2025 Children in Museums Award - Special Commendation for “Let’s Spend the Night in the Museum!”

The Museum of Ethnography’s complex educational programme “Let’s Spend the Night in the Museum!” received a Special Commendation from the international jury of the prestigious 2025 Children in Museums Award. The Budapest-based public collection—which has earned several professional recognitions this year—was ranked among the top five institutions worldwide, alongside such renowned museums as the Children’s Museum Singapore, the OliOli Children’s Museum in Dubai, Showtown in Blackpool (UK), and the overall winner, the La Nube STEAM Discovery Center in El Paso, Texas. Presented by the European Museum Academy and Hands On! International, the Award recognises museums that offer outstanding and innovative experiences for young audiences. According to the jury—who created this special distinction specifically for the Museum of Ethnography—the programme “provides a strong collection focus and an active learning environment, introducing children to the world of museums and the discipline of ethnography in a uniquely engaging way.” 

Let’s Spend the Night in the Museum! is the first operating phase of the Museum of Ethnography’s future Children’s Museum. It is designed for children aged 8 to 11, as well as families with younger children and school groups, and can be experienced either as a short early-evening session or as a full overnight sleepover. Participants enter the building after closing time, prompting the very first question of the programme: What happens in a museum after hours? 

At the heart of the experience lies a dedicated educational environment used exclusively during these sessions: a half-finished exhibition and its adjoining storage area, which the children are invited to complete. The theme of the exhibition is sleep—a topic that resonates both personally and culturally. Children can choose from hundreds of objects, work on magnetic and writable surfaces, and use demonstration pieces and replicas; meanwhile, curators’ notes, plans and object stories are all available for inspiration. Throughout this process, participants operate as real curators and museum professionals: they research, select, arrange and ultimately create their own small-scale exhibition. 

Their completed work is presented in small groups through living tableaux, role-play, storytelling or explanation. These presentations reflect not only on the museum’s themes but also on the children’s own lives: they share their sleeping habits, family experiences and personal interpretations of the museum’s relevance. The evening culminates in each child creating their own sleeping space within the exhibition or storage area, followed by a musical storytelling performance that gently guides them to sleep. In the morning, the group wakes together, shares their dreams and reflects on the experience. 

Pedagogically, the programme places particular emphasis on emotional engagement, intrinsic motivation and differentiated tasks. Museum educators support the process from the background, allowing children to articulate their discoveries, think aloud and appear as creators and researchers. The use of real collection objects—enabled by the Museum’s holdings of 230,000 artefacts—provides authenticity and depth to the learning environment. This is not a playhouse but an authentic museum space, in which the children build an exhibition based on a script prepared by the Museum’s ethnographer-curators. Although the theme is sleep, on a deeper level the programme invites children to “play curator,” to build an exhibition of their own, and to understand what a museum is for, how it relates to their everyday lives and how museum knowledge can be used meaningfully. Through this process, each participant also shapes their own identity by engaging with different objects, situations and perspectives. 

The Special Commendation acknowledges the Museum of Ethnography’s deep strategic commitment to children, young people and families. The jury highlighted the institution’s multi-layered pedagogical approach, its methodology that prioritises genuine child participation and its innovative use of collections to foster personal and meaningful connections. Let’s Spend the Night in the Museum! offers not only an innovative learning experience and a glimpse behind the scenes of the museum, but also opportunities for creative thinking and self-reflection that contribute to children’s self-awareness and identity formation.