Escape into a museum

Museum Quest, playing a game and enjoying culture

Ana-Maria Cononovici, 14.09.2021, 14:00

Feel
like playing a little bit? What would it be like if, as we’re playing, we can
also find out various and diverse cultural pieces of information we can then
memorize without even realizing we’re actually doing that? Challenging enough
for you? That’s how the museum quest organizers thought it out: as a challenge.
Museum Quest is a cultural project.

The initiator of the project,
Catalina Stanciu:

Museum Quest took off in 2020 as a cultural project in its
own right, financed by the Ministry of
Culture. For six years now we have an Escape Room in Bucharest and we really
like that sort of activities by means of which we’re having fun intelligently
as we’re doing everything as team work. And we’ve given it a lot of thought as
to what we could come up with on the Bucharest market, so that people can have
fun in a cultural environment as well. We started up partnerships with museums
as we wanted to develop treasure hunters in the museums across Bucharest. In
effect, we’re also speaking about a team game where two to six individuals will
have to visit museums and have a cultural race, where their discover traces and
accomplish missions.

Catalina
Stanciu also spoke about the partner museums were and what happened during the
race:

As we speak, we have partnerships with the Antipa Museum, the Village
Museum, The History and the Military Museum. Teams can register on our website,
at www.museumquest.ro.
There can book the hours when they want to come and make their cultural
journey, at the date and time they’ve booked for themselves, they turn up at
the museum they have chosen, one of our representatives, a game master,
welcomes them, they are being briefed a little bit about what exactly treasure
hunting means and what the purpose is for their prospective cultural race, and
the very moment they take the start for the game, they all receive
lock-fastened carrying cases, while the available time stands at 90 minutes,
for the Village Museum, and at 60 minutes, for the other museums, when they can
discover all the marks we thought out for them, and when they need to accomplish
all the missions and finish the race..

We
asked Cătălina Stanciu to give us examples of marks, but she refrained from
doing that altogether. However, she tempted us with the description of the very
process of playing.

Catalina Stanciu:

They will have to interact a lot with the cultural elements in a
museum and, resorting to the team spirit and to the logical thinking, but also
using their intuition and the wish to discover things, they’re being tasked
with solving a couple of mini-puzzles and mysteries, each member of the team
has a lock-fastened carrying case, their job is to open the locks, one by one,
so that they can discover new mysteries, The game is highly interactive, it
relies heavily on team work and, in effect, it is a mix between the escape room
and the classical treasure hunting. With the Antipa, History and the Military
museums there can be at least two participants, while with the Village Museum
there can be at least four. A team is made of no more than six people and the fun
is guaranteed. So far, there hasn’t been single participant who was not
literally fascinated with that new modality of discovering the museums.

We
were very happy to find out no previous knowledge was needed before taking the
plunge into the discovery of the museums.

Catalina Stanciu:

We use the museum premises and the collections in museums to bring in
fresh batches of visitors, so that, through a game, they can discover cultural
a scientific information, also having fun as they’re doing that. They do not
necessarily have to know the history of Romania before they enter the museum,
but they’re sure to discover and definitely store info in their long-term
memory, without perceiving such info as sheer museum-related info, they will do
that as they take part in the game and accomplish certain mission we have thought
out, so that they can also get their information as if they have visited the
musem.

Cătălina
Stanciu assured us the activity was perfectly suitable for families with
children aged 7, but also for team building, anniversary parties, since the
game was very versatile and could be appreciated by people of all age brackets.
It’s a game offer we can’t refuse!

(Translation by Eugen Nasta)