Museum 2.0

MARCH 4, 2015

This week marks five years since the book The Participatory Museum was first released. I thought the pinnacle of participatory practice was an exhibit that could inspire collective visitor action without facilitation. Over the past four years, I''ve been running a small regional art and history museum in Santa Cruz, CA.

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Participatory Museum Empowerment Facilitation 20

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 18, 2011

In our quest to make the public areas of the museum more reflective of Santa Cruz culture, we moved these boards from a comprehensive display in the history gallery into a main stairwell, prominently visible from the lobby and throughout the building. We decided to approach the label-writing for these boards in a participatory way.

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Participatory San Diego Museum History 48

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

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

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 26, 2015

Designing A Participatory Hook for a Virtual Meeting. One thing I noticed during the meeting is that I was sitting more than I normally would because of the video and the cultural norm having the video on the whole time. How have you changed your organization’s meeting culture to be better? Design must comes first.

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Facilitation Virtual Arts Participatory 50

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 10, 2014

Scene: a regional workshop on arts engagement. A funder is speaking with conviction about the fact that her foundation is focusing their arts grantmaking strategy on engagement. Engaging people actively in the arts. Here, in no particular order, are ten different kinds of quality in arts experiences: AESTHETIC: is it beautiful?

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Participatory Museum Arts Culture 55

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

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

OCTOBER 30, 2013

Earlier this fall, I read this headline: "Stanford study: Participation in a cultural activity may reduce prejudice." When the music video was focused on Mexican culture, the researchers found that the white and Asian participants demonstrated a decrease in prejudice against Latinos, both immediately after the activity and six months later.

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Measure Arts People Museum 47

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 25, 2018

For the past five years, each summer, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History has hosted MuseumCamp. Develop compelling, powerful participatory offers and promises for your prospective partners. Tour MAH participatory exhibitions and shadow MAH community events. We'd love to have you here for this pilot year.

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Community Participatory Museum Registration 31

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. I’ve been using these participatory categories to talk about how we’d like users to participate in different projects.

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Model Activities Active Activism 98

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

APRIL 26, 2018

One that has found remarkable success is California’s Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. I'm also always interested in how the national media portrays changes in the cultural sector. Executive Director Nina Simon, who was hired in 2011, says that in the years following the global financial crisis, the facility was struggling. “At

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Audience Washington Museum Intergenerational 49

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. Creating event-specific rules can level the playing field, make the implicit explicit, and create a specific culture for the event.

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Hosting Arts Help Museum 31

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. We were discussing the potential for cultural organizations to have significant impact across communities: on planning, health, education, and quality of life. The arts ARE future-making.

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San Francisco Arts Design Marketing 20

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 goal is nothing less than to remake the MAH as the primary cultural touchstone of the Santa Cruz community, the place that best embodies the unique cultural vibe of Santa Cruz. "We

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Museum History Arts Work 31

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. In contrast, the Wikimedians were focused on making cultural content digitally available online using as open a licensing structure as possible.

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Wikipedia Arts Museum Images 40

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

Have Fun - Do Good

NOVEMBER 2, 2006

It is an art form completely dependent upon the creative potential of each audience member in relation to the events on stage. Over a month ago I told Emily from the Nonprofit Blog Exchange that I would participate in the most recent exchange and write about The Artful Manager. art social media social web web net2 nptech

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Arts Web Wisconsin Social 40

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 15, 2014

When basketball players are offering more cogent commentary on racial issues than cultural institutions, you know we have a cultural relevance problem. Museums are a part of this educational and cultural network. Schools and other arts organizations are rising to the challenge. What should be our role(s)?

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Museum Blogger Cleveland Missouri 52

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 11, 2012

For years, I'd give talks about community participation in museums and cultural institutions, and I'd always get the inevitable question: "but what value does this really have when it comes to dollars and cents?" but I didn't have numbers to back it up. They all have in concert, and they build on each other.

Audience 47

Audience Museum Participatory History 47

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

OCTOBER 25, 2011

Note From Beth: Yesterday, I attended a convening called “ Beyond Dynamic Adaptability ” for arts organizations about cultural participation in the arts.

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Guatemala Movie Artist Award 93

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JANUARY 18, 2011

Establish local networks of individuals and organizations using social media to help build stronger organizations and more participatory societies. Experience with Middle Eastern Culture and no experience. Trainer the Trainers: Beth Kanter, Mohamad Najem, Jessica Dherre, and Mary Joyce. Some Connection Points: Learning. Efficiency.

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Network Build Yemen Morocco 95

Museum 2.0

JUNE 1, 2010

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. I closed this book wondering: are cultural institutions really interested in being third places? Facebook discussion board here.

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Place Discussion Culture Museum 41

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). Yes and no.

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Question Participatory Museum Evaluation 49

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 2, 2013

Proposals involve sculpture, performance, participatory-projects, videos, and installation that use and respond to the museum’s collection. This past July, artist Guillermo Gómez proposed to restore a piece of art. Both objects and art-objects would be part of this continuing transformation and evolution.

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Artist Museum Proposal Participatory 49

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. This could be a serious research opportunity for someone interested in impact assessment, community attitudes towards the arts, and the role museums can play in transforming communities.

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Museum Participatory Arts Attitude 34

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 24, 2012

To that end, our exhibitions are full of participatory elements. Riding the art couch through downtown Santa Cruz with two visitors and a dog while blasting the Jackson 5 was one of the highlights of my year. Visitors can comment on how we can improve or what they would like to see. Happening Couch. Here's a picture of it in action.

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Platform Open Museum Participatory 41

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 31, 2012

The Arts Dinner-vention Project - date TBD. This one was cooked up by Barry Hessenius, former director of the California Arts Council and public art blogger extraordinaire. Barry is asking the universe to send him names of "unheralded arts sector leaders" to be considered for an all-star dinner party in 2013.

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Professional Develop Museum Arts 35

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

Last week I was honored to be a counselor at Museum Camp , an annual professional development event hosted by the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH). Nina Simon, the executive director of the museum, is an expert in participatory design and fantastic facilitator. A mature employee knows how to manage up.

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Causes Change Museum Social 50

Museum 2.0

JULY 17, 2012

But we've just compiled all our attendance data for the past year at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (our fiscal year ends on June 30), and several people have written to me asking for the numbers behind our turnaround. I promise--after this post, I'll stop writing about this. actively sought out community needs to respond to.

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Museum History Arts Artist 47

Museum 2.0

MARCH 14, 2017

This is the second installation 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 MAH fundamentally has two jobs: we bring art and history out into our community, and we invite our community in. Yes, art is place making.

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Public Museum Arts History 27

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 9, 2011

It's a little living room in a lobby area that invites people to lounge on comfortable chairs, leaf through magazines and books related to art and Santa Cruz history, and generally hang out. The area that houses the Creativity Lounge also shows art. Teenagers are curling up with art magazines. People love petting zoos.".

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Museum Arts History Columbus 51

Museum 2.0

MAY 2, 2012

Today is my one-year anniversary as the executive director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. We went through a dramatic financial turnaround and redefined our relationship with our community through a series of experimental participatory projects and new programmatic approaches. 85% of our visitors attend through events.

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Museum Director Participatory Culture 55

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

NOVEMBER 11, 2006

The above powerpoint is from 1999 and excerpted from day-long workshops I used to lead when I worked at NYFA and design and ran a program called "KIT: Knowledge in Technology - Technology Planning for Arts Organizations." He defines participatory culture as a culture: 1.

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Social Network Network Guide Participatory 50

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. open to anyone (minimize cultural bias). Tags: guest blogging participatory.

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Technique Question Design Develop 50

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 work hard to name and build our culture in many ways. Institutional culture is something I never really understood before and I am now completely fascinated by how it can shape work. Naming our goals and our culture.

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Museum Director History Teen 49