Core facilitation tools to make your museum programmes more interactive

In my previous post on facilitation skills, ‘A Quick Guide to Facilitation Skills on Guided Tours‘, I talked about the many skills required to being an effective facilitator and the core areas that I focus on in my Thinking Museum® Approach workshops.

Today I’m going to focus on some of the core facilitation tools that you can use to help to engage participants and make sure everyone is involved on a guided museum experience.

• Encourage observation and noticing
• Clarifying 
• Linking or bridging
• Summarising
• Encourage quiet group members
• Giving balanced feedback

Encourage observation and noticing

Observation and noticing are an essential foundation of using the Thinking Museum® Approach. Do not be tempted to skip this step. After a small amount of time looking at the object in question, ask the group to describe what they see and notice. This is a great way of getting everyone involved in the discussion – you do not need to have any prior information or knowledge and it’s just a case of using your eyes. This is essentially the ‘warm-up’ before you open up the discussion to more interpretive questions. Giving participants the chance to fully observe and describe an object or artwork before interpretations are offered, reduces the chance of hasty reactions. Focusing on close looking followed up by careful describing allows participants to see the “whole picture” and to notice parts they would ordinarily have missed too. 

Clarifying

This involves asking a question to gather more information, get clarity and seek connections (It shows that you have heard what the speaker has said but perhaps do not fully understand or require more information). Some clarifying stems could include the following:

‘Would/Could you tell me a little more about…?’

‘Let me see if I understand… ‘

‘I’d be interested in hearing more about..’.

You can also ask for more evidence:

‘What do you see that makes you say that?’

‘What evidence can we find in the picture for that idea?’

‘What more can we find in the artwork?’

Linking or Bridging

This helps the group to follow the discussion and to connect ideas that may have been said earlier in the discussion. Make links between different strands of thoughts (i.e. ‘We have a variety of opinions here, Mary mentioned X earlier and Tom now thinks Y’) and note any changes that have happened during the discussion – this could be a change of opinion.

Summarising

At certain points during the discussion, you can take the opportunity to summarise what has been discussed so far. This helps participants to remember the key points up to this point and understand what has been said. You can outline the emerging common ground as well as any unresolved differences in opinion. You can use your summary to check with everyone that you’ve got it right.This can also be a springboard for new discussion if comments are starting to dry up.

Encourage quiet group members

Don’t allow anyone to dominate the discussion, but equally don’t pressure anyone to respond. People should feel encouraged but not required to participate. Some people take time to warm up and feel comfortable. Others prefer to remain quiet for the duration. Personally I would never point at anyone and ask them for their thoughts as lots of people (myself included!) do not like being put ‘on the spot’. I use subtle hand gestures and eye contact with the quieter group members to encourage contributions. I also position quieter group members closer to me so that they don’t have to raise their voice too much should they wish to take part.

Giving balanced feedback

This is a hotly contested subject whenever it comes up in our trainings. I prefer to give non-judgemental feedback to anyone that contributes to a group discussion. I treat everyone equally. I will tell you why – if you get overly enthusiastic with one person’s comment and then do not treat another person’s comment with the same enthusiasm, that person might end up wondering why they weren’t valued the same way or might even not bother commenting again. So, judge comments as neither good nor bad as this sets the tone of fairness within the group. Develop your own response system to participant’s comments. Have a few standard neutral phrases that work for you and are ready to use in any situation:

‘Thank you for sharing..’

‘I’ve never thought about it that way before.’

‘Will you elaborate?

‘I’m listening, tell me more…’

‘Let’s talk about that…’

Using these verbal facilitation tools as part of the Thinking Museum® Approach will help you to create enjoyable and inspiring discussions on your interactive guided tours. Have you tried using any of these in the past? What results did you see?