The view of the child and young person in designing museum and gallery spaces for learning,exploration, discovery and research.

Spaces supporting children and young people's learning are changing in response to the information technology revolution, government agendas in the field of culture and education and wider international agendas such as children's rights to have a voice and participate in matters concerning them.
New approaches to pedagogy are emerging in both the educational and cultural sectors and there are important questions arising about the roles of professionals and the rights of learners in these spaces.
Children from a very early age can participate in conversation (visual and textual) about design and new methodologies are developing that allow this to be realised as well as researched.
This series of workshops will allow for a collaboration of museum professionals with a group of senior academics who have current involvement in researching children and young people's learning in informal educational environments. The principal objective will be to develop strategies that support children and young people's view of the museum to inform design decisions and related research. The workshops, which will be hosted by museums, will explore existing methodologies and approaches that have so far been used in museum spaces to engage children in discussions about decision making around the principles of design. Participants of the workshops will then develop and adapt these approaches in situ. One workshop will involve children and young people. They will work alongside architecture students from the University of Sheffield who will be briefed to act in a support role to encourage the view of the museum space from the child's point of view to be recorded. Design activities on the theme 'the museum I'd like' will engage the children in a valuable process of envisaging the possibilities of museums as spaces for learning, exploration, discovery and research. The results of the workshops will be presented at an open conference at the end of the series and will be valuable to learners, parents, teachers and other educators in the educational and cultural sectors. A journal article will present and discuss the findings by key collaborators from the Museum and Higher Educational sectors.