Participation of Potential Visitors in an Exhibition Concept Based on an Online Survey

A new Geosciences campus will be built in central Munich, that will also house an innovative exhibition on geosciences, the Forum der Geowissenschaften. A team of scientists, curators and museum educators has started to plan the exhibition in the last year. Currently, a catalogue of topics for the forthcoming permanent exhibition is being prepared. As the topics that we as experts find most interesting do not always coincide with the interests of the public, potential visitors should be involved in the planning process. Therefore, we have conducted an online survey to ask the audience which topics they would like to see in the future Forum der Geowissenschaften. Participants were asked to rate a wide range of topics according to their interest on a Likert-scale reaching from ‛highly interested’ to ‛not interested’. Moreover, participants were invited to indicate other topics which they find interesting. The survey was distributed via several digital platforms to reach a broad audience and received more than 750 responses. First results indicate variations in interest regarding different age groups, but also between educators and scientists. Overall, the survey provides a large database about the targeted audiences that will help to refine the exhibition concept. We assume for example, that topics might be rated with low-interest due to insufficient and ineffective communication in the past. Therefore, we aim to create new curiosity for these topics by adopting modern approaches to science communication.