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Let's say you spend a year working with a group of teens to co-create an exhibition, or you invite members and local artists to help redesign the lobby. In many cases, once the final project is launched, it's hard to detect the participatory touch. Not every participatory process has to scream "look at me!"
When I talk about designingparticipatory experiences, I often show the above graphic from Forrester Research. Museums see open-ended self-expression as the be-all of participatory experiences. Would you design an interactive exhibit that only 1% of visitors would want to use? This is a problem for two reasons.
When I talk about designingparticipatory experiences, I often show the above graphic from Forrester Research. Museums see open-ended self-expression as the be-all of participatory experiences. Would you design an interactive exhibit that only 1% of visitors would want to use? This is a problem for two reasons.
It is multi-disciplinary, incorporates diverse voices from our community, and provides interactive and participatory opportunities for visitor involvement. This post focuses on one aspect of the exhibition: its participatory and interactive elements. So many museum exhibitions relegate the participatory bits in at the end.
Which of these descriptions exemplifies participatory museum practice? Museum staff create an exhibit by a traditional internal design process, but the exhibit, once open, invites visitors to contribute their own stories and participation. In the first case, you are making the design process participatory.
This exhibition represents a few big shifts for us: We used a more participatorydesign process. Our previous big exhibition, All You Need is Love, was highly participatory for visitors but minimally participatory in the development process. We focused more on design. A million thanks to them.
Over the past year, I've noticed a strange trend in the calls I receive about upcoming participatory museum projects: the majority of them are being planned for teen audiences. Why are teens over-represented in participatory projects? Why are teens over-represented in participatory projects?
Last week, I gave a talk about participatory museum practice for a group of university students at UCSC. Teenagers are often the target for participatory endeavors, and they definitely have high interest in creative expression, personalizing museum experiences, and using interactive or technological tools as part of their visit.
This week marks five years since the book The Participatory Museum was first released. HUMANS ARE THE BEST AGENTS OF PARTICIPATION When I wrote the book, I was coming from the perspective of an exhibit designer. Those people are driven not by the design precept of participation. Humans empower each other. Invite each other in.
Answers will differ depending on who's asking, but they are also influenced by the designed environment in which questions are asked. The outcome of our conversations is dependent on the diversity of designed environments in which they occur. "Where were you last night?" If someone asked you that question, how would you answer?
A group in their late teens/early 20s were wandering through the museumwide exhibition on love. When I walked by the first time, the teens were collaging and Kyle and Stacey were talking. I don't know what formed the bridge between the artists and the teens in this circumstance. Kyle had brought his baby with him.
We''re more successful when we target particular communities or audiences and design experiences for them. Single-speaker lectures languish while lightning talks featuring teen photographers, phD anthropologists, and professional dancers are packed. How do you reconcile inclusion and targeting in program design?
This past weekend, in conjunction with our exhibition about Ze Frank's current participatory project, A Show , we hosted " Ze Frank Weekend "--a quickie summer camp of workshops, activities, presentations, and lots of hugging. Or that we take a group photo together at the end of the day. It was pretty freaking amazing.
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? For this reason, I see history museums as best-suited for participatory projects that involve story-sharing and crowdsourced collecting (e.g.
Museums aren't the only venues facing this question: news outlets, corporate brands, and educators are also grappling with the question of trust in the participatory age. I'm reading a book of essays about how to teach written by teens. Many of the teens write, "learn with us. In the Web 2.0 It's very relational.
Ready to turn your institution into a site of participatory engagement? specializes in designing museum experiences and exhibitions that are community informed, socially stimulating, technologically ambitious, and intriguingly experimental. Want to bring the spirit of this blog to your colleagues and projects?
When I look back at some recent projects that I''m most excited about (like this teen program ), I realize that I had very little to do with their conception or execution. Participatory work can be very labor-intensive. In the meantime, here are some. THINGS I''M MOST PROUD OF: Making space for distributed leadership.
I'd always joked that my dream job was to design pinball machines--a technical problem wrapped in creativity and pleasure. At the big one, I worked on a small project with teens to design science exhibits for community centers in their own neighborhoods. I designed electricity workshops for families.
It’s a thrilling challenge to the traditional form of art museum exhibit design, and better yet, visitors like it. There are two aspects of Side Trip that really stand out: the immersive environment and the design of the interactives. We’re all together, man. The interactive experiences in Side Trip are superlative.
I led two sessions, one on visitor co-created museum experiences, and the other on design inspirations from outside museums. Visitor Co-Created Museum Experiences This session was a dream for me, one that brought together instigators of three participatory exhibit projects: MN150 (Kate Roberts), Click! More on that in months to come.
The London Science Museum team designed an entire exhibition and then left a few open vitrines at the end for visitors to contribute their own toys during the run of the exhibition. I worked on one project in which the client institution thought they wanted unfettered teen expression. It invites people to play. Projects Core Museum 2.0
The people were of all ages--moms with babies strapped to their fronts, six year-olds using skillsaws, pre-teens building robots, teenagers doing homework. The design and feel of the place was different than any science center I''d ever experienced. What unique design elements make Community Science Workshops work?
On 8.16.08, the Museum of Art and History (Santa Cruz, CA) hosted FreelanceCamp, a free unconference that brought 150 designers and techies from the south bay area together to talk shop. Heck, it doesn't even attract the museum exhibit designers. Projects participatory museum. marketing Museums Engaging in 2.0
We're always happy for more bodies in the door, but if supporting teens means alienating seniors, there's a problem. But it skips some of the fundamental design and operational choices that separate community centers from the rest of the civic and cultural landscape. Tags: participatory museum inclusion comfort.
The irritating design? The recent flurry of restrictions that has sent teens fleeing? Tags: participatory museum visitors. When you think of MySpace, what is the first thing that comes to mind? The bizarre obsession with "adding" friends? Or is it the stalkers?
In many museums, comment cards are currently the most "participatory" part of the visitor experience. It may be useful if you want to ask "What kind of teen programs should our museum offer?" Great user interface; see this in-depth article about its design. Negatives of GetSatisfaction: Free version has ads.
Every other year, they convene TUPAC, a group of 35 outside advisors, including teens, college students, Temple University professors, artists, philanthropists, and community leaders. They live their mission, working in questions and projects rather than exhibitions and programs.
I've written before about the difference between participatory processes and products , but this question of frameworks and sensibility is more broadly applicable to community engagement strategies. In fact, I find that participatory products are often more likely to reflect a formal sensibility than their traditional counterparts.
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