A“
rtificial intelligence now delivers knowledge faster and more fluently than any institution can. Information is personalized, available around the clock, and free of queues. In this context, the museum’ s traditional claim to authority— as the custodian and interpreter of knowledge— is genuinely under pressure. The more important question is not whether museums can compete with AI on information delivery. They cannot and should not try. The question is what they offer that AI cannot: the lived encounter with objects and ideas; space for pause, dialogue, and wonder; and the opportunity for communities to shape, rather than simply receive, culture.
Creative learning in a museum is not only about interpreting the past; it is a gateway to inspiring the future— an opportunity to advance humanity and foster a lifelong passion for learning.
Across the GCC, a growing number of institutions are responding to this challenge not by defending their authority, but by redistributing it. They are designing programs in which audiences are not consumers of meaning but co-authors of it— shifting the museum from a site of transmission to a site of collaboration. Two institutions, at different stages of development, illustrate how this shift is being built in practice.
LOUVRE ABU DHABI: REINTERPRETING THE COLLECTION
In 2023, Louvre Abu Dhabi launched its inaugural University“ Take Over the Museum” program, inviting students to do something museums rarely permit: reinterpret the permanent collection and design public-facing interventions within it. The initiative shaped around a single challenge question— What does it mean to be human?— and three core principles: participation, cross-disciplinary exchange, and critical reflection.
Eighteen student groups moved through a structured development program, mentored by curators, educators, and creative professionals. The process was as deliberate as the outcomes: participants were not handed a brief but invited into the museum’ s working logic— its collection rationale, curatorial decisions, audience research and engagement— before designing their responses. The resulting interventions ranged from participatory workshops and digital installations to performance and sound works, each one a distinct interpretation of identity, authorship, highlighting the museum’ s evolving civic role within the community.
The program continues, expanding its thematic range each year to encompass cultural heritage, sustainability, and time. What it has demonstrated, consistently, is that when young people are given genuine agency— not a workshop slot but real ownership— they produce work that challenges and enriches the institution. The museum becomes more itself by making room for the next generation.
ILMI SCIENCE DISCOVERY AND INNOVATION CENTER: CO-CREATION AS FOUNDATION
Rising above Wadi Hanifa on the edge of Riyadh, ilmi Science Discovery and Innovation Center is among the most anticipated informal learning institutions in the region. A spherical structure within Mohammed Bin Salman Nonprofit City— Misk City— and supported by the Misk Foundation, ilmi is designed to ignite curiosity in science, technology, and innovation among Saudi youth aged 6 – 16. What distinguishes it from comparable science centers is not its architecture or ambition, but its methodology: cocreation is not a program at ilmi. It is the foundational approach through which all content is developed.
Since inception, ilmi’ s teams have worked directly with young people, educators, parents, and subject matter experts to shape the center’ s three core narratives— Our Selves, Our World, and Our Inventions— as well as the STREAM framework( science, technology, reading, engineering, arts, and mathematics) that structures the Learning and Digital strategy. Recent focus groups, including play-based sessions with parents and young children, have already informed Early Years programming. The result is a visitor journey calibrated not only to the site’ s unique natural and cultural context, but to the actual cognitive and emotional entry points of its audiences.
The co-creation approach is explicitly cyclical. As ilmi’ s teams acknowledge, translating community insight into meaningful institutional experience requires careful planning and skilled facilitation— it is neither quick nor self-executing. But the investment is fundamental: by keeping young people in continuous dialogue with the institution before it opens, ilmi is building an audience that already has a stake in what it becomes. They arrive not as visitors, but as active contributors with a genuine sense of belonging.
MATAHEF. COM 79