GeoFort in The Netherlands takes the Prize!
Peter Stöckler (Gemeinderat Graz), Annemies Broekgaarden (Head Public & Education Rijks Museum Amsterdam), winner Willemijn Simon van Leeuwen with her son Remi Bennis (GeoFort), Jörg Ehtreiber (Director children’s museum FRida & freD Graz, President of Hands On!). Foto: fini Agentur
At a lively ceremony which took place on the evening of Thursday 9 June at the ECSITE Conference in Graz, Austria, the results of the 2016 Children in Museums Award were announced. 17 museums took part in the competition this year, with a short-list of nine finalists listed below. The entries were of an extremely high quality and a real testament to the growing maturity of a relatively new field for the museum profession.
The judges said:‘GeoFort is a genuinely unique and innovative experience. It makes the potentially dry topics of navigation and cartography very hands on, social and fun. It gets people outdoors but there is enough to do inside if the weather is bad. The site has been well adapted from an old fortress into a modern science centre and has a strong ethos of exploring and improving the world without being worthy. It is inclusive for children of a variety of ages and those who learn in different ways, with enough variety to engage young people and hold their attention. GeoFort is an active, realistic and enjoyable complex where children learn by doing while having fun. It is an inspiring place and a worthy winner of the 2016 Children in Museums Award.’
THE SPONSOR Grateful thanks are due to Mercis BV for their generous sponsorship of the Award.
Read the Judges’ Report by clicking the link below: