MOD. is Australia’s leading future-focused museum, provoking new ideas at the intersection of science, arts, and innovation to inspire young adults. The BROKEN exhibition is a response to the question of how we might build future-thinking capabilities in young visitors.

Today’s problems are increasingly complex and multidisciplinary and require a wide range of future-ready skills and capabilities to solve. Young people are uncertain about and underprepared for the future, as well as anxious and frustrated around issues like inaction on climate change. As a future-focused museum, MOD. is uniquely placed as a key actor with responsibility for building futures-thinking capabilities and confidence of young people to navigate the future.

BROKEN was conceived following a Future Themes Forum where young people and a wide range of stakeholders shared their concerns on various issues such as the degradation of environmental and democratic systems. Participants were also frustrated with disinformation, hyper-capitalism, waste and access to resources, and felt a sense of brokenness, whether it be the housing crisis, fragmented media or problems with the education system.

The exhibition is underpinned by research and dialogue on hope theory with each gallery considering what alternative systems might look like, framed by a “what if” provocation. What if we put nature first? What if we all had a say? What if the future had a voice?

BROKEN explores a range of possible alternative systems, across nature and Country, collaboration, universal services, housing and land, democracy and time, and meaning of learning. Central to imagining alternative systems is the idea of hope, energetically fuelled by agency.

MOD. worked in collaboration with a wide-range of researchers from various faculties, as well as students, artists, and creative studios to inform exhibition content. MOD. not only showcases leading research and innovation, but also undertakes live research projects involving gathering data from visitors over the course of the exhibition to provide insight into people’s attitudes towards hope and change.

We conduct year-long analyses evaluating the outcomes and impact of our exhibitions. Since opening mid-January, BROKEN has had over 30,000 visitors. BROKEN currently scores an average of 4/5 on enjoyment and nearly 80% of people indicate that they would recommend a friend to visit. 33% of surveyed visitors are in our target age range of 15-25 and nearly 4% of our visitors surveyed reporting as either Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander. 34% of surveyed visitors were inspired to consider a career or further study in STEM after visiting MOD.

To compliment BROKEN and provide deeper exploration of the topics in the exhibition. MOD. produced a book called Beyond BROKEN. The essays and interviews in the book detail work that many people are doing to improve our systems and imagine new ways of being, including perspectives of First Nations peoples.