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Encountering the ‘other’: interpreting student experiences of a multi-sensory museum exhibition

Version 2 2024-06-06, 07:50
Version 1 2015-06-18, 11:12
journal contribution
posted on 2024-06-06, 07:50 authored by P Schorch, J Walton, N Priest, Yin ParadiesYin Paradies
The Immigration Museum Melbourne, Australia, launched the Identity: Yours, Mine, Ours exhibition in 2011. Aimed primarily at secondary school students, this long-term installation seeks to foster reflection on identity and belonging, as well as dialogue about racism, through an interactive, immersive museum experience. This paper describes a multi-method research project, which included narrative interviews, focus groups and video diaries with 47 Year 11–12 students from three secondary schools in Victoria, Australia, and discusses each method's contribution to an overall empirical understanding of the installation's impact on students' experiences. Emerging findings suggest the ways in which the exhibition space supports students to encounter and engage with individual stories and experiences, thus moving beyond an abstract tolerance of cultural diversity by unsettling the self and destabilising stereotyped and prejudiced interpretations of the ‘other’. The paper concludes by discussing the potential for triangulated qualitative approaches to provide rich emic perspectives on multi-sensory exhibitions.

History

Journal

Journal of intercultural studies

Volume

36

Pagination

221-240

Location

Oxford, Eng.

ISSN

0725-6868

eISSN

1469-9540

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2015, Taylor and Francis

Issue

2

Publisher

Taylor and Francis