Affective atmospheres in children’s museum experiences

ABSTRACT

Taking inspiration from ethnographic methods, this study presents the experiences of young children and their families, as they interact with a display at the Workers Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark, analysing these through Ben Anderson's concept affective atmospheres. Adding to scholarship on emotion in leisure studies, the paper presents young visitor experiences as ongoing relational interactions between bodies, objects, and places, where atmospheres are central to the sensory leisure experience and deeply enmeshed with affectivity. With this perspective, we contribute to broadening the scholarship that challenges the division between positive and negative emotions, which continues to be foregrounded in leisure scholarship, arguing that such binary framework does not account for the granularity and complexity of emotional worlds. The research invites scholars and practitioners to attend to affective atmospheres in visitor experiences, while letting go of the notion that these can be controlled through careful curation.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion
• affect
• atmosphere
• museum
• visitor experience
• ethnography

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank The Workers Museum (including the display area and ‘non-human actor’ inhabiting it), participating children, and their families for making this research possible. We would also like to extend our appreciation and gratitude towards the reviewers, who have offered great recommendations and suggestions, strengthening the contribution of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Names are only used with prior informed consent and a pseudonym is used for those who requested it.

2. Primary caregivers and the children gave verbal approval to be filmed during their interactions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stefanie Steinbeck

Stefanie Steinbeck is an educational anthropologist and PhD Fellow at Department of Business Humanities and Law, Copenhagen Business School. Specializing in visitor experiences and participatory methodologies, she prioritises underrepresented voices and perspectives in research. Her current research focuses on children in museum spaces, emphasizing their embodied-affective experiences. She works to strengthen the collaboration between academic research and museum practice.

Ana María Munar

Ana Maria Munar is Associate Professor at Department of Business Humanities and Law, Copenhagen Business School. Her research applies philosophical approaches to gender, higher education and tourism. In her latest book ‘Desire: Subject, Sexuation and Love ‘ she applies psychoanalysis, philosophy, art and literature to explore what desire means for our human condition.