Museums have the responsibility to develop and implement culturally responsive programmes even though the training experiences of museum professionals may not have involved multi- and intercultural education. The paper focuses on age-related cultural agendas when including older adults in museum learning environment. It is argued that in an ageing society museums need to overcome the thinking of older people in terms of traditional age-related categories which often lead to ageism, but need to take into considerations the cultural context of their generation. Generations differ in cultural values due to objective (socio-historic) experiences and, more importantly, subjective interpretation of those experiences. Each generation has its own culture – a set of beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, knowledge, experiences. When developing educational programmes for older adults in terms of inclusive and intercultural (i.e. intergenerational) learning, museum professionals should consider the specific cultural considerations typical of older generation. In order to create meaningful and transformative learning experiences for older adults in museums, museum (educational) staff need to be interculturally competent: they need to have knowledge, skills and positive atitudes related to old age, the culture of older generation and older adult education. In Slovenia a model of intercultural competence training for engaging older adults as voluntary cultural mediators in museums was developed. The model was conceived and developed by the Slovenian Third Age University (founded in 1986), who with eight museums provided the required training and practice. According to this model, students of the Third Age University receive topic- and purpose-oriented education and training for voluntary museum work, whereas museum staff educate themselves to understand the value of volunteering for active citizenship of older people and to create new voluntary roles for the elderly in museums. The findings of the empirical research, carried out within the Slovenian-third-age-universities network and the Slovenian museum network, show considerable intercultural incompetency in relation to older learners in museums, resulting mainly from age-related stereotypes. Since older adults´ social group is (unjustly) pushed to the margins of society and volunteering is not duly appreciated in Slovenia, the model also includes systematic public campaigning.

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