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Thessa Jensen
Peter Vistisen
Conference theme: Transforming visitor participation and learning
Title:Transforming learning and visitor participation as a basis for developing new busi-ness opportunities in an outlying municipality - A case study of Hjørring Municipal-ity and Børglum Monastery, Denmark
Abstract:The aim of the paper is to show how teachers, students, and businesses can develop business opportunities in cooperation with each other, and to show which problems both ethical and practical might arise due to different aims in the group of users.
Contact information:Thessa Jensen, ph.d.Associate ProfessorInstitute of Communication and PsychologyNyhavnsgade 149000 AalborgEmail: [email protected]
Peter VistisenAssistant ProfessorInstitute of Communication and PsychologyNyhavnsgade 149000 AalborgEmail: [email protected]
Transforming visitor participation! 1
Transforming learning and visitor participation as a basis for developing new busi-
ness opportunities in an outlying municipality - A case study of Hjørring Municipal-
ity and Børglum Monastery, Denmark
FIRST DRAFT!
Starting point of the above mentioned project is the Christmas television calendar by TV2 (Danish television) for 2011. This calendar was shown every day from 1st till 24th Decem-ber for half an hour on TV, filmed at Børglum Monastery. The monastery is a museum and farm, the former depending heavily on tourism, as do many of the family attractions, mu-seums, and small businesses in Northern Jutland. 3% of all businesses in the region de-pend on tourism as their main income (Danmarks Statistik, 2008).
Being a main actor in the historical and cultural development of Northern Jutland, the deci-sion to use the monastery in a film or TV production seemed straightforward. The munici-pality of Hjørring decided in 2008 to collaborate with Aalborg University to use one of the regions most prominent historical figures, the bishop Stygge Krumpen, as basis for a pro-ject, which should leverage the development of new tourist attractions and transform a visit to the region into a more cultural and learning based experience (Matchmaker, 2010:24-25). Thus the story should be seen as a fulcrum for different small and medium enterprises (SME) as well as museums and other cultural institutions.
In 2010 the number of visitors is 23.000 for the monastery (Danmarks Statistik, 2010). In December 2011 the monastery was open every weekend, during which 15.000 visitors went through the exhibitions, which at that time still included parts of the television set (Nordjyske, 2011). As with other film and christmas calendar shows the impact of the show was immediate and huge but has since faltered, due to the non existent marketing strategy of both Hjørring Municipality and Børglum Monestary. This can be seen in the southern region of Sverige, Skåne, where the crime stories of Wallander by Henning Mankell were placed and filmed (DN.se, 2009) .
The challenge for both Børglum Monastery and Hjørring Municipality lies thus in the future utilisation of the increased attention and interest due to the Christmas Calendar, and the anticipated renewed interest if the film about the portrayed family will be a reality. The film is expected to be filmed during the summer 2012 (Nordjyske, 2012).
Because of lack of funding and no apparent marketing strategy the project’s website hasn’t been updated since january 2012 (www.krumpen.dk). Any per chance visitor has to resort to the indicated links to other websites like www.lysetsland.dk in this way rendering the Krumpen website useless.
Transforming visitor participation! 2
Figure 1: The inactive www.krumpen.dk (left) and the active, but less specific, www.lysetsstrand.dk (right).
Hjørring Municipality is aware of the problem with a “dead” website and contacted Aalborg University in autumn 2011 to create increased traffic on the website. The problem being that the project Stygge Krumpen isn’t commonly known in Northern Jutland which means that SMEs aren’t interested in developing products, events, or attractions using the design and the history the project is based upon. This in turn makes it difficult for Hjørring Munici-pality to get funding for their project ideas, creating a negative downward circle of action.
Since the challenge was creating traffic on the website itself, it was decided to shift focus from the SMEs to the end user. The whole idea behind Stygge Krumpen was reexamined using the 3 Domain Model by Peter Vistisen (figure 1 and Vistisen, 2011).
Figure 2: 3 Domain Model by Peter Vistisen
Transforming visitor participation! 3
The three domains being business, people, and technology, combined and intertwined in a holistic perspective on how different knowledge domains correlate in the process of creat-ing user-centered innovation, which are sustainable in a business context. Through a her-meneutical perspective, the 3-D model suggest that user-centered innovation must come from the unified overlap between the economic perspective of business, the rationalistic perspective of technology, and the humanistic perspective of user-centered design. The model is used to identify the needs of the end user, the ‘People’, and relate these to the SMEs (Business) as well as museums and other attractions, before finally deciding on which technology is to be used to enhance traffic on the website. The 3 Domain Model has the development of strategic design as its aim and is thus useful in reflections on market-ing as well as web and other design issues.
The final concept development was conducted in a workshop with students on the 7th se-mester Interactive Digital Media at Aalborg University, using the analysis of the current problems together with the requirements from the municipality.
The requirements being:
The 3 Domain Model takes all of the requirements into account shown by cues in the brackets. Using the model during the analysis gives the possibility to examine the ques-tions asked for the three main topics. At the same time the model shows that part of the solution will be under the control of either the businesses or the municipality (being part of the business topic) while other parts of the content will be under no control or just partial control by other participants in the project. The model therefore acts as the articles main framework for discussing the barriers, which exist in praxis’s wheren multiple companies, and organizations with haves significant dif-ferenceses in their dominating rationale, and furthermore describes, how a holistic per-spective on the problem domains can overcome these barriers.
The people domain“What is the desire? - Is the solution relevant?”
- The concept should focus on learning and transforming the visit to the different attrac-tions in the region (People)
- Historical and cultural awareness (People, Business)
- SMEs should be integrated in the concept (Business)
- Low cost in creating the content for the website (Technology)
- Low cost in maintaining the website (Technology, Business)
- Use of the Stygge Krumpen design line (Technology, Business). The design line of the Stygge Krumpen project is supposed being used by the SMEs in connection with new products and services. At the time being (spring 2012) the design is visible only on the website: www.krumpen.dk
Transforming visitor participation! 4
To increase traffic on any website it has to contain useful and meaningful information. This is at the time being not the case for www.krumpen.dk. It is obvious that many of the de-sires of tourists are taken care of on websites like www.lysetsland.dk or www.visitnordjylland.dk. Both developed with tourists as the end user in mind.
Who is the end user of www.krumpen.dk? For one it has to be someone who can buy products and partake in events developed by the intended associated SMEs. At the same time visiting figures from Børglum Monastery shows 46% of the visitors being families with children (Kunckel, 2009:10). The Rottbøll’s themselves have expressed the wish for being more interesting for families. At the time being the monastery doesn’t have many exhibits which in any way could be interesting for children.
Taking this information at face value, the workshop with the students focussed on engag-ing children in the development of the content. If children are experiencing interesting and meaningful events, they will typically pass this on to their parents and grandparents. Thus using Word-of-Mouth to spread the knowledge. Parents will typically see to that their chil-dren are entertained and if possible even educated while on holiday (Gram, 2007). Gram shows that children are the main instigators when planning holidays. Children decide what to visit and participate in and the parents oblige. At the same time children like to get in-volved in the events which take place during the holidays. Involvement being anything from bodily engagement as well as developing a given event (Christensen, 2007). The best way to engage children in a given event is to get them to develop the content of the same. This will at the same time give the possibility to teach the children and engage them in the events unfolding different places in the region.
The project requirements further stipulated a learning approach. Here the school came into focus. If it was possible to develop a concept which enabled schoolteachers in primary school to use the Stygge Krumpen project as a part of their curriculum then both teacher and pupils could be interested in other parts of the project and spread the word even fur-ther.
With teachers becoming part of the end user group, different requirements to the concept were established. While still taking care of the “learning, cultural and historical setting”, now the working context had to be part of the considerations for the content development concept. Teachers can teach in different settings and in different timeslots: from one lec-ture (45 minutes) to whole workshop weeks (temauger). And anything in between. The concept had to be flexible on this point, making it possible for the teacher to choose how much time should be spent on developing the content.
Furthermore, easy use of the concept with only a minimum of preparation would enhance the teachers experience of the concept and lower the threshold for participation on both the teacher and the pupils side.
But the teacher alone would be to small of a user group to be able to spread the word about Stygge Krumpen project. The children’s parents had also to be a part of the concept. As said above, parents are very interested in giving their children a memorable holiday ex-perience.
Parents as a user group again have other requirements than teachers or pupils. They are interested in their children’s work, but are also protective of their children. The parents are
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a big part of the visitors, Børglum Monastery and other SMEs in the region are interested in. The concept has to activate this group, because parents are the main consumers, pay-ing for the experiences, services, products, and the like.
This can be mapped as a elastic user relationship (Cooper 2007, 118) in which the chil-dren, teachers, and parents creates a dialectic between the functional and service oriented relations to the concept.
Figure 3: The mapped dialectics between the teacher, childrens and parents different relations towards the concept.
All of the above are part of the humanistic viewpoint and has to be considered when mov-ing on to look at the business and technology point of view. The three groups of people specified as end user are:
- Children, developing the content as well as being participants in events and visiting at-tractions
- Teachers, using the content development as part of the teaching curriculum- Parents, being interested in their children’s work as well as being influenced by their chil-
dren as where to go on holiday
The three different user groups, and their changing relations to the concept, not only rise some questions about how to develop a concept which can be meaningful for every single group as well as all three of them at the same time. Because the website being partly commercial, it also gives rise to ethical considerations. Children as such are often depicted as vulnerable in a marketing context, and setting their work in a commercialised environ-ment puts them under the direct influence of advertising and marketing. Topics which are
Transforming visitor participation! 6
problematic in any teaching context let alone in a context where the content produced is used as a part of a marketing project which children as well as their parents will be sub-jected to. At the same time, a cooperation between school and business, and especially institutions like museums, adds a new perspective on the development of children’s as both consumer and citizen. The environment being educational, gives new possibilities for both teacher and parents to discuss and develop the cultural and historical identity of the children, as well as their identity as citizen and consumer (Olesen, 2003).
The question was, how learning, children, and development on one side could be put to-gether with the website in a meaningful environment on the other side. One of the possible answers was developing material for the teaching purposes at primary schools in the mu-nicipality of Hjørring. The aim of the material being:
The first three topics are aimed at the teacher and the main concern here is how to en-courage the use of the material for the development of content for the website as well as grounding the learning potential. Less preparation and easy access should ensure teach-ers to use the material in education. The story of Stygge Krumpen is already part of the curriculum of primary schools in Denmark and using the surrounding attractions and locali-ties is consistent with the pedagogical ideas of the Danish primary school.
The fourth topic gives rise to some practical as well as ethical challenges. One of the un-resolved problems being who is in charge of updating and, if necessary, censoring the content of the website. At the time being the website is “dead”, not being updated for some months, because the municipality doesn’t have an intern, who normally would be in charge. This also shows that the municipality isn’t able or willing to put any kind of eco-nomic base behind the project. One solution to this problem would be to give the teacher access to the website’s content.
The ethical problems are even more problematic: how can a more or less commercial website conform to the ideas and pedagogical ideology of the primary school? This dis-cussion has already prevailed when Danish schools due to cutbacks in governmental founding considered the idea of sponsoring teaching materials and the like through local businesses. As it is, the Danish governments backs sponsoring schools by private busi-nesses as long as it is not for operational purposes (folkeskolen.dk, 2009). While the
1) Part of the curriculum already part of the education
2) Easy to use and adapt in the learning and teaching context of the primary school, thus being of interest for the teacher
3) Easy to use either on a day to day basis or as a workshop week (tema uge)
4) To show the finished product on the website
5) To use the local attractions as a part of the learning experience
6) To give parents an insight into their children’s work
7) To interest parents and children in the history and attractions of the region
8) To provide SMEs a base for participating in the Stygge Krumpen project
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sponsoring would be openly and visible for children, teachers, and parents, putting mate-rial on the website of the Stygge Krumpen project would in the first place not be visible marketing for any businesses in the region. First when looking at the finished product on the site itself, the marketing would start: using free space for advertising as well as the ma-terial, developed by the children itself will be creating interest for the attractions and events involved in it. This form for covert marketing in connection with both children and public schools gives rise to ethical issues. Solving these would have to be done on a case to case basis. Is Børglum Monestary to be viewed as a SME or as a museum which holds part of the regional history? Is developing an event for the monastery marketing or partici-pation in unravelling the history of the place and thus giving the children a possibility to de-velop their personal identity?
As is often the case with ethical issues the answer depends on the point of view. “Using” school children to develop content for a website which could be seen as a covert market-ing site is problematic. If the content is seen as part of developing knowledge and identity for the children, then it would be recommendable.
BusinessWhat is feasible? - Is the solution sustainable?
To give a possible answer to the above questions it is necessary to look into the other viewpoint involved in the concept design: Business - in this case SMEs. The small busi-nesses which the municipality of Hjørring refer to, normally consists of one owner and his or her spouse. In rare cases the owner has an employee, often only during the High Sea-son. Since Northern Jutland is part of the peripheral areas of Denmark (udkantsdanmark) many of the business opportunities are developed by so called enthusiasts (ildsjæle) who have an ideological base for their development of any given business or attraction. Be-cause the business as well as the owner are part of the local community, the community will often support the business - if it is aware of the existence of the same.
The 3D model shows that businesses have to ask whether they are viable or not. Being part of a small community makes it necessary for the business to attract people from out-side the community. Being a SME often implies none existing financial funding for market-ing purposes. At the same time the enterprises are often built on a ideology which doesn’t wish to impose advertising on its possible customers. Thus sustainability, value based pro-duction like ecological farming, and the like depend heavily on Word-of-mouth advertising and the ethos, the business is build upon (Jensen, 2010). Viability thus depends on a high ethos and knowledge of the enterprise in a wider range than just the local community.
In the context of the Stygge Krumpen project marketing is focussed on the SMEs as well as the museums and other cultural institutions in the region. This can already be seen as problematic, since it could be argued that culture and commercialism doesn’t go well to-gether.
The ethical issue seems to depend upon wether the enterprise is based on some kind of value based approach, best put together with a deeply rooted local involvement, or wether it is solely based on a capitalistic background, best defined by Friedman (Friedman, 2002:133): “(...) there is one and only one social responsibility of business - to use its re-sources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits (...)”.
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For the former there would be small or none ethical challenges concerning the involvement of schoolchildren in developing content for a marketing website. Especially since the pro-ducers and enterprises which are to form the products, events, and attractions for the Stygge Krumpen project will have to take the transforming part of the experience as a base for their development of products.
In a rethorical perspective this situation can be mapped in the 3D model as a depiction of Bitzers ‘retorical situation’ (Bitzer 1968), in which the first step for the Stygge Krumpen and the SME’s is to established an ethos for the technological platform (www.krumpen.dk) and the service relation between the SME’s and the users of the the web-site. The next step hopes to established a pathos appeal in which the users/consumers participate in the plat-form, contributing with content, visits to physical locations, and consuming goods from the SME. In the final step, the strategy is to have the users/consumers become stakeholders in the Stygge Krumpen concept, and furthermore the region as a whole, and thus have created a logos appeal for the relevanse of the region.
Figure 4: The rethorical situation from the viewpoint of creating participation in the Stygge Krumpen concept - from establishing ethos, to particpative pathos, and finally into a stakeholding logos appeal.
TechnologyThe last part of the 3D model asks what technological possibilities are in existence, and wether the choosen technology is effective/appropriate to the users. The municipality has decided to use a website - with the possibility for commenting and updating by other par-ties than the municipality itself. Considering the material which should be used in connec-tion with the schools there are a wider range of technologies available. And part of the pri-mary school curriculum today is the use and knowledge of computer based technologies. Thus the development of web content will not pose any technology based difficulties, since children aged 12 and older are supposedly familiar with the use of smart phones, video editing and the like due to their use of the computer.
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The ContentIn the workshop the students were presented to the above mentioned requirements and analysis. the main task was to create a framework for developing content for the website using schools, teachers, and the technology at hand. In the case of the pupils this meant: mobile phones and computers equipped with free software. It is assumed that the pupils can film and take picture without needing technological assistance, if any help should be needed, the classmates should be able to provide.
With this framing the students developed the following ideas and concepts:
Storyline courseThe course can take a whole week or just a few days. The pupils have one assignment per day and the result of the assignment “unlocks” the next days assignment. During the course the pupils need information given through the curriculum on the historical and cul-tural events surrounding bishop Stygge Krumpen. The final day is collecting the different parts of the course and ends with a feast for the pupils made by the pupils. Different sites in Northern Jutland may be visited, but it also suffices just to tell about the places using Google maps and the like. The pupils are introduced to different cultural buildings and thereby historical events and figures having played a part in the development of the region.
Reformation and theatreThis course doesn’t take the pupils outside the school but instead introduces the different characters in the story of Stygge Krumpen using both storytelling and “physical evidence” in form of letters from the different characters to each other. The pupils have to develop a play based on the material presented to them during the course.
Reformation and storylineThis course has Børglum Monastery as fulcrum, using its history as curriculum and devel-oping an event for both school and SMEs in the neighbourhood. The pupils are also meant to develop a role play and participate in the event.
Stygge WorkshopThis course focuses on developing a play using self made costumes as well as the stories of the characters from actual historical events surrounding Stygge Krumpen. The connec-tion to the SMEs is made by exploring the neighbourhood for historical clues and collecting food and recipes which will be used on the final day where the different products will be shown.
All of the above use the website as a way of reporting the results of the workshops and storyline. Especially the first Storyline course uses the website as a place for describing the results and thus putting content on the website. The control of this part of the commu-nication is placed in the hands of the teacher.
Results?The main idea of developing material for the use in a school environment is to get the par-ents to look the result up at the website of Stygge Krumpen. Thus the schoolteacher will have material for different kind of teaching, the children will be able to get absorbed in the learning process, because the concept is based problem based learning, the parents will be able to monitor what their child is up to at school, the municipality gets an increased
Transforming visitor participation! 10
traffic on their website, the SMEs get a reason for being part of the Stygge Krumpen pro-ject, since the website in fact provides easy access to a wider range of possible customers and visitors.
At the same time basing the whole project on material developed with the idea of learning and transforming experiences makes it possible to ensure a deeper understanding of the history and culture of Northern Jutland, in this way making it possible to give rise to a new and different kind of interest in the attractions and events taking place in the region. Turn-ing the participation in the events into a transforming experience for both children and par-ents on the one hand, but also for the enterprises on the other hand. The enterprises being compelled to understand their part in the events as something which takes its starting point in the history of the region.
Possible results from a future implementation of the mentioned concepts could be:
- Updates on the website www.krumpen.dk without need of payment or censorship
- Collection of material on the cultural and historical identity of the people and places of Northern Jutland
- Creating local knowledge and citizenship in children
- Participation in the project by children, parents, and teachers, thus turning the top down approach into a bottom up approach and thereby creating a better foundation of the pro-ject
- Creating traffic on the website by both teachers and parents, who can be potential cus-tomers both for the institutions as well as the businesses collaborating in the project
- Connection between schools, teachers, pupils, parents, businesses, and institutions of Northern Jutland
The project of Stygge Krumpen is still ongoing.
ReferencesBitzer. L., 1968: The rhetorical situation. Philosophy and rhetoric.
Christensen, Lars Holmegaard, Malene Gram and Thessa Jensen, 2007, Family Attractions - Attracting Families Staging Experiences, in Arts & Experiences, Articles on Experiences, ed. Mika Kylänen & Anna Häkkinen, University of Lappland Printing Centre.
Cooper A., 2007, About Face 3, Wiley Publishing, Inc.
Danmarks Statistik, TemaPubl 2008:1, Turismen. Regionalt, nationalt og internationalt, Fihl Jensen, Frederiksberg.
Danmarks Statistik, 2010, Visitor numbers for museum: http://www.dst.dk/da/Statistik/emner/museer-og-kulturarv/museer.aspx
DN.se, 2009: http://www.dn.se/ekonomi/vallfard-till-wallander-land
Folkeskolen.dk, 2009: http://www.folkeskolen.dk/59004/mange-skoler-bruger-foraeldrebetaling-og-sponsorer
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Friedman, Milton, 2002: Capitalism and Freedom, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Gram, Malene, 2007, Children as co-decision makers in the family? : the case of family holidays, in Young Consumers, vol. 8, nr. 1.
Jensen, Thessa, 2010: Oplevelsesøkonomi uden kød på? in akademisk kvarter, vol. 1: http://akademiskkvarter.hum.aau.dk/pdf/vol1/Thessa_Jensen_Vol1.pdf
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Matchmaker, 2010, http://issuu.com/kostanza/docs/aaumatch3_2010_web
Nordjyske, 2011: http://nordjyske.dk/artikel/10/2875/28/4039755/4/ikke-en-god-forretning---endnujulekalender-p%E5-b%F8rglum-kloster-har-der-v%E6ret-ekstra-udgifter-og-arbejde,-men-ogs%E5-mange-nye-g%E6ster
Nordjyske, 2012: http://www.nordjyske.dk/artikel/10/2835/12/4058685/3/ny-film-med-familien-glad-i-st%F8beskeen
Olesen, Jesper, 2003: Det forbrugende barn, Hans Reitzels Forlag, København.
Vistisen, Peter, 2011: Strategisk digital designtænkning, speciale, Aalborg Universitet, http://projekter.aau.dk/projekter/da/studentthesis/search.html?search=peter+vistisen&advanced=true&type=&education=, forthcoming 2012.
www.krumpen.dk: The website for the Krumpen project, 2011.
www.lysetsland.dk: Website for tourists visiting Northern Jutland.
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