Today I’m so happy to be talking to Hanna Piksen about deconstructing the traditional guided tour and creating a completely new experience where guides are given free rein to design and lead the tour entirely from their own perspective. 

Hanna Piksen is the Head of Co-learning at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. This is the national museum for digital culture, design and architecture in the Netherlands. 

Hanna has a background in art history, art education and in collaborating with artists. 

She believes that the most valuable and unexpected things happen when museum education is content based, visitor focused and experiment driven. 

In today’s episode Hanna talks to me about the Detour Experiences that she has developed in Het Nieuwe Instituut. Detours are unlike any other guided tour you have been on.

Detours are deconstructed museum tours that give their guides the flexibility to present information in a way of their choosing. Each one is specially designed from the Detour guide’s unique perspective as a musician, dancer, art teacher or designer. 

In this episode we talk about the innovative hiring process for their unique team, the qualities that they are looking for in a Detour guide & the unlearning that the department had to do in order to co-construct these new experiences.

We explore how a Detour Experience works and the ways in which it differs from a traditional guided tour. 

We also chat about what benefits the guides and the audience get from these experiences and Hanna shares feedback on how they have been received. 

This one will open your eyes to new ways of looking at, thinking about and designing guided tours.

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Hanna Piksen

Het Nieuwe Instituut

More info about Detours and Detour Guides at Het Nieuwe Instituut

MuseumNext article about Detour guides https://www.museumnext.com/article/overcoming-museum-fatigue-with-detour-guides/