How can museums attract more youth? The Youth Advisory Board, an initiative of the Hermitage museums in Saint Petersburg and Amsterdam, will try to find answers to this question. No less than three students of the Reinwardt Academy are part of the board.

Recently, the Hermitage museums in Saint Petersburg and Amsterdam started the project Museum 15/24 in which the education departments of several Dutch and Russian museums are to learn from each other’s best practices. The goal is to make museum visits more attractive to youngsters aged 15 to 24. The so-called Youth Advisory Board plays an important role in the project: ten Dutch and ten Russian students will be testing the educational projects of the participating museums and make recommendations for improvement. Part of the board are Reinwardt Academy students Imre Spaan, Mulan Go and Shannon van Essen.

Like professionals
‘In the upcoming weeks, we will be testing the educational programmes of the Zuiderzee Museum, the Kröller-Müller Museum and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. And this fall, we are going to visit museums in Saint Petersburg’, says Imre. The work offers the three students a great opportunity to put theory into practice: ‘The bachelor’s programme has taught us very well how to analyze educational projects and how to think of alternative ways of doing things. We really know how to look at these projects like professionals.’