MORE THAN A MUSEUM
The Financial Life Park is an interactive exhibition ... and much more besides. The FLiP Experience visitor programme combines with the FLiP Library, FLiP Lab and FLiP Web to form an information platform about money, the economy and entrepreneurship.
The FLiP Experience is a visitor programme that takes visitor groups to a series of stations along a “learning trail”.
The sequence of the stations can be modified to suit the needs of each group and tailor the content accordingly. A collection of savings devices rounds off the FLiP Experience.
LEARNING PILLARS
Educators
The visitor groups are accompanied by educators on their way through the FLiP Experience. The educator leads the group, explaining the stations and their sequence, activates the necessary elements to launch interactive content, explains and manages the games and sums up the outcomes.
Wallet
The Wallet is a tablet computer which visitors use to participate in the games at the stations, reading information on the screen, entering input and solving tasks. The Wallet supplies the content and links visitors to others in the group and to the educator.
Stations
The FLiP has a modular structure. Each station has its own educational and thematic focus. The tour starts with a personal perspective, broadening the horizon step by step along the trail to end with a global view.
MODULES
SAVINGS DEVICES
Historical savings devices from the Erste Bank collection are on display in the foyer area, interspersed with short text passages about the history of saving and quotes from famous personalities in a pleasant and welcoming environment.
PROLOGUE
The FLiP tour starts with an introduction to the topic of money. What is the role of money in our society, how does it affect our individual lives? Why does it make sense to take an interest in money matters? The visitors receive their Wallets – specially configured tablet computers that are used to navigate and enter data. Before the tour starts properly, the visitors are asked to answer five questions on their Wallets.
CONFIGURATOR
Challenges at this station vary with the age of the visitor group. Detectives think about the monthly expenses of adults, while explorers and experts are invited to take on different roles. In their respective roles, the visitors are given a fictional budget and asked to allocate the money to the seven major expense categories. In the evaluation stage, statistical data are used to see how realistically the participants planned their budgets.
Reality check
The visitors are split into three small groups and play a game of financial and budgeting challenges. The challenges are shown on the athletes’ Wallets and have to be mastered by the team. Correct questions to answers make it easier to ride the stationary bike. Greater financial independence thus leads to a direct physical sensation for the athletes. For explorers and experts, the game also includes a number of long-term financial decisions that are made at the Reality Check station, with consequences that emerge as the game progresses.
tresor
In a room furnished with the interior of an authentic former bank vault, the visitors are confronted with the question of how much value attaches to an object. They split up into small groups to explore the safe deposit boxes in the context of a card game. In the game, they are asked to determine the value of different items, taking into account price, utility value and emotional significance. It quickly becomes clear that price is not the same as value and that different values may be attached to an object.
OPINION FORUM
The Opinion Forum demonstrates how important it is to develop well-founded positions on financial and economic issues. The visitors are first asked an apparently simple question. Then clips from street interviews are shown, and an expert discusses different views on the issue. The visitors can continue the discussion, formulating and arguing their own positions. The point is not to get it right (or wrong), but to show how important it is to build up a solid information base before forming an opinion.
Getting global
The life story of a product is shown on a globe-like arrangement of monitors. As the group walks around the globe, following the product, the visitors learn about international connections, interdependence and other economic factors. They realise that their actions and decisions affect people in other parts of our globalised world. The story starts with short film sequences. The visitors are asked to answer questions, and the story continues according to their answers. A second trip around the globe illustrates how the group’s individual decisions affect six people in different parts of the world.
Wrap up
A wrap-up round at the end of the tour leaves room to discuss any remaining open questions. The educator sums up the content of the tour, interprets the results and leads discussions among the visitors. Moreover, the visitors have the opportunity to rethink their answers to the five questions that were asked at the start. On the basis of the quiz results, they are grouped into “money types” in order to stimulate further thinking about how they deal with money.
KNOWLEDGE STORE
The Knowledge Store is the content backbone of the FLiP. Here visitors can explore and get in-depth information on topics that have come up during the tour. Both the objects and the graphical dots can be scanned with the Wallet to read the content behind them. However, it is not apparent at first sight how topics are interconnected. The challenge to the visitors is to think about the information and find connections. Texts, pictures and animated films are used to present information from the three main fields of personal finance, basic economics and functions of a bank.
The FLiP Library is a place where visitors are encouraged to learn and exchange ideas.
Publications on the economy, banking, finance, globalisation and entrepreneurship are available for quick browsing or in-depth study. In addition to books and magazines from the library of the Erste Foundation, the FLiP Library also houses a collection of historical Erste Bank posters. Under the heading “Let’s talk about money”, the FLiP Library also hosts events such as fireside talks with experts.
The FLiP Lab is a venue for workshops, seminars, lectures and continuing education events for teachers.
The workshops “Entrepreneurial Design Thinking” and “Project Playground”, which are offered as part of the “Start Your Project” programme, also take place here. “Entrepreneurial Design Thinking” focuses on the development of a business model, while participants in “Project Playground” learn the basics of project management. The Lab space can be flexibly modified to meet the needs of different event formats. It is furnished with a multifunctional storage wall with integrated office kitchenette.
FLiP content is also available online.
FLiP Web, a digital communication and information platform, offers aspects of the FLiP Experience along with articles for young people that answer questions ranging from “Why is everything getting more expensive?” to “How can I get rich?” or “Should I overdraw my account?”, and many others. A broad range of educational materials are available as downloads for teachers.