Young Voices for Young People at the Penn Museum

By: Kevin Schott, Associate Director of Interpretive Programs, Penn Museum

Photo courtesy of Kel Quinones.

Working as an educator at the Penn Museum one of the hardest things to do is to capture the attention of our young visitors. We do so many things get K-12 students engaged, including props, songs, and games. For a generation of people raised with touchscreens and tablets, video and social media are powerful ways of getting and holding attention. For several years now the Museum has worked to incorporate iPads with images and short video clips into our tour experiences.

Adding an iPad to your tour kit opens many doors. It literally allows kids on tours to hear from voices other than the guides. While it is great to show expert commentary by curators and researchers, or a demonstration video by an artist, it is the voices of other young people that can be the most effective in reaching our young folks.

While updating the tour of the Native American Voices exhibition at the Museum, I wanted to find video content to add to the tour. It was in this search that I came across the YouTube channel of Raquel Quinones. She goes by Kel and has a large social media following under her brand, Kel’s a Funny Girl. Her videos are funny and charming as she shares the up’s and down’s of life. You can find make-up tips, travel videos, and even book recommendations.

Kel also welcomes her online following in for some aspects of her life and culture. She is Spirit Lake Dakota and grew up on the Spirit Lake Reservation in North Dakota. She does a great video update sharing slang from that reservation. You can watch the video below.

So not only is Kel beautiful (just kidding! Or am I?) and funny, she also speaks directly to young people in their own language: slang, social media, and humor. Behind all the jokes there is a lot of information that visitors often don’t know. Not all reservations are the same. Not all tribes are called by the name that they use amongst themselves. Some things on a reservation are just like everywhere else, full of DMs and joking around, while other things are unique like using Dakota language as slang. It’s easy to write this off as just social media playfulness, but it’s also an invitation for young people at the Museum to look beyond the artifacts on display.

The goal of the Native American Voices exhibition and the tour that goes with it is to remind visitors that Native American tribes never disappeared. That their culture is as alive and vibrant as ever. What better way to illustrate this for young people than to have a funny girl like Kel let you know?

Do you have a story from your museum that you want to share? We’d love to publish it! Send us an email at marketing@philadelphiamuseumcouncil.org.