Abstract
As educational facilities and museums around the world are buffeted by the COVID-19 crisis, Japanese museums are no exception. This harsh situation, however, could bring those who are concerned an opportunity to realize what they have missed; the feelings of people who are not able to visit museums because of different reasons – illness, poverty, inconvenience of transportation and so on. In Japan, the awareness of the idea of “social inclusion” has not been so high: not many museum staff have good understanding of what “inclusive” means. In addition, university students who are taking courses to be future museum professionals are not familiar with the phrase “social inclusion”. As they lack the concept of “inclusion,” many museums focus only on the “visitors” who are possible to visit the museums by themselves without reasonable accommodation. Fortunately, or not, the lockdown has given them an opportunity to experience inaccessible life to museums. Furthermore, university programs have been forced to adopt online courses due to the lockdown. In one online program, students have tried making short educational videos for children in the hospitals. This program seems to be very effective to have them realize that there are people who are in different environments or difficult situations. While many of the museums are struggling to get back the pre-COVID life, we also need to use this experience to create more “inclusive” museums around Japan.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2021 Special Focus: What Museums Post Pandemic?
KEYWORDS
Education, University, Participation, Accessibility, Online
