Why do not children in Luleå, Sweden, voluntarily visit the local science centre when they become teenagers? Obviously, in order to study this question the starting-point has to be teenagers’ lives and how the science centre fit into it. This paper focus on how a collaborative approach can give the researcher opportunities to account for the teenagers’ agenda. It is based on a study which provided findings that suggests that the main problem with science centre exhibits from the teenagers’ point of view is the lack of possibilities for personal meaning-making.