José Antonio Gordillo Martorell on Why Every Museum Should Be a Children’s Museum

Early in my career, I worked at Boston Children’s Museum. It was a great and important experience for me. While I didn’t go on to work in children’s museums, I’ve continued to care about them and follow the field with real interest. When José reached out to suggest we do a Q&A about his new book, I readily agreed.

Adam Rozan: Hi, José, can you introduce yourself and your work?

José Antonio Gordillo Martorell: My name is José Antonio Gordillo Martorell, I am the CEO and Founder of Cultural Inquiry.

AR: What is a children’s museum, and what’s your definition of a children’s museum?

JM: Well, personally, I’m a bit critical of the term ‘children’s museums’. I believe that every museum should, by definition, be a children’s museum because it must necessarily include children. Conversely, so-called ‘children’s museums’ are museums for everyone. It’s a somewhat artificial and archaic definition that reflects a rather outdated way of thinking about museums. We love to classify and compartmentalize reality, thereby limiting it. The so-called ‘children’s museums’ often end up being caricatures of themselves because they frequently operate on the basis of clichés and stereotypes regarding the role a child should play in a museum; a role that is predominantly that of a passive, superficial, naive, immature spectator, incapable of tackling complex challenges, and so on. When you work seriously with children in museums, you realise that none of this works and that their ideas and suggestions are extraordinary and interesting for everyone, not just for children. Labels sometimes hinder and reinforce stereotypes rather than help.

AR: And importantly, congratulations on your newly published book, Children’s Boards in Museums: New Approaches to Working with Children in Museums. Tell me about the book and what motivated you to write about children’s museum boards.

JM: Thank you very much for your congratulations. The book is a good example of how sometimes the worst can turn out to be the best, because it is actually the result of a disastrous professional experience I had a few years ago at a toxic and dysfunctional ‘museum’ in northern Sweden, where I witnessed first-hand what a museum should never be or do. A sort of anti-model of a museum. Interestingly, in that ‘museum’ where I actually created (and I say created because I did it on my own without any support) the first Children’s Board in a Swedish museum, it was the children who warned me that my future wasn’t there and that I should leave so I could work with real professionals and do it properly. You might remember this because we had a conversation back then when I heard your inspiring talk at MuseumNext, ‘And Other Duties as Necessary’, which really resonated with what I’d just been through. So that is exactly what I did, and the result has been five years of working non-stop on my own with children in some of the world’s finest museums, which are committed to reinventing themselves by involving children in the process as leaders and agents of change. The book is a summary of all the experiences I’ve had and a collection of the incredible stories I’ve shared with children in museums over the years. You realise that time is the best judge and eventually puts everything in its place. By the way, I’ll be launching my book on 2 October at that very same venue, and I’ve already invited all my former ‘colleagues’ to the launch.

AR: Wow, thank you for sharing that with me. Fundamentally, how different is the criteria for a children’s museum board from a non-children’s museum board?

JM: This relationship between children’s councils and adult councils in museums is very interesting. We recently discussed these differences during a Museums & Change session organised by our dear friend Avi Decter on this topic, alongside Andrea Durham and Greg DeFrancis.

When something like a board made up of children interacts with a board of adults a lot of interesting things start to happen, for example:

• Questions of the ’emperor has no clothes’ variety start to be asked – questions that no one had dared to ask before. For example, why are you the museum’s CEO?
• Issues that were previously ‘invisible’ – because they were deliberately kept out of sight (I recall a girl asking a man and a woman at the museum how much they each earned, and the look on their faces when they heard it) – are beginning to come to light.
• Arguments such as “because that’s how it’s always been done” are no longer valid.
• Play is no longer seen as a waste of time but as the most important thing.
• The power structure flattens out, shifting from a pyramid to a happy, flat chocolate cake. Who doesn’t love a chocolate cake?
• The mission, vision, values, and strategy come to life, transforming from a boring PowerPoint presentation that nobody reads into something fun that everyone can enjoy.

And many other things I’ve seen with my own eyes over the years, when a board was capable of being led by another made up “just only” by children. I should also mention that, in many cases, the Adult Board ends up following the children’s board.

AR: Interesting. In addition to an interest in the community, children, and museums, what are other important attributes for an ideal children’s museum board member?

JM: Just being a child – that’s all. In our Children’s Councils, we aren’t looking for the smartest children, those who get the best grades or regularly visit museums with their families. No. That’s a misconception. Any child is perfect for the ‘role’. In fact, we always recommend to the museums we work with that they select the children who make up the Council at random to send the message that anyone can be part of the Council. There’s nothing that makes you better suited for it.

Furthermore, the more diverse the Board’s composition, the greater the impact it will have. We love working with children from very different backgrounds and socio-demographic, linguistic and cultural contexts—migrants, neurodivergent children, aged between 7 and 12. Children’s Boards should be like a mini-society within the museum, and society, by definition, is diverse. Children’s Boards that are too uniform fail to deliver the full potential of what they could achieve. It’s like working with a palette of just one colour rather than many. What’s fascinating is seeing how, throughout the process, children who didn’t know each other end up forming lifelong friendships, and they do so in a museum and within a setting designed to allow them to always be themselves.

AR: In your experience, how can museums, especially children’s museums, support and collaborate with their boards, and what’s important for board members to know and understand about the museum staff?

JM: Here’s a shortened version: Museums are deeply entrenched power structures, resistant to change — let alone to children leading it. At Cultural Inquiry, we work to ensure that this transfer of power feels not like a threat, but like a genuine opportunity for museum professionals to grow. This takes time, trust, and a clear methodology to challenge one of the most ingrained assumptions in the field: the child as a passive visitor who comes, looks, and leaves.

When children shed that self-image and begin to see themselves as agents of change — with fresh, profound perspectives on how a museum actually works — everything shifts. Areas once considered exclusively adult territory, such as strategy, fundraising, or recruitment, become open conversations where children’s voices are heard and taken seriously. What they offer is consistently surprising and inspiring, opening up worlds previously unimagined. Only half-jokingly: every museum should hire — and pay — children to lead their R&D or Creativity departments.

AR: Since we’re talking about boards, which are essential for providing support and guidance to institutions, can we also discuss the roles that adults, the caregivers of children, and children themselves can play in children’s museums, in addition to surveying?

JM: As I mentioned earlier, children, working alongside adults, can perform an incredible variety of roles that are absolutely vital to the museum. From research tasks concerning the museum itself, as I described in my latest article published in the Journal of Creative Research Methodologies, to complex strategic decisions relating to the museum’s relocation, new types of programming, measures to attract new audiences, new ways of forming partnerships, or the role that AI should play in the museum. Children have a vision of the museum, and this is something we must understand. They can get involved in any area concerning the museum, not just in the creation of exhibitions or activities. This is not about something radical; it is about something realistic and, if you push me, even self-serving for the museum’s own survival in the medium and long term. They will be the ones to sustain it then, not us. And they will only do so if they feel they are an important part of it and if it forms a significant part of their lives. We professionals who work in museums must be humble and intelligent enough to act accordingly and learn to take a step back to make this possible. We must view things in terms of generational change, asking ourselves: What will become of this museum in 20 years’ time?

AR: What are some of the biggest challenges children’s museums are currently facing?

JM: Museums face serious challenges: scarce resources, unappealing careers, attacks from authoritarian governments seeking to erase history, the environmental crisis, AI disruption, and a fundamentally shifting role for cultural institutions.

But the real focus should be internal — specifically, on who will rise to meet these challenges. Museums that genuinely involve children in this process will remain relevant and vital to their communities. Those that don’t will fade into irrelevance, or disappear altogether — a process already well underway.

AR: Social media use and the concerns related to it for children are an important topic. What are some examples of how children’s museums have gotten involved in this issue, and how are you seeing this discussion unfold in museums?

JM: This debate — with few exceptions from researchers like Sara Grimes, Mhairi Aitken and Sonia Livingstone — has been approached incorrectly from the start, repeating the same misconceptions made with social media. We still operate from the flawed assumption that children lack judgement, focusing almost entirely on protection rather than participation. As a result, we remain ignorant of what they actually think, how they use technology, and what they’d change about it.

Encouragingly, some initiatives are getting it right. Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum lets young people run its official social media through the “Blikopeners” programme. The Inclusive AI Lab is doing vital work in this space. And my own pilot project, “Welcome to our PlAIground!”, developed with researchers from the Universities of Helsinki and Oulu, aims to build LLMs that genuinely incorporate children’s perspectives.

AR: A recent NPR headline reports decreased museum attendance in U.S. museums due to “natural disasters and political instability.” Could you share how children’s museums are programming and responding to the crises and challenges children are facing?

JM: Participation is now essential to the museum experience. Visiting is no longer enough — people must be able to do things there: meet others, share ideas, tackle challenges, support their community, and forge meaningful connections.

Children understand this intuitively through the concept of the museum that cares. Natural and instinctive carers, they imagine a museum closer to a hospital-meets-playground than a traditional exhibition space — one that heals, nurtures, and includes everyone. This is a revolutionary shift, and it’s being led by children. Join them and make it happen.