Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MARCH 1, 2016

Whether you are facilitating a session with your board, staff, or hundreds of folks in a room, you’ll find ways to design instructional content that interests, engages, and inspires action. Instructional Design. How To Think Like An Instructional Designer for Your Nonprofit Training. The Art of Good Closers. Design Labs.

Training 50

Training Train San Jose Instructional Design 50

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.

Denver 35

Denver Museum Arts Collaboration 35

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. When you have four facilitators, you want to make sure that you choreograph each activity. Defining Roles. I like to use a rock band metaphor. For example, here is a storify of the tweets from our track.

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Reflection NTEN Change Facilitation 124

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. The "love locks" are not a project with an institutional or artistic director.

Participatory 20

Participatory Project Artist Instruction 20

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 28, 2011

We've been offering a host of participatory and interactive experiences at the Museum of Art & History this season. I loved Jasper Visser's list of 30 "do's" for designing participatory projects earlier this month. SETUP Cut your instructions down to as little text as possible. Please share yours in the comments.

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Design Participatory Learning Instruction 45

Museum 2.0

JULY 27, 2009

I’ve long admired Improv Everywhere , the NYC-based participatory public art group. The MP3 experiment is an exercise in following instructions. He explains that you will have to follow his instructions to have “the most pleasant afternoon together.” He’s not your friend, but he likes you.

Instruction 21

Instruction Instructional Nicaragua Experiment 21

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.

Arts 50

Arts Community Online Intergenerational 50

Museum 2.0

APRIL 4, 2012

Museums have been grappling with this question for years ( here's a 2007 roundup of such projects ), most aggressively in zoos and natural history museums where staff hope to inspire conservation and in history/concept museums that focus on civic engagement and activism. There was no specific instruction with the dots.

Story 47

Story Participatory Museum History 47

Museum 2.0

MARCH 27, 2009

This week, the Denver Art Museum (DAM) opened a new temporary exhibition called The Psychedelic Experience , featuring rock posters from San Francisco in the heyday of Bill Graham and electric kool-aid. It’s a thrilling challenge to the traditional form of art museum exhibit design, and better yet, visitors like it.

Denver 21

Denver Museum Arts Remix 21

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 16, 2010

I spent some time playing with this question last week at the Milwaukee Art Museum, a large general museum that is moving toward redesign of the permanent galleries. But the activity itself WAS compelling, because of the fun conversations, unusual recommendations, and evocative photos. Do you interrogate the map? Get deliciously lost?

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Experiment Lesson Learning Museum 44

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 18, 2008

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. A few suggestions for how to think strategically about hosting them: Provide activities or offerings that align with your desired image.

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Museum Hosting Model Community 22

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 6, 2012

I'm thrilled to share this brilliant guest post by Marilyn Russell, Curator of Education at the Carnegie Museum of Art. In a straightforward way, Marilyn explains how her team developed a participatory project to improve engagement in a gallery with an awkward entry. Reassert the "forum"? SOLUTION: POST-IT NOTES?

Museum 45

Museum Arts Problem Design 45

Museum 2.0

JULY 3, 2008

I've written before about techniques for talking to strangers, looking at how buttons , buses , and dogs and can all be tools for participatory design. I used that instruction recently to kick off a meeting at a museum planning a participatory education space. There was a self-aggregating group who toured an art exhibition.

Participatory 20

Participatory St. Louis Museum Game 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 24, 2012

When we talk about making museums or performing arts organizations more participatory and dynamic, those changes are often seen as threatening to the traditional arts experience. But what if the "traditional" arts experiences is a myth? What if historic arts experiences were actually a lot more participatory?

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Greece Arts Industry Participatory 51

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 15, 2009

It launched in October of 2007 with a very simple and understandable idea: to produce a global map of pieces of art made with stones on beaches. The act of making art, and the recognition on a simple website, are the only rewards. The World Beach Project does not exist in the V&A Museum. It's not marketing hype. The ask is clear.

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Project Museum Artist Map 38