Appealing to the senses, long-run workshops and exhibitions on soil for museum visitors

In Saitama Museum of Rivers, workshops and exhibitions on soil have been organized for more than 10 years and we will share the experience in this presentation.

To recognize and stimulate curiosity towards soil, touching or observing soil and making participants feel the soil is effective. Long-run workshops carried out for the museum visitors who are not familiar with soil are, 1. making shining soil balls with clayey soil, 2. dying cloths with fluvial and volcanic soil, 3. stepping on soil of fluvial (paddy) and volcanic (upland farm) soil, 4. painting with soil of different color, 5. observing soil animals and others. All workshops include touching and/or observing soil. Main participant is primary school students and below with their parents. Questionnaire was taken for 2 hours workshops 1 and 2, and both showed high level of satisfaction. Free statement of the questionnaire were as follows, “Surprised that fine soil becomes so hard (1)”, “Could understand well about soil (1, 2)”, “Feels good with shiny surface (1)”, “Very much absorbed in the work (1, 2)”, “Surprised with the color difference of the two soils (2)”, “It was fun to knead the soil (2)”. From these answers, it can be said that participants enjoyed working on soil while learning about soil. It seems good that participants could bring what they made back home, too. From the experience of different workshops, it is important to talk casually about soil during the workshop (while participants are working on the today’s menu) not only to the young participants, but to their parents. Not the formal, lecture type but casual and relaxed talk stimulates curiosity to soil, which may lead to next question. As for exhibition, Soil Monolith Exhibition (2012), What is Soil (touring exhibition, 2015), Soil Watching (2023) were organized. “What is Soil” toured 13 different places, 7 of which content was fully exhibited and others partly, and number of total visitors was 50,757. Age of visitors is wide, and it was tried that contents would not be too technical yet keeping necessary information. Effort was made on hands-on and real material (e.g. monoliths) exhibits. From the questionnaire, visitors were satisfied because “could get to know about soil which is close to us but not familiar with”, “could actually see the real soil and touch the exhibits”, and not satisfied because “too technical and too many letters” (free statements). Contribution of soil monoliths to raise interest toward soil seemed high. Guide tours were arranged several times and they were popular, so face to face guide tour has great demand. Overall, satisfaction level was high and effective on people to get to know soil, with a room for better achievement.