article thumbnail

Participatory Grantmaking: I’m in! Now what?

sgEngage

You’ve read about participatory grantmaking—and maybe even heard about other organizations using this model to distribute control of their funding strategy and grants decisions to the communities they serve. Not sure if participatory grantmaking is for you or maybe you need a refresher on what it is? Is this you?

article thumbnail

What I Learned from Beck (the rock star) about Participatory Arts

Museum 2.0

Beck''s project is unusual because he deliberately resurrected a mostly-defunct participatory platform: sheet music for popular songs. In his thoughtful preface to this project, I reconnected with five lessons I''ve learned from participatory projects in museums and cultural sites. Constrain the input, free the output.

professionals

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Goodbye Consulting, Hello Museum of Art & History!

Museum 2.0

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

History 55
article thumbnail

Participatory Moment of Zen: Diverse Visitor Contributions Add Up to Empathy

Museum 2.0

This person is writing about a participatory element (the "pastport") that we included in the exhibition Crossing Cultures. They diversified the voice of immigration in the exhibition and encouraged people to share their own histories verbally. Response mail art after the visit. Collaboration in the months before the show.

article thumbnail

Adventures in Evaluating Participatory Exhibits: An In-Depth Look at the Memory Jar Project

Museum 2.0

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 puts it on the wall. What was it?

article thumbnail

Is it OK to Smash That? The Complications of Living Art Museums

Museum 2.0

I thought about all of this when reading about the recent incident at the Perez Art Museum Miami, where artist Maximo Carminero smashed a vase by Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei in an unauthorized act of visitor participation. It is not acceptable to walk into a museum and destroy another artist''s work of art.

Museum 50
article thumbnail

Balancing Engagement: Adventures in Participatory Exhibit Labels

Museum 2.0

The Santa Cruz Surfing Museum recently loaned us some fabulous surfboards that tell the co-mingled history of surfing and redwood trees in Santa Cruz. 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.