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Museum Engagement Tour

Project: Museum Tour

Course: Themed Entertainment Design taught by MK Haley
Date: November 2023
Location: Texas Science and Natural History Museum, Austin Texas

This project was an opportunity to create a museum tour stop for the Texas Science and Natural History Museum that drew inspiration from “Hack the Museum”. Hack the Museum is a company started by Nick Gray that aims to make visiting museums more exciting through “games, guides, and gossip”. It uses exciting stories and interactive activities to draw guests in, while putting some useful information in as well.

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For my tour stop, I focused on the large fossil of the Quetzalcoatlus Nortropi pterosaur located in the atrium of the museum. This fossil is an eye-catcher; it soars above guests head and shows off the 35 foot wingspan that its species was famous for. I was inspired by biomimicry - the process of learning from nature to fuel manmade innovation - and therefore sought to engage guests with the research and current applications of pterosaur flight efficiency. Using Hack the Museum's technique of "guides, games, and gossip", I created a tour that incorporated a fun activity while providing guests with the facts as well.

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I carried out this tour for classmates and invited guests in October of 2023, and it went quite successfully! My professor's feedback said: "Very thorough documentation that will be super useful to our hosts in the event that they wanted to recreate this stop on a tour.  You might want to do the activity several times with guests of a variety of ages to get a sense of how long it consistently takes depending upon the guests physical ability to fold, and ability to focus. - Downright perfect!" My documentation was eventually provided to the museum for further use.

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