The Rural Open Air Museums: Visitors, Community and Place

Abstract

Contemporary rural museums perform not only the traditional tasks but are also the places where both the visitors and the local community members have chances for entertainment and attractive leisure time. Consequently one can find in museums numerous catering offers such as cafes, bistros, snack bars, restaurants, pubs and wine bars. The material presented is the result of theoretical and field studies carried out in the selected open air museums in Poland and focused on newly introduced commercial activities (as catering). Our research results show that the development of sustainable cultural tourism as a generator of income in the open air rural museums is important in the challenging economic time. Museums having catering services of different character could easier overcome financial struggle. Moreover there is no doubt that the introduction of an interesting and ambitious cuisine in the restaurants located in the rural open air museum is of great importance also in other terms: popularization of the food culture, rural tradition of region, healthy diet and lifestyle, chance to increase the museum attractiveness, important economic support to the museum and the local community and the improvement of living quality.

Croydon's historic machinery collection

“…Before the 'new museology' of the 1980s, most would have agreed that a museum 'is an institution that cares and conserves a collection of artefacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural or historical importance'. 1 The collection, and research into it, was the principal concern of the museum, while interpretation for visitors through static displays was educational but didactic, operating from the assumption that the visitor was a blank slate learning from expert curators. Decreasing fundingand a boom in the number and variety of museumsmeant a greater emphasis on attracting paying visitors, such that the traditional educative role of the museum was transformed into engaging visitors by anticipating their needs, and valuing (or connecting with) the knowledge they brought to the exhibitions.…”