Authentic Youth Engagement: How Te Manawa Built Real Relationships

When Pru Pim walks around Te Manawa Museum of Art, Science, and History, she sees families coming in to enjoy the exhibitions and programs. What she doesn’t see are teenagers.

“[Young people] seem to have decided there’s nothing here for them. We have to coax them in and show them that there is,” said Pru, Te Manawa’s Inclusion and Accessibility Coordinator.

Te Manawa is an important community hub in the small New Zealand city of Palmerston North.  In exploring how Te Manawa could become more OF/BY/FOR ALL, Pru and the team decided to focus on engaging local teens. They saw youth as a real priority both for their inclusion efforts and for the organization overall. 

“The youth group represents one of the biggest shifts in society that we're going to have to address. Either we do it actively or it's going to be addressed for us. I'd rather we took charge of that situation in a way that helped us grow and evolve than be in a reactive situation where we are in catch-up mode,” said Janet Ellery, leader of the museum’s People & Partnerships team.

Getting Specific about Defining Community

In the OF/BY/FOR ALL approach, organizations have to get very specific about who they mean when they describe a community. “Teens” is too broad. The OF/BY/FOR ALL staff challenged the Te Manawa team to get more specific about which teens they felt they could and should strive to involve. Based on their available resources and connections, the team chose to target three different youth communities: 

1. Young people who participate at the Palmerston North Youth Space

2. Art students at their last year of college during the MATA (Manawatu Art Teachers Association) Excellence art exhibition, which is held annually at Te Manawa

3.  Young people entering college at the Universal College of Learning, a local polytechnic college

The team started community conversations with 12 local young people at the Youth Space. Pru and her colleague Mirjam de Oude led the engagement in partnership with Remy Waldteufel-Irvine, a Palmerston North City Council student city co-ordinator. Here are the steps they used to engage teens involved with Youth Space.

1. Shift from centering the institution to centering the community. 

Staff started by asking young people about Te Manawa and their memories of the place. But most of them had never been to Te Manawa before. So the team adapted and modified the questions, focusing more on the youth and what their preferred experience would be. Instead of asking: ‘Why haven’t  you been to Te Manawa?’ they asked: ‘If you went Te Manawa, what would you like to see?’

The Youth Space teens had a lot to say - and the Te Manawa team had to learn to talk less and listen more. As Remy from the Youth Space noted: “Our youth were quite challenging for them. Te Manawa had some cool ideas around content and programming to reach that group but our big point was you need to talk and have an honest conversation because there's opportunity for Te Manawa to make the museum meaningful to local youths. It could be something as simple as making time on Thursdays between 4 - 6 PM to have food and a conversation with community to ask what's some things we can put in that represent you in the space.”

2. Use methods rooted in community.

Instead of using a museum-suggested facilitation structure for community conversations, the team used a conversation model suggested by partners at the Youth Space called Chuck, Keep, Change. The activity provided a positive way for young people to think about what’s done well in the museum and give feedback about what can be improved. The familiar method got youth talking and provided a sense of control and ownership. 

“They seemed like they genuinely cared about our opinions,” said Dante Bentson-Budd, a 19-year old regular at the Youth Space. “So I thought, let's see what they're after. What they wanted was to hear our view and I did feel heard by them.”  

3.  Reflect honestly on institutional shortcomings relative to the community. 

Museums, according to Janet, tend to set themselves up as guardians of important treasures who decide how these artifacts will be accessed and in what form. In speaking to Remy and the Youth Space, the museum team had to face the fact that what they offer is not resonating with that audience. 

“Te Manawa has always been around. I went there once or twice but it was just the same thing each time, so it got boring real quick,” said Dante.  “Another thing is that I'm Maori, that's my ethnicity. But there's not much related to Maori culture in the museum. There’s so much behind New Zealand’s history that’s not talked about that’s important to us. They define who we are today. Why aren’t we showing this?”

4. Build Real Relationships Rooted in Community Interests

Opening the conversation to include young people created a space for teens to vocalize the changes they want to see. Feedback from Dante and others revealed there are opportunities for Te Manawa to become more relevant to them. 

For example, the teens saw the existing high school exhibition, MATA, as a bright spot. “That shows young people that their views deserve to be seen as well and that young people do get a say of what gets put up in there,” said Dante.

Young people have shown they want to engage. For that to happen, they seek intentional, ongoing, and empathetic listening spaces. The team plans to move away from surveys and one-off gatherings to more regular and open lines of communications. The Te Manawa team wants to foster deeper relationships so more collaborations can occur.

“One of the things a place like Te Manawa can do is bring communities together,” said Janet. “Focusing on youth helps us actively evolve in a way that we might not have been interested in if we hadn't been on this road.”