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

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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Participatory Evaluation Project Museum 52

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. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand how the feng shui of a classroom impacts learning. Circles without tables, just chairs helps promote group discussion.

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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

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

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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Participatory Practice Fundraising Relationship 39

Museum 2.0

JULY 10, 2018

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. When participants are diverse, explicit rules help. But for some reason, I applied none of those lessons to my new situation.

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Hosting Arts Help Museum 31

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

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

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 Program Participatory Community 49

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. In any of my instructions for any interactive activities, I always tell people that it isn’t required to move around or stand – do what they comfortable doing and modify. I make it okay to modify so no one feels excluded.

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Detroit Instruction Instructional PPT 77

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.

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Denver Museum Arts Collaboration 35

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

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

This simple participatory project invites visitors to contribute their own small objects in little alcoves in our bathrooms. We have seven participatory elements in our current exhibitions on three floors, ranging from voting to talkback walls to an in-depth "make a memory jar" craft activity.

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Museum Difference Examples Participatory 47

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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Participatory Museum Web Indianapolis 35

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.

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Participatory Project Artist Instruction 20

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 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

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. The impact was dramatic.

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Audience Washington Museum Intergenerational 49

Museum 2.0

JULY 23, 2014

The Silk Mill is part of the Derby Museums , a public institution of art, history, and natural history. It''s clear from the diversity of activities, the professionalism of the scaffolding, and the forms of access that they are serious about inviting meaningful participation in the Re:Make project. it''s carried on. It''s serious.

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Museum Product Participatory Community 53

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 11, 2012

We just started to try to live up to that vision, partnership by partnership, activity by activity. 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. It feels pretty amazing.

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Audience Museum Participatory History 47

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

MARCH 1, 2016

My colleague Cindy Leonard has used her photoshop magic to help each of the speakers transform into a character. This is a session where you’ll be an active participant in your learning and will leave ready to apply lots of practical tips and techniques that will give your trainings more impact. The Art of Good Closers.

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Training Train San Jose Instructional Design 50

Museum 2.0

MARCH 20, 2013

This week, the Santa Cruz Weekly's cover story is about my museum (the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History ) and the work we have done to make it a more participatory, community-centered place over the past two years. I love this image--not controlling everything, just helping steer the way and keep us moving forward.

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Story Georgia Participatory Museum 31

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. 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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Museum Question Participatory Evaluation 45

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 16, 2013

Then again, Saturday was hardly normal at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. 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.

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Reflection Community Museum Participatory 43

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. Different activities need different levels of materials to appear "open for business." It's just fun.

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Design Participatory Learning Instruction 45

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 23, 2014

They were “preaching the museum gospel” in NYC via alternative tours at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. We interacted with the art and with each other through dynamic photo challenges, kinesthetic activities, and conversations. So I went on a tour…and experienced the museum in an entirely new way.

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Museum Interview New York Interaction 55

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

MAY 10, 2011

It's my second week as the Executive Director at The Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz, CA, and boy is my everything tired. I'm also making the 2011-2012 budget, getting to know our terrific staff and volunteers, and starting up a few small participatory projects to launch us into being a more community-driven institution.

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Museum History Participatory Arts 53

Museum 2.0

APRIL 25, 2011

I've seen this line of questioning almost completely disappear in the past two years due to many research studies and reports on the value and rise of participation, but in 2006-7, social media and participatory culture was still seen as nascent (and possibly a passing fad). In 2008, the conversation started shifting to "how" and "what."

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Question Participatory Museum Evaluation 49

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. No small task for a museum exhibition.

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Story Participatory Museum History 47

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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Arts Community Online Intergenerational 50

Museum 2.0

JUNE 29, 2011

Visitor contributions help participants feel connected to institutions. It helps institutions leverage the skills and creativity of their communities. Scanning the comment board is one of the few activities in my workday when I'm confronted with unbridled creativity and optimism about the future of our institution. It's funny.

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Museum Participatory Comment Sound 47

Museum 2.0

JULY 23, 2019

Today, I wanted to think about participatory elements, something so essential to this blog. Lumin at Detroit Institute of Art Now on to the interactives…I’ve been thinking a great deal about the function of interactives in museums. This activity went with an artist’s work where she told of immigration stories.

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Museum Participatory Interaction Classroom 35