Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 18, 2011

The surfboards are beautifully hung in their new location, but they present a new challenge: we have to write very short labels. We decided to approach the label-writing for these boards in a participatory way. Visitors have gone to town, writing both basic questions (“who made them?” “who What do you want to know?

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Participatory San Diego Museum History 48

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. The content focuses on the question of WHY we collect and how our collections reflect our individual and community identities.

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Participatory Museum History International 44

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. This post shares some of the most interesting questions I''ve heard throughout these experiences. Feel free to add your own questions and answers in the comments! The Museum 2.0

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Museum Question Participatory Evaluation 45

Museum 2.0

MARCH 4, 2015

This week marks five years since the book The Participatory Museum was first released. Across the museum field, the questions about visitor participation have gone from "what?" I thought the pinnacle of participatory practice was an exhibit that could inspire collective visitor action without facilitation. and "why?" to "how?".

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Participatory Museum Empowerment Facilitation 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 26, 2015

Designing A Participatory Hook for a Virtual Meeting. In a face-to-face training, I might do an exercise with sticky notes where I get participants to write down answers to a question or two related to the content on sticky notes. For this meeting, we asked two questions: What makes a meeting a good, productive use of your time?

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Facilitation Virtual Arts Participatory 50

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 25, 2016

Most participatory projects were short-term, siloed innovations, not institutional transformations. Interestingly--for good and ill--this transformative funding program coincided with a national funding crisis in the arts in the UK. Critical friends are positive, constructive, and able to tease out real challenges.

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Museum Participatory Resource Place 20

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

APRIL 25, 2011

This post shares some of the most interesting questions I've heard throughout these experiences. Feel free to add your own questions and answers in the comments! BROAD QUESTIONS ABOUT AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION 1. Are there certain kinds of institutions that are more well-suited for participatory techniques than others?

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Question Participatory Museum Evaluation 49

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 3, 2009

On Friday, I offered a participatory design workshop for Seattle-area museum professionals ( slides here ). We concluded by sharing the tough questions each of us struggl es with in applying participatory design techniques to museum practice. I love this question. First, what do the right questions look like?

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Technique Question Design Develop 50

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 25, 2018

For the past five years, each summer, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History has hosted MuseumCamp. Come share your projects, challenges, questions, wild successes and epic failures with creative changemakers from around the world. Develop compelling, powerful participatory offers and promises for your prospective partners.

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Community Participatory Museum Registration 31

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 30, 2013

My biggest question for these social psychologists is this: how do we apply their lessons to our work? We hope that visitors will not only learn about our diverse roots but be able to identify and transform some of the persistent challenges that divide us. Direct questioning.

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Measure Arts People Museum 47

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

APRIL 28, 2009

On Friday, I offered a participatory design workshop for Seattle-area museum professionals ( slides here ). We concluded by sharing the tough questions each of us struggles with in applying participatory design techniques to museum practice. I love this question. First, what do the right questions look like?

Technique 52

Technique Design Question Develop 52

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

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

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

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

OCTOBER 23, 2018

Two years ago, our team at the MAH embarked on our most challenging co-creation project ever. We partnered with foster youth, former foster youth, artists, and community advocates to create an exhibition that used art to spark action on issues facing foster youth. This project wove together many different participatory threads.

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Issue Childhood Community Create 45

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 4, 2010

It's rare that a participatory museum project is more than a one-shot affair. Wikipedia Loves Art, Take One The first version of Wikipedia Loves Art first took place in February 2009. Some of these challenges were about mission fit. I hope you'll share your thoughts in the comments.

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Wikipedia Arts Museum Images 40

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 2, 2013

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. Proposals involve sculpture, performance, participatory-projects, videos, and installation that use and respond to the museum’s collection.

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Artist Museum Proposal Participatory 49

Tech Soup

JANUARY 31, 2012

One of the most frequent questions I hear at events from nonprofit professionals in the field is how to coordinate teams to produce compelling media across offices, time zones and countries. This is a participatory live video show - come ready with your questions for our experts! Guests for Nonprofits Live: Collaborative Video.

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Storytelling Collaboration Video Thailand 67

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 9, 2010

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? Aren't art museums less open to participation than other kinds of museums?" I was surprised by her question.

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Museum Difference Participatory History 29

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. How do community members make your institution better? Visitors can comment on how we can improve or what they would like to see.

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Platform Open Museum Participatory 41

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 15, 2014

Schools and other arts organizations are rising to the challenge. Artists and arts organizations are contributing their spaces and their creative energies. Yet our posts contain similar phrases such as “21st century museums,” “changing museum paradigms,” “inclusiveness,” “co-curation,” “participatory” and “the museum as forum.”

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Museum Blogger Cleveland Missouri 52

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

Tech Soup

JANUARY 20, 2012

One of the most frequent questions I hear at events from nonprofit professionals in the field is how to coordinate teams to produce compelling media across offices, time zones and countries. This is a participatory live video show - come ready with your questions for our experts! Guests for Nonprofits Live: Collaborative Video.

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Collaboration Storytelling Video Thailand 44

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

DECEMBER 19, 2012

We're looking for an Exhibitions Manager to join our team here at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. I'm curious what has worked or been challenging at other museums, especially small and mid-sized ones, when it comes to both frequency of exhibition changes and the approach.

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Participatory Museum Blended History 32

Museum 2.0

MAY 9, 2012

Our curator writes labels about licking the art. And I talked about some of the challenges of finding the right income and expense models for a museum that operates more like a community center than a traditional cultural institution. Merilee Mostov and the Columbus Museum of Art. Participatory art and co-creation on the rise.

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Reflection Columbus Museum Participatory 43

Museum 2.0

MAY 2, 2012

Today is my one-year anniversary as the executive director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. It’s been a wild and wonderful year—without question, my most challenging and stimulating yet. I'm open to any questions you want to raise in the comments. It is incredibly rewarding work. I feel lucky.

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Museum Director Participatory Culture 55

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. The largest was a "wish canopy" that hangs above the entire gallery.

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Story Participatory Museum History 47

Museum 2.0

MAY 3, 2017

This is the ninth in a series of posts on the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History ( MAH )'s development of Abbott Square , a new creative community plaza in downtown Santa Cruz. The “we” isn’t always staff; in most cases, our staff work with community partners in a participatory, co-creative model. We explore the possible programs.

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Develop Artist Participatory Blended 20

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 5, 2008

I was captivated by Chris Alexander 's story about participatory online/onsite efforts at the San Jose Museum of Art (SJMA). It is small and focused and highly repeatable (Chris and Lucy are producing a new YouTube series for the new exhibition on The Art of Cardboard ). Would my enthusiasm have been different? Projects.

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Case Study Participatory Studies Museum 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 21, 2014

I''ve now been the executive director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History for three years. This year was a year of building, challenging, and strengthening. I''m open to any questions you want to share in the comments. Participatory work can be very labor-intensive. In the meantime, here are some.

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Museum Director History Teen 49

Museum 2.0

MARCH 21, 2012

I used to think these were easy questions to answer. Art, however, does not come to museums pre-hardened. At the museum of art and history where I work, we are grappling with the question of how to help people enjoy themselves while keeping the art and artifacts safe. What if you WANT them to touch certain things?

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Museum Denver Artist Milwaukee 49