Experiencing a Museum After Dark: ThePractice of ‘Lates’ in the Industrial Gas Museum of Athens

In the competitive leisure marketplace, museums are systematically seeking new ways of engaging and retaining audiences as well as attracting new markets. Over the past decade, late night thematic events, known as ‘Lates’, are becoming an increasing feature of museums, and a key method of attracting underrepresented visitor groups. As the growing body of studies suggest, these events, balancing between entertainment and learning, are addressed to a new target audience segment, the Generation Y. The paper aims to explore this emerging practice in Athens and in particular in the Industrial Gas Museum. Given that the phenomenon has not yet been investigated in the context of the Greek museum landscape, the paper takes as starting point the development of themed night-time events in museums elsewhere, mainly the UK, and reviews their typical features and their evaluation. It then focuses on the novel adoption of late night events by the Industrial Gas Museum entitled ‘Let’s be late!’. Key questions are raised: Are the attendees non-traditional museum visitors and do they respond to the characteristics of Generation Y? How does their feedback relate to the Museum’s intentions? Does the ‘Lates’ event encourage engagement with the permanent collections or intentions for subsequent visits? The study draws on two forms of data collection: observations of use of space, and a research questionnaire. Results illustrated that frequent museum visitors and young audiences who are familiar with the museum respond well to the event. Implications are discussed.