The Royal British Columbia Museum, in the midst of reinventing its exhibits and displays to become a more inclusive and modern institution, is getting a helping hand from dozens of university students this weekend.
The museum will be the focal point of Royal Roads University’s Design Thinking Challenge. Nine student teams from across Canada and one from the U.S. will offer ideas on how the Royal B.C. Museum can be something more than a place that stores collections and historical records.
“Some people think of museums as dusty places with only old stories and history in them,” said Kim Gough, learning program developer at the Royal B.C. Museum. “But I think museums can be much more about our contemporary society. They can be about current issues and they can also be forward-thinking.”
Royal Roads said design thinking is an approach to solving complex problems using empathy and continuous prototyping, and allows students to step into an important public conversation at a pivotal time for the museum.
Museums are at a critical time of “reckoning,” including dealing with issues of systemic racism, Gough said.
“We really need to address that head on and to think about how that is impacting our community and people who visit us and don’t visit us,” she said.
“We need to think in new ways, and this feels like a really wonderful opportunity to think in a new way.”
Students in teams of four from Camosun College, the King's University, Idaho State University, Assiniboine College, University of Toronto, Université de Montreal, McMaster, Royal Roads, Wilfrid Laurier and Okanagan College are taking part in the online event starting today and continuing through to Monday.
Gough said museums should allow communities to “represent themselves and be their own storytellers.”
Royal Roads bachelor of commerce student Amar Singh said design thinking lends itself perfectly to the process of discovering what people value.
“I hope to develop and take away the skill of listening with empathy to others,” he said.
“I guess what excites me the most is discovering different perspectives on the same matter by talking to others and having my own biases shattered.”
Gough sees the museum as a place that gives space for communities to represent themselves, where British Columbians contemplate the past while connecting it to the present and the future.
“The museum would be an exciting place, not a quiet place,” she said. “It might be buzzing, it might be loud — people laughing, crying and wanting to gather together. To me, that would be a beautiful place to work in and to be in.”
Gough said student teams will play a key role in making a vision like that a reality.
