Expanding Audiences through Intergenerational Programming

ID: WMA2026_628

Track:

This session focuses on how museums bridge generational gaps to ensure long-term vitality. Leaders from the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Nora Eccles Harris Museum, and Kimball Art Center share innovative strategies for engaging children, college students, and seniors. This panel explores how tailoring programs to specific life stages fosters community engagement. Attendees will gain a “Life-Stage Toolkit” to broaden their audience base and build sustainable, inclusive institutional models resonating across patron lifespan.

Session Information

Format: Regular session/panel (roundtable, single speaker, etc.)

Uniqueness: This session uniquely maps the “life-cycle” of engagement by synthesizing broad success stories from three distinct museum types into a scalable framework for participants.

Objectives: This session is designed to transform intergenerational programming from a niche outreach effort into a core strategy for institutional sustainability. Through analyzing three distinct institutional models, participants will achieve the following learning objectives: 1.   Life-Stage Strategic Mapping: Participants will learn to identify and dismantle museum barriers for three critical demographics: children (UMOCA), young adults/college students (NEHMA), and seniors (Kimball Art Center). By the end of the session, attendees will be able to map their own museum’s age gaps and apply specific, proven tactics, including youth-led curation or senior-focused wellness programs, to broaden reach. 2.   Collaborative Program Design: Moving beyond the “one-size-fits-all” approach, attendees will gain tools to design programs fostering reciprocity. Learning outcomes include the ability to facilitate Knowledge Café style dialogues within participant’s home institutions, ensuring that diverse age groups are not spectators but active contributors to the museum’s mission, vitality and future. 3.   Measurable Impact & Advocacy: Participants will acquire a framework for measuring a social return on investment across generations. They will leave with a “Life-Stage Toolkit”, a digital resource of metrics and case studies empowering participants to advocate for intergenerational funding and board support. Ultimately, this session inspires a shift from passive visitor services to active community-building, providing a scalable roadmap for museums to become essential, lifelong hubs of engagement.

Engagement: Utilizing a “Live Resource Map” attendees contribute their own successful age-specific programing via QR code. Following the rotating café discussions, we conclude with a “Rapid-Fire Ideation” session. Digital worksheets will be provided in advance and accessible during the session, ensuring multiple means of representation. This collaborative environment honors the professional expertise of the participants, fostering reciprocity rather than a passive lecture format.

Relationship to Theme:

Audience

Audiences: Curators/Scientists/Historians Development and Membership Officers Events Planning Marketing & Communications (Including Social Media) Registrars, Collections Managers 

Professional Level: All levels 

Scalability: The strength of this session lies in its scalability and the diverse institutional DNA of the panel, representing a blueprint for the entire WMA membership. By featuring a mid-sized contemporary museum (UMOCA), a specialized university museum (NEHMA), and a community-focused art center (Kimball), we provide entry points for every attendee regardless of their size, budget or mission. Application Across Scales & Types: ·     Small/Rural Museums: The session focuses on low-cost + high-impact engagement. For example, the Kimball’s senior citizen programming highlights leveraging existing community partnerships to reach isolated demographics without a massive marketing budget. ·     Academic/Research Institutions: NEHMA’s focus on the student-to-citizen pipeline provides a model for university galleries to integrate curriculum-based outreach with professional development and future engagement. ·     Large Urban Centers: UMOCA’s strategies for engaging children provides scalable models for high-volume family programming that prioritizes deep, repeat engagement over one-off visits. This Knowledge Café format is inherently inclusive. By breaking the fourth wall of the traditional panel, we invite participants to bring their specific institutional challenges to the table. This peer-to-peer exchange ensures that a collections manager from a small historical society or an educator from a large science center can find common ground in the universal “life-stage” framework. Digital resources, available via QR codes, ensure that our tools remain accessible and adaptable long after the conference ends, regardless of the attendee’s geographic or organizational constraints.

Participants