Deborah Elizabeth Finn

NOVEMBER 25, 2019

The tendency of philanthropic professionals, big donors, and other relatively privileged people to assume that they know what is best for the people who are directly affected by the problems that need to be addressed. Deciding Together Shifting Power and Resources Through Participatory Grantmaking. Here are 6 ways it could go.

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Philanthropy Open Participatory Evaluation 98

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 22, 2012

At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, we take our interns seriously, give them real responsibility, creative challenges, and meaningful work opportunities. I'm particularly excited about two internships that relate to participatory exhibition design. First, there is the Participatory Exhibit Design Internship.

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Participatory Museum Photography Unconference 37

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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Participatory Museum History International 44

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

I thought about all of this when reading about the recent incident at the Perez Art Museum Miami, where artist Maximo Carminero smashed a vase by Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei in an unauthorized act of visitor participation. It is not acceptable to walk into a museum and destroy another artist''s work of art.

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Museum Arts Artist Participatory 50

Connection Cafe

APRIL 21, 2014

Working with arts organizations there are often concern that your constituent stories aren’t as impactful. Our job is to get those people, those lives, those schools and communities to want to tell our stories. Our job is to get those people, those lives, those schools and communities to want to tell our stories. Make it fun!

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Arts Story Org Personal 37

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JANUARY 19, 2017

Yesterday, I spent a day facilitating leadership workshops for arts leaders attending the Art House Convergence Conference near Park City, Utah. Having a large enough space so people can move around and self-organize into small groups also promotes learning. Have you ever had to do a room hack? What was your experience?

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Lecture Classroom Experiment Learning 91

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 18, 2011

We decided to approach the label-writing for these boards in a participatory way. We put up the following label along with a pedestal with post-its and pencils: We're writing a description* for these surfboards and we need your help. Understanding what you think helps us think about how we display our collections.

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Participatory San Diego Museum History 48

Museum 2.0

JULY 10, 2018

I had lots of creative formats for drawing people out, sharing stories, and working collaboratively. Priya Parker's wonderful book The Art of Gathering shares the core principles of how to drive. Here are my three big takeaways from The Art of Gathering : Hosting is an exercise in courageous leadership. Take the lead.

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Hosting Arts Help Museum 31

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 13, 2011

I'm finding myself really enjoying fundraising because it is fundamentally about inspiring people to participate--and to do so in a way that is significant both for the organization and for themselves. As a designer, I'm always trying to ensure that participatory activities, however casual, impact both the participant and the organization.

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Participatory Practice Fundraising Relationship 39

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 26, 2015

Designing A Participatory Hook for a Virtual Meeting. This helped us do a better job of sense-making. This helped make the meeting more interactive and also helped participants think about what techniques they wanted to try after the session. Design must comes first. Finally, you identify next steps and follow up.

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Facilitation Virtual Arts Participatory 50

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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History Museum Arts Consultant 55

Museum 2.0

JUNE 1, 2016

I've spent the past year on a quest for relevance, diving deep into how organizations can matter more to more (and more diverse) people. The result is a new book, The Art of Relevance , coming out in a few weeks. This post is an invitation for those of you who want to help it come alive in your own community.

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Arts Advocacy Team Dallas 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 3, 2010

As many of you know, I've been working for the past year+ on a book about visitor participation in museums, libraries, science centers, and art galleries. The Participatory Museum is a practical guide to visitor participation. The Participatory Museum is an attempt at providing such a resource.

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Participatory Museum Vietnam Netherlands 30

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

APRIL 23, 2008

I'm prepping for a workshop on Social Media and wanted do a round up of recent compelling examples of arts organizations using social media strategies and tools. I've covered arts organizations and social media here and there over the past three years and last winter co-wrote a cover story article with Rebecca Krause-Hardie for ArtsReach.

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Arts Social Media Examples Artist 74

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 1, 2014

It made me dig up this 2011 interview with Tina Olsen (then at the Portland Art Museum) about their extraordinary Object Stories project. They designed a participatory project that delivers a compelling end product for onsite and online visitors… and they learned some unexpected lessons along the way.

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Museum Story Project Design 43

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 28, 2013

Earlier in 2013, I was amazed to visit one of the new “Studio” spaces at the Denver Art Museum. The Denver Art Museum is no stranger to community collaborations, but we’ve been dipping in our toe a little more deeply when it comes to developing permanent participatory installations. Who are all of these people?

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Denver Museum Arts Collaboration 35

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 25, 2012

This past Friday, we experimented with a new feedback format at an evening event focused on poetry and book arts. The event involved over fifty artists throughout the building helping visitors make their own paper, write poems, stitch books, etc. It accomplished several things at once: It drew people in. We got more feedback.

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Activities Active Activism Participatory 50

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 25, 2018

For the past five years, each summer, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History has hosted MuseumCamp. MuseumCamp is amazing, but there are two issues that come up every January when we announce the new session: The application process is very competitive, and hundreds of people end up being rejected or waitlisted.

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Community Participatory Museum Registration 31

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 14, 2011

It was Friday, a few hours before the drawing activity, and my colleagues were worried that it would be too challenging for people to draw the icons and landmarks selected. We often avoid drawing as a community art activity because visitors can get really judgmental of their own abilities, and our staff just felt that this might be too hard.

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Participatory Classroom Help Artist 43

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

My style of teaching is participatory; I don’t lecture with PPT endlessly and involve the audience. However, when I have participants that also include physically disabled people who are wheel-chair users, have limited mobility, or blind, I make accommodations to be inclusive and, especially avoid being ableist.

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Detroit Instruction Instructional PPT 77

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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Arts Museum Artist Tucson 45

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. DO message clearly.

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Participatory Arts Design Museum 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 10, 2015

Last week, the international press lit up with a story from Paris : the city is removing the "love locks" from the Pont des Arts bridge. And so, one of the most successful, accidental, and fraught participatory projects of the past decade comes to an end. I understand that they can pose a danger to people's safety.

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Participatory Project Artist Instruction 20

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. The people at Museums and the Web are on the forefront of web-based innovative museum practice. Instead, I found a standard art museum.

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Participatory Museum Web Indianapolis 35

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. We continuously and actively respond to requests as well as invite people to be a part of our programs.

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Museum Program Participatory Community 49

NTEN

NOVEMBER 4, 2014

Last year, NTEN Community Champions helped to raise over $36,000 to help support the NTEN Community Challenge , which helped to enhance NTEN''s program accessibility, including sending over 50 people to the 2014 Nonprofit Technology Conference (14NTC) and the 2014 Leading Change Summit (14LCS) with scholarships.

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Donation Impact Share NTEN 64

Museum 2.0

APRIL 26, 2018

One that has found remarkable success is California’s Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. She says that the museum made changes in hiring and board recruitment practices, and invited the community in to help reshape the facility into a place that reflected and represented its people and their interests.

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Audience Washington Museum Intergenerational 49

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. How can you describe user participation in a shared language that helps your team make the right decision for your project?

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Model Activities Active Activism 98

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. In the second, you make the product participatory.

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Participatory Design Difference Museum 27

Museum 2.0

JULY 23, 2014

But not enough people care about it anymore, and the museum is fading into disrepair. The Silk Mill is part of the Derby Museums , a public institution of art, history, and natural history. The Silk Mill is part of the Derby Museums , a public institution of art, history, and natural history. What do you do? Or silk production.

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Museum Product Participatory Community 53

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. People like participating, we take them seriously, and they take us seriously. The participation is almost 100% on-topic and appropriate.

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Museum Difference Examples Participatory 47

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

APRIL 1, 2010

I am putting the finishing touches on another social media lab designed for arts organizations. So, have been updating arts 2.0 Back in December, the Brooklyn Museum started to experiment with FourSquare running a promotion to get people to check in and get a free membership.

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Museum Mashup Badge Participatory 97

Museum 2.0

APRIL 15, 2015

"The arts are future-making." I wrote this down when Deborah Cullinan said it at a meeting of arts leaders about a year ago. Deborah''s vision for the arts leading the way to stronger future inspired me. Deborah''s vision for the arts leading the way to stronger future inspired me. A fitness trail for urban life.

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San Francisco Arts Design Marketing 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

NOVEMBER 3, 2015

It is always challenge to use participatory techniques when your participants are not native English speakers and you don’t speak the language. I thought I’d share a few quick insights and tips that I learned for others who may be preparing for doing tech training internationally and want to use participatory techniques.

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Facilitation Training Train International 50

Museum 2.0

JULY 1, 2011

I've now been the Director of The Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz for two months. Her mission in her blog has been to rebrand the experience of going to a museum, chasing away the old ideas of a quiet temple of tweedy art appreciation by generating new ideas of what a museum could be.

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Museum History Arts Work 31

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 11, 2012

We're hearing on a daily basis that the museum has a new role in peoples' lives and in the identity of the county. It also feels amazing to see some of my theories validated in this way--that giving people the opportunity to actively participate does really transform the way they see the institution and themselves.

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Audience Museum Participatory History 47

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. Why should institutions engage with people in this way? Are there certain kinds of institutions that are more well-suited for participatory techniques than others? The Museum 2.0

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Museum Question Participatory Evaluation 45