’t thought of for a while
51% shared some of their knowledge with other people
83% felt curious about finding out more
85% felt they had been reminded of the importance of some issues
67% got a real buzz out of what they learnt
36% felt it was all very familiar to them
81% felt it was pleasant to be reminded and to learn more
51% of respondents reported sharing their knowledge with others and 83% expressed a desire to find out more.

For 27% of respondents the most interesting feature of the exhibition was the art, 17% craft and artefacts, 16% stolen generation and the maze, 11% weapons, 10% history.

81% of respondents correctly identified Indigenous people as telling the stories in the exhibition and 83% supported the merging of political and cultural issues in the exhibition.

Visitor profile: