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

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 18, 2011

We decided to approach the label-writing for these boards in a participatory way. We blatantly borrowed the brilliant technique the San Diego Museum of Natural History used to write labels based on visitors’ questions. Visitors have gone to town, writing both basic questions (“who made them?” “who how did they ride the plank?”

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Participatory San Diego Museum History 48

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. Note: the title of this post pays homage to Elaine Heumann Gurian''s excellent and quite different 1981 essay of the same title. Feel free to add your own questions and answers in the comments!

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Museum Question Participatory Evaluation 45

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

JUNE 18, 2014

And it''s got me thinking about how we build energy and audience for the arts in this country. Barry Hessenius recently wrote a blog post questioning the theory that more art into the school day will increase and bolster future adult audiences for art experiences. If kids were checking out art supplies from the library.

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Arts Build United States Audience 47

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. The exhibit opens.

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Participatory Design Difference Museum 27

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 25, 2016

Most participatory projects were short-term, siloed innovations, not institutional transformations. Five years later, project director Dr. Piotr Bienkowski's final report for Our Museum tells a different story. Bernadette Peters' provocative 2011 report, Whose Cake is it Anyway? didn't mince words. and realistic.

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Museum Participatory Resource Place 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 26, 2015

Designing A Participatory Hook for a Virtual Meeting. Depending on the number of people in your group, there are different ways to facilitate the report out. For this meeting, we asked two questions: What makes a meeting a good, productive use of your time? Design must comes first. Flickr Image by Derek Gavey.

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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. Any questions? Quality Shakespearian theater is different from quality contemporary dance.

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Participatory Museum Arts Culture 55

Museum 2.0

APRIL 25, 2011

Note: the title of this post pays homage to Elaine Heumann Gurian's excellent and quite different 1981 essay of the same title. 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 Yes and no.

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Question Participatory Museum Evaluation 49

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

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

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?

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Arts Museum Artist Tucson 45

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 30, 2013

I talked with Tiffany, and also with Hazel Markus and Alanna Connor, Stanford social psychologists who recently co-authored a pretty fascinating pop-science book about understanding cultural difference. My biggest question for these social psychologists is this: how do we apply their lessons to our work? Direct questioning.

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Measure Arts People Museum 47

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. Rick wanted a better way to describe what kinds of projects led to different community outcomes. Science has an answer.

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Model Activities Active Activism 98

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

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

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

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.

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Participatory Arts Design Museum 20

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 23, 2018

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. Short story: we learned a lot. We wrote a toolkit about our process. What did we learn?

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Issue Childhood Community Create 45

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. But I left uneasy, grappling with questions that plagued me throughout the conference. Instead, I found a standard art museum. Lovely grounds.

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Participatory Museum Web Indianapolis 35

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

JULY 23, 2014

The Silk Mill is part of the Derby Museums , a public institution of art, history, and natural history. The Derby Silk Mill folks have a different tack: they define the Silk Mill as being about making. A strong participatory process is not a loosey-goosey, open the doors and do whatever strategy. Or silk production.

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Museum Product Participatory Community 53

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 4, 2010

It's rare that a participatory museum project is more than a one-shot affair. The project's implementation keeps changing, and I can't decide whether it is getting better or just different. The project's implementation keeps changing, and I can't decide whether it is getting better or just different.

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Wikipedia Arts Museum Images 40

Museum 2.0

JULY 11, 2012

I get excited about a lot of things in my work at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. And to cut to the end of the story first, yes, we are creating a project together, yes, you can participate, and yes to whatever other questions this brings up in your head. To celebrate political differences.

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Museum Participatory Artist History 45

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

FEBRUARY 24, 2009

What's different is that the backchannel is being used in non-technology conferences. What's also different is that more and more people are viewing the back channel as integrated with the conference networking and participant learning. You can combine this with asking the audience for “out-loud” questions as well.

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Reflection Conference Resource Arts 69

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 25, 2009

If someone asked you that question, how would you answer? Answers will differ depending on who's asking, but they are also influenced by the designed environment in which questions are asked. We have different conversations on the phone than we do in person or in internet chat rooms. "Where were you last night?"

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Design Goal Difference Platform 31

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

SEPTEMBER 8, 2014

The Leading Change Summit was drastically different from the Nonprofit Technology Conference, NTEN’s flagship event that has over 2,000 attendees, dozens of tracks and hundreds of panels, big parties, a trade show, and all the things you would expect from a traditional conference. Do you have a preferred method? Overnight Reflection.

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Reflection NTEN Change Facilitation 124

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. Are there differences between the Museum Hack experience at the Met and AMNH?

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Museum Interview New York Interaction 55

Museum 2.0

MAY 22, 2013

Think about the difference between Pacman and Grand Theft Auto. Negotiated agency" strikes me as a really useful framework in which to talk about visitor/audience participation in the arts. The museum invites art-making in the elevator. This is a kind of negotiation jui-jitsu that can create art through creative tension.

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Game Artist Museum Participatory 40

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. Lisa and I have fundamentally different ideas of what a "good" museum experience is.

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Museum Arts History Columbus 51

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

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

APRIL 21, 2015

And, as she recognizes, putting these skills in everyday practice is uncomfortable — it is a different way of interacting than a command-and-control style She tells leaders she advises: “If your palms aren’t sweaty and your stomach isn’t churning, then you probably aren’t practicing engaged leadership.”

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Digital Strategy Chapter Advice 50

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. The debriefing question encouraged us to reflect on points of connection and reciprocity. Trainer the Trainers: Beth Kanter, Mohamad Najem, Jessica Dherre, and Mary Joyce.

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Network Build Yemen Morocco 95

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 9, 2017

Hosted by a sound art collective, Ultra-red, the 2015 event promised "to investigate listening as a political activity and to interrogate the stakes of participation in neoliberalism." I'm embarrassed to say I hadn't really thought about these questions before the Against Participation symposium. At first, I thought it was a joke.

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Participatory Museum Voice Press 20

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