Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 1, 2014

Recently, we''ve been talking at our museum about techniques for capturing compelling audio/video content with visitors. It made me dig up this 2011 interview with Tina Olsen (then at the Portland Art Museum) about their extraordinary Object Stories project. We ended up with a gallery in the museum instead. That is more curated.

Museum 43

Museum Story Project People 43

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 5, 2013

"The words we use in attempting to change museum directions matter. Our museum in Santa Cruz has been slammed by those who believe participatory experiences have gone too far. I am glad this conversation is happening and that both museum professionals and local Santa Cruzans are engaged. But we do have ''and.''

Museum 53

Museum Participatory Arts History 53

Museum 2.0

MAY 21, 2014

I''ve now been the executive director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History for three years. We talk a lot at our museum about empowering our visitors, collaborators, interns, and staff by making space for them to shine. Participatory work can be very labor-intensive. Making co-creation sustainable and powerful.

Museum 49

Museum Director History Culture 49

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 20, 2017

Courageous speakers from dozens of countries described bold, participatory projects. El Museo Reimaginado is a collaborative effort of museum professionals in North and South America to explore museums' potential as community catalysts. I find North American museums to be risk-averse. Pioneers of communitario museums.

Museum 40

Museum America Participatory Conference 40

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 23, 2010

Yesterday, I had the delightful opportunity to participate in the 3six5 project , a yearlong participatory project in which 365 people write 365 journal entries for every day of 2010. The reward for participants of having your contribution displayed is fairly and clearly structured. Complexities of project management.

Participatory 34

Participatory Project Museum Journal 34

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 9, 2010

Jasper Visser and his colleagues at the not-yet-physically-open National Historisch Museum of the Netherlands have impressed me with their innovative, thoughtful approach to developing a dynamic national museum. Last weekend my museum presented itself at the Uitmarkt in Amsterdam.

Museum 34

Museum Comment Experiment Participatory 34

Museum 2.0

APRIL 7, 2009

Which of these descriptions exemplifies participatory museum practice? Museum invites community members to participate in the development and creation of an exhibit. But the difference between the two examples teases out a problem in differentiating "participatory design" from "design for participation."

Participatory 27

Participatory Design Difference Museum 27

Museum 2.0

APRIL 25, 2011

I've spent much of the past three years on the road giving workshops and talks about audience participation in museums. The Museum 2.0 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.

Question 49

Question Participatory Museum Evaluation 49

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 2, 2013

George Scheer is the director and co-founder of Elsewhere Collective, a fascinating "living museum" in a former thrift store in Greensboro, NC. In this post, George grapples with the challenges of balancing the care for a museum collection with that of contemporary artists-in-residence who are constantly reinterpreting it.

Museum 49

Museum Artist Participatory Proposal 49

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 24, 2012

I like to ask myself this question periodically, challenging myself to find substantive ways for visitors to contribute to our museum. To that end, our exhibitions are full of participatory elements. We actively seek participation and develop structured opportunities for visitors to collaborate with us.

Open 41

Open Museum Platform Participatory 41

Museum 2.0

MARCH 13, 2013

Visitor-contributed photos surround a collection piece in Carnegie Museum of Art's Oh Snap! It can be incredibly difficult to design a participatory project that involves online and onsite visitor engagement. The museum selected and is featuring 13 works recently added to our photography collection. gallery closes.

Authoring 53

Authoring Experiment Open Museum 53

Museum 2.0

MARCH 10, 2010

This is the first of a four-part series on the behind-the-scenes experience of writing The Participatory Museum. Overview: Stages of Development and Participation Types The Participatory Museum was written over a 15 month period that began in December of 2008. Many of the book sections started as blog posts on Museum 2.0.

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Participatory Museum Statistics Process 21

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

There are many participatory kiosks that are functional black holes--visitors make videos or draw pictures or write stories, drop them in a slot, and. There are many participatory kiosks that are functional black holes--visitors make videos or draw pictures or write stories, drop them in a slot, and. nothing happens. nothing happens.

Participatory 35

Participatory Museum Rate YouTube 35

Museum 2.0

MARCH 27, 2013

There's a constant dialogue in participatory work about how to make peoples' contributions meaningful. I've written about different structures for participatory processes (especially in museums), and recently, I've been interested in how we can apply these structures to the design of public space.

Design 49

Design Children Participatory Museum 49

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

SEPTEMBER 8, 2014

The Leading Change Summit was more intimate (several hundred people), participatory and interactive, intense, and stimulating. I designed this exercise after a delightful experience visiting the Barnes Foundation Museum where the art work is hung on the wall in a way to facilitate pattern recognition and learning about art concepts.

Reflection 127

Reflection NTEN Change Facilitation 127

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 22, 2009

What does the word "participatory" mean to you? The various definitions of participatory projects can lead to confusion and misunderstandings. Participation in science research is a good basis on which to develop a framework for participatory models because it is based on a consistent scientific process with many steps.

Public 36

Public Research Participatory Museum 36

Museum 2.0

MAY 3, 2010

Last week, I attended Structure Lab , a half-day workshop on legal and financial structures for ventures for social good. The Structure Lab is set up as a "game" in which you explore cards in various categories (values, assets, financing, etc.) to better articulate what you are really trying to do with your project concept.

Structure 31

Structure Model Social Profit 31

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 15, 2012

We've gotten a little more organized at The Museum of Art & History , and we've now released opportunities for summer internships. These are unpaid part-time and full-time opportunities to help design public programs, develop new uses for the museum, perform visitor research, and pursue unusual projects.

Museum 34

Museum Participatory Arts International 34

Museum 2.0

JULY 30, 2014

Our work to transform the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History into a participatory and community-centered place has been heavily supported by the James Irvine Foundation. Interestingly, they argue instead that structural change--including but not exclusively programmatic change--is what makes the difference in participant makeup.

Report 52

Report Museum Memphis Arts 52

Museum 2.0

JUNE 1, 2010

You can join the conversation in the blog comments, or on the Museum 2.0 Like many museum and library professionals, I am enamored of the idea of cultural institutions as “third places” – public venues for informal, peaceable, social engagement outside of home or work. This is the only post written by me, Nina Simon.

Place 41

Place Discussion Culture Museum 41

Museum 2.0

MAY 3, 2011

Lots of museums these days have video comment booths to invite visitors to tell their stories, but how many of those booths really deliver high-impact content? Last week, I talked with Tina Olsen, Director of Education and Public Programs at the Portland Art Museum, about their extraordinary Object Stories project.

Story 53

Story Interview Museum Audio 53

Museum 2.0

JULY 7, 2010

Most of my work contracts involve a conversation that goes something like this: "We want to find ways to make our institution more participatory and lively." Most museums that offer interactive exhibits, media elements, or participatory activities offer them alongside traditional labels and interpretative tools. Fabulous!" "But

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Audience Museum Oakland Participatory 40

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 20, 2010

Audience segmentation and research has become a hot topic in museums, especially when it comes to crafting appealing offerings that are customized to different kinds of visitors. I sat down with Kristen Denner, Director of Membership and Annual Fund, to learn more about the program's development and the museum's goals for its future.

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Interview Director Museum Benefit 46

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 4, 2010

It's rare that a participatory museum project is more than a one-shot affair. But next month, Britain Loves Wikipedia will commence--the third instance of a strange and fascinating collaborative project between museums and the Wikipedia community (Wikimedians). Some of these challenges were about mission fit.

Wikipedia 40

Wikipedia Arts Museum Project 40

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 2, 2011

We're seeking great folks for public programs, participatory exhibit design, online marketing, 3D design, and whatever else you might have to offer. I had a bit of a wakeup call about internships last month at an "emerging leaders" lunch event at the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums conference. We might never get there.

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Museum Student Participatory International 35

Museum 2.0

MARCH 28, 2012

At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH), we've started experimenting with a "community first" approach to program development. Here are a few things that I think helped make this experience valuable: We started from communities' needs, not the museum's. For example, one of our groups was focused on commuters.

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Program Community Design Museum 49

Museum 2.0

MAY 9, 2008

There's a tag applied to many Museum 2.0 Posts under that tag tend to examine non-museum things, from malls to games to ad campaigns , and draw some design lessons for museums from their foreignness. What aspects of that socialness are desirable in museums (and how might we mirror buses or trains to promote them)?

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Participatory Design Museum Facilitation 20

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 7, 2007

I got my copy of the fall issue of Museums and Social Issues this week. The theme is "Civic Dialogue," and the journal includes articles on the historical, cultural, media, and museum practice of getting people talking to each other (including one by me about such endeavors on the web). A place many museums are not.

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Museum Lecture Denver Attitude 22

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 29, 2009

Last week, Jim Richardson and I hosted MuseumNext , a 24-hour workshop for museum professionals focused on bringing new, wild museum projects into the world. We also ended the entire event with one of my favorite exercises, the Exquisite Corpse game, in which participants co-created comics of their craziest museum dreams.

Facilitation 32

Facilitation Reflection Museum Participatory 32

Museum 2.0

JUNE 22, 2009

I'm working on a personal project (slowly) to open a cafe/bar venue that is also a design incubator for participatory exhibits. My goals are two-fold: to develop a dynamic, creative, social platform for my community and to distribute its successful elements to other civic learning institutions (museums, libraries, community centers).

Ideas 31

Ideas Action Museum St. Louis 31

Museum 2.0

MARCH 4, 2009

In other words, a new kind of talkback board or participatory educational program. The thing that excites me about this is not the opportunity to use all the weird-colored cardstock hanging around the supply cabinets of most museums. If Signtific just asked the "What if?" question and allowed open response, it would not be as good.

Experiment 24

Experiment Participatory Game Museum 24

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 25, 2009

Rabinowitz commented that "as a 40-year veteran of history museum interpretation, I can say that I never learned so much from and about visitors." This is the opposite situation of the previous design goal, one typical in science and children's museums.

Goal 31

Goal Difference Design Platform 31

Museum 2.0

MAY 19, 2016

For example, when we held community meetings about the development of a new creative town square next to our museum, a group of middle/upper-class moms talked about not feeling safe downtown. Create a structure that values peoples' participation. not feeling "welcome") or don't mention their safety concerns at all.

Community 35

Community Build Museum Group 35

Museum 2.0

MAY 5, 2009

I just returned from the American Association of Museums (AAM) annual meeting in Philadelphia. I led two sessions, one on visitor co-created museum experiences, and the other on design inspirations from outside museums. what is the value of the exhibition experience to non-participants, that is, regular museum visitors?

Slides 20

Slides Museum Participatory Children 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 16, 2007

into the museum is the potential to encourage more positive in-museum interactions among strangers. I want in-person museum experiences to be more like experiences on social sites like Flickr, where strangers connect and form relationships around content. Structure the space with a clear story (and commensurate rules).

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Museum Myspace Social Network Facilitation 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 27, 2008

The VSA has replaced their keynotes with structured group dialogue. But the VSA has taken an intentional approach to these structured conversations with the goal of putting the (arguably) best part of conferences—the side conversations and hallway discussions—front and center. My first reaction was skepticism.

Associations 20

Associations Studies Houston Museum 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 13, 2014

I first learned about this technique from Sam Kaner''s excellent book, Facilitator''s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making. To me, this is analogous to the benefits of having multiple staff members engaged with community partners on participatory projects. Build structures to support meeting each other.

Facilitation 36

Facilitation Professional Learning Unconference 36