Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 7, 2010

Nina has written a fantastic book engagement called The Participatory Museum. A third argues that the project won’t be truly participatory unless users get to define what content is sought in the first place. Rick wanted a better way to describe what kinds of projects led to different community outcomes.

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Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

This simple participatory project invites visitors to contribute their own small objects in little alcoves in our bathrooms. But people have participated in completely different ways. Here are three possible explanations for this gender divide: Men and women use bathrooms differently. But not so much in the men's bathroom.

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Museum 2.0

JUNE 25, 2014

Two years ago, we mounted one of our most successful participatory exhibits ever at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History: Memory Jars. Two years later, this project is still one of the most fondly remembered participatory experiences at the museum--by visitors and staff. He creates a visual representation of his story.

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Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 3, 2014

This person is writing about a participatory element (the "pastport") that we included in the exhibition Crossing Cultures. Each prompt was tied to a different artwork in the exhibition. Each of these activities invited contribution on a different level. Response mail art after the visit. Some with a colored pencil.

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Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 18, 2011

We decided to approach the label-writing for these boards in a participatory way. note: originally, this said "we're writing a label" but with that phrasing, lots of people wrote creative titles for the surfboards (like the title for a work of art) instead of talking about content of interest. who were the surfers who used them?” “how

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Museum 2.0

APRIL 14, 2011

As of May 2, I will be the executive director of the Museum of Art & History at McPherson Center in Santa Cruz, CA (here's the press release ). Because of the increased workload I expect in the months to come, as well as the likely possibility that we will start a Museum of Art & History blog, I'm lowering my Museum 2.0

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Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

In the spirit of a popular post written earlier this year , I want to share the behind the scenes on our current almost-museumwide exhibition at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, Santa Cruz Collects. This exhibition represents a few big shifts for us: We used a more participatory design process. We had some money.

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Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 21, 2012

I am fascinated by the incredible differences in what people contribute based on format and phrasing of the invitation to participate. This week at my museum, as we are wrapping up our current set of exhibitions on collecting, I noticed a simple, subtle example of this that I thought might interest you. that we selected during prototyping.

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Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 13, 2011

As a designer, I'm always trying to ensure that participatory activities, however casual, impact both the participant and the organization. If fundraisers are so keen on relationships, why weren't they the first into social media and participatory projects on behalf of their organizations?

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Museum 2.0

APRIL 7, 2009

Which of these descriptions exemplifies participatory museum practice? But the difference between the two examples teases out a problem in differentiating "participatory design" from "design for participation." In the first case, you are making the design process participatory. The exhibit opens.

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

AUGUST 20, 2009

Nonprofit Use #1: Events and Conferences Since those early days, hashtags have been used in different ways by nonprofits. Nonprofit Use #3: Advocacy Channel Hashtags can be used effectively at different rungs on the ladder of engagement. One of the most frequent applications has been to use them at events and conferences.

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Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

Imagine this situation: You go to an arts event, one of a type you rarely or never take part in. There's been a lot of innovation in arts programming in the last few years. There's been a lot of innovation in arts programming in the last few years. How do you form an arts habit? You have a great time. Repeat exposure.

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Museum 2.0

JUNE 18, 2014

And it''s got me thinking about how we build energy and audience for the arts in this country. Barry Hessenius recently wrote a blog post questioning the theory that more art into the school day will increase and bolster future adult audiences for art experiences. Like Barry, I feel that more art in schools is always better.

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Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 10, 2014

Scene: a regional workshop on arts engagement. A funder is speaking with conviction about the fact that her foundation is focusing their arts grantmaking strategy on engagement. Engaging people actively in the arts. Quality Shakespearian theater is different from quality contemporary dance. Engaging new people.

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Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 1, 2012

Last week, Douglas McLellan of artsJournal ran a multi-vocal forum on the relationship between arts organizations and audiences, asking: In this age of self expression and information overload, do our artists and arts organizations need to lead more or learn to follow their communities more? Here are three of my favorites.

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Museum 2.0

APRIL 20, 2009

I’d never attended before and was impressed by many very smart, international people doing radical projects to make museum collections and experiences accessible and participatory online. Are participatory activities happening on the web because that is the best place for them? Instead, I found a standard art museum.

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

FEBRUARY 24, 2009

What's different is that the backchannel is being used in non-technology conferences. What's also different is that more and more people are viewing the back channel as integrated with the conference networking and participant learning. For those of us who have been attending blogging and tech conferences, the backchannel is not new.

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Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 26, 2012

Visitors bond and bridge through participatory experiences at MAH. There were times when coordinating a fire art festival while researching social capital theory made me want to burn my computer. I learn a ton from her every day and wanted to share her thinking--and her graduate thesis--with you.

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Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

I''m glad to see coverage about art museums involving visitors in exhibitions. The whole process of being interviewed for the story made me question the stories we tell and words we use to describe participatory work. The metaphor for traditional art museums is the temple. What is the metaphor for participatory arts?

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

AUGUST 29, 2006

I met Janet Salmons many years ago while I working on various arts and technology projects in New York State for the New York Foundation for the Arts. I started in the Cornell University Center for Theatre Arts , where I founded and directed two programs: Cornell Theatre Outreach and the Community-Based Arts Project.

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Museum 2.0

JANUARY 4, 2010

It's rare that a participatory museum project is more than a one-shot affair. The project's implementation keeps changing, and I can't decide whether it is getting better or just different. The project's implementation keeps changing, and I can't decide whether it is getting better or just different.

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Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 9, 2010

Recently, I was giving a presentation about participatory techniques at an art museum, when a staff member raised her hand and asked, "Did you have to look really hard to find examples from art museums? Aren't art museums less open to participation than other kinds of museums?" I was surprised by her question.

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JANUARY 18, 2011

Establish local networks of individuals and organizations using social media to help build stronger organizations and more participatory societies. Trainer the Trainers: Beth Kanter, Mohamad Najem, Jessica Dherre, and Mary Joyce.

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Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 30, 2013

I talked with Tiffany, and also with Hazel Markus and Alanna Connor, Stanford social psychologists who recently co-authored a pretty fascinating pop-science book about understanding cultural difference. And then I started talking with Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, a UC Berkeley psychologist who blogs under the title Are We Born Racist?

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Cloud 4 Good

MARCH 8, 2022

In addition to the education and inspiration, NTEN is promoting accessibility, equity, and inclusivity like never before with dedicated racial affinity spaces, meditation sessions, and even virtual art galleries and live music. Opportunities for Professional Development.

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 26, 2015

Designing A Participatory Hook for a Virtual Meeting. Depending on the number of people in your group, there are different ways to facilitate the report out. The features include being able to easily create different color sticky notes and type in notes and move them around the board. Design must comes first.

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

NOVEMBER 11, 2006

The above powerpoint is from 1999 and excerpted from day-long workshops I used to lead when I worked at NYFA and design and ran a program called "KIT: Knowledge in Technology - Technology Planning for Arts Organizations." People have their own customs online, they act differently, and it can be hard to find your way around.

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Museum 2.0

MARCH 17, 2010

This is the second in a four-part series about writing The Participatory Museum. Several hundred people contributed their opinions, stories, suggestions, and edits to The Participatory Museum as it was written. Several said things like, "I was curious to see how this kind of participatory, collaborative approach would work in practice."

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Museum 2.0

APRIL 25, 2011

Note: the title of this post pays homage to Elaine Heumann Gurian's excellent and quite different 1981 essay of the same title. In 2008 and 2009, there were many conference sessions and and documents presenting participatory case studies, most notably Wendy Pollock and Kathy McLean's book Visitor Voices in Museum Exhibitions.

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 3, 2009

On Friday, I offered a participatory design workshop for Seattle-area museum professionals ( slides here ). We concluded by sharing the tough questions each of us struggl es with in applying participatory design techniques to museum practice. Ask the question several different ways to different groups of people.

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Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 24, 2014

Two weeks ago, I wrote about t he use of the word "quality" in the arts and its many forms. There are many different forms of engagement with many different outcomes depending on your goals, your project, or your institution." I don''t think these goals are universal by any means to the museum or arts field. Engagement?

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Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

George is a stranger I met last week at SFMOMA’s new show, The Art of Participation:1950 to Now. The Art of Participation provides a retrospective on participatory art as well as presenting opportunities for visitors to engage in contemporary (“now”) works. Here are two pictures. The first one is me.

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

SEPTEMBER 8, 2014

The Leading Change Summit was drastically different from the Nonprofit Technology Conference, NTEN’s flagship event that has over 2,000 attendees, dozens of tracks and hundreds of panels, big parties, a trade show, and all the things you would expect from a traditional conference. Taking in New Ideas: Facilitated Listening.

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Museum 2.0

MAY 8, 2013

In the past, I''ve subscribed to the theory that an organization should target many different groups and types of people to serve a constellation of specific audiences across diverse affinities, needs, and interests. At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History , we''re approaching this challenge through a different lens: social bridging.

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Museum 2.0

JULY 23, 2014

The Silk Mill is part of the Derby Museums , a public institution of art, history, and natural history. The Derby Silk Mill folks have a different tack: they define the Silk Mill as being about making. A strong participatory process is not a loosey-goosey, open the doors and do whatever strategy. Or silk production.

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Museum 2.0

JULY 11, 2012

I get excited about a lot of things in my work at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. Ze Frank is a participatory artist who creates digital projects that are explicitly about creating and enhancing authentic interpersonal connections. To celebrate political differences. To recreate childhood photographs.

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Museum Participatory Artist Project 45

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 18, 2013

Originally posted in April of 2011, just before I hung up my consulting hat for my current job at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. Note: the title of this post pays homage to Elaine Heumann Gurian''s excellent and quite different 1981 essay of the same title. It looks different in different types of institutions.

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