Museum-based sleep education: development and evaluation of pop-up exhibits for children and families

Museums are informal learning environments that attract people of all ages, but their potential for providing sleep education is underexplored. We developed interactive pop-up exhibits on sleep and investigated whether they effectively engaged museum visitors, improved sleep-related attitudes, and broadened perceptions of scientists.

Activities were prototyped from 2016 to 2022, and then systematically evaluated across 11 events at a medium-sized museum. Pop-up exhibits included face-to-face interactions with sleep-research trainees, professional signage, video displays, visual icebreakers (inflatable dinosaur fitted to a CPAP mask), handouts (e.g. multilingual sleep tips, stickers, brain-shaped stress balls), and interactive activities to learn about polysomnography (magnetic "electrodes," 3D-printed brain). Museum staff conducted qualitative evaluations and recorded the frequency and duration of visitor interactions for sleep exhibits and comparison exhibits. A subset of adult visitors completed surveys to inform acceptability, efficacy, and perceptions of scientists.

A total of 1336 people visited the sleep exhibits (32% of total museum visitors), which significantly exceeded size- and location-matched comparison exhibits (12%). Visitors interacted for twice as long with the sleep exhibits relative to comparison exhibits. Survey respondents indicated that they would recommend the exhibit to a friend, that their prioritization of sleep increased, and that they intended to change their sleep habits. More than half of visitors reported scientists as being friendlier and/or more demographically diverse than they previously believed.

Pop-up museum exhibits show promise as a method to improve sleep prioritization and may have the potential to challenge stereotypes of scientists in local communities.