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.

Participatory 37

Participatory Museum Photography Unconference 37

Museum 2.0

APRIL 7, 2009

Which of these descriptions exemplifies participatory museum practice? Museum staff create an exhibit by a traditional internal design process, but the exhibit, once open, invites visitors to contribute their own stories and participation. In the first case, you are making the design process participatory.

Participatory 27

Participatory Design Difference Museum 27

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.

Participatory 44

Participatory Museum History International 44

Museum 2.0

MARCH 4, 2015

This week marks five years since the book The Participatory Museum was first released. HUMANS ARE THE BEST AGENTS OF PARTICIPATION When I wrote the book, I was coming from the perspective of an exhibit designer. Over the past four years, I''ve been running a small regional art and history museum in Santa Cruz, CA.

Participatory 20

Participatory Museum Empowerment Facilitation 20

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?

Participatory 39

Participatory Practice Fundraising Relationship 39

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. This accomplished a few things: I didn’t have to trash my plans and revert to a traditional lecture. I made it participatory so participants helped move the furniture.

Lecture 91

Lecture Classroom Experiment Learning 91

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 18, 2011

They’re no longer “an exhibit” per se—more of an evocative design element that hints at an important story told elsewhere in the museum. We decided to approach the label-writing for these boards in a participatory way. Understanding what you think helps us think about how we display our collections. how did they ride the plank?”

Participatory 48

Participatory San Diego Museum History 48

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.

Participatory 20

Participatory Arts Design Museum 20

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.

San Francisco 20

San Francisco Arts Design Marketing 20

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 18, 2012

If you design interactives for kids, adults recognize that the experience is not for them, and they don't engage. There are many participatory experiences that appeal primarily to adults, and they are designed distinctly for adults. People of all ages are sensitive to the messages that design sends. The colors are muted.

Interaction 47

Interaction Design Museum Participatory 47

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 26, 2015

As trainers, Andrea and I both know the value of “modeling the model,” so we wanted to use and model best practices for designing effective meetings on their preferred platforms. Design must comes first. Designing A Participatory Hook for a Virtual Meeting. Finally, you identify next steps and follow up.

Facilitation 50

Facilitation Virtual Arts Participatory 50

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 10, 2012

What happens when you let visitors vote on art? Let's look at the statistics from three big participatory projects that wrapped up recently. Each of these invited members of the public to vote on art in a way that had substantive consequences--big cash prizes awarded, prestige granted, exhibitions offered.

Arts 47

Arts Artist Museum Award 47

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 25, 2016

Most participatory projects were short-term, siloed innovations, not institutional transformations. The evaluation additionally called out some faulty assumptions in program design about leadership and staff continuity throughout the multi-year process. Bernadette Peters' provocative 2011 report, Whose Cake is it Anyway? and realistic.

Museum 20

Museum Participatory Resource Place 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.

Participatory 30

Participatory Museum Vietnam Netherlands 30

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?

Participatory 55

Participatory Museum Arts Culture 55

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. This isn't even participatory. People will talk about what they are writing or making.

Design 45

Design Participatory Learning Instruction 45

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

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.

Arts 74

Arts Social Media Examples Artist 74

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. The most reliable question I'm using works in art museums.

Technique 50

Technique Question Design Develop 50

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.

Museum 43

Museum Story Project Design 43

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.

Museum 49

Museum Program Participatory Community 49

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MARCH 1, 2016

Our session will change the way you design and deliver technology trainings. 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. Peer Learning Design. Design Labs.

Training 50

Training Train San Jose Instructional Design 50

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 7, 2010

I'm a huge fan of work and the way she thinks - especially after she road the Scare House ride on the Santa Cruz boardwalk with me and did a brilliant reflection on its design. Nina has written a fantastic book engagement called The Participatory Museum. I've purchase a two copies, one for me and one to give away.

Model 98

Model Activities Active Activism 98

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

Their space is designed for local nonprofits to connect, share ideas and develop solutions together. They have built an authentic community through cultivated conversations and events designed to build trust, deepen relationships and set the stage for collective impact. Just added these to my trainer kit).

Detroit 77

Detroit Instruction Instructional PPT 77

Museum 2.0

JULY 23, 2014

The Silk Mill is part of the Derby Museums , a public institution of art, history, and natural history. They see this as directly related to the founding principles of the Mill as a place of experimentation, design, creating, and making. A strong participatory process is not a loosey-goosey, open the doors and do whatever strategy.

Museum 53

Museum Product Participatory Community 53

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. The most reliable question I'm using works in art museums.

Technique 52

Technique Design Question Develop 52

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.

Participatory 35

Participatory Museum Web Indianapolis 35

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 21, 2012

We decided to show a selection of Danny's lists in a hallway surrounded by a participatory element where we invite visitors to contribute to new lists on evocative themes ("Things we forget," "The best feelings in the world," etc.) One of the collections on display is a set of "found lists" collected by a local farmer, Danny Lazzarini.

Participatory 39

Participatory Difference Analysis Museum 39

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. and I hope you share them in the comments.

Museum 47

Museum Difference Examples Participatory 47

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

OCTOBER 30, 2013

We have some strategies for tackling this: convening diverse content advisors, incorporating anti-bias educational approaches in our design, developing participatory opportunities for visitors to connect past to present. inclusion Museum of Art and History research social bridging Unusual Projects and Influences'

Measure 47

Measure Arts People Museum 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 Last week, the Museum released a mobile version of their website, joining other museums like the Powerhouse Museum and the Walker Art Center.

Museum 97

Museum Mashup Badge Participatory 97

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. Over 13,000 photographs were submitted by 102 photographers at the fifteen different institutions, documenting about 6,200 pieces of art.

Wikipedia 40

Wikipedia Arts Museum Images 40

Museum 2.0

APRIL 26, 2018

One that has found remarkable success is California’s Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. The whole second half of the article was dedicated to our work: Smaller museums can be especially scrappy in finding ways to connect with the community. The plaza serves as a kind of front porch to the museum, ushering visitors old and new. “I

Audience 49

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. The Art of Gathering expanded my understanding of what it means to build a powerful culture of participation.

Hosting 31

Hosting Arts Help Museum 31

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

NOVEMBER 3, 2015

They started WAKE after working together for 15 years designing and leading global programs at the intersection of technology, civil society and women’s empowerment. It is always challenge to use participatory techniques when your participants are not native English speakers and you don’t speak the language.

Facilitation 50

Facilitation Training Train International 50

Museum 2.0

MARCH 28, 2012

At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH), we've started experimenting with a "community first" approach to program development. There are many amazing community representatives from business, arts, education, and social services who connect us to powerful ideas and partners. Six goals for MAH community programs.

Program 49

Program Community Design Museum 49