Forum One

MARCH 30, 2023

Forum One’s recent design work with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) Simmons Talks series was a dream come true: an opportunity to put passion behind a design that I believe in and honor the work of others who inspire me. Endowed by Dr. Ruth J.

Arts 79

Arts Artist Museum History 79

Museum 2.0

APRIL 26, 2018

The Washington Post covered the MAH's transformation as part of an article about museums engaging new audiences. 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. It’s something that any museum, of any size, can work toward.

Audience 49

Audience Washington Museum Intergenerational 49

Bloomerang

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Auctioneers have to capture the audience’s attention with eye-catching items that spark bidding wars. This guide is a great place to start to generate ideas for items and packages that will captivate your audience at your next auction event. Wow auction attendees with close-up seats to musicals or plays at your local theater.

Artist 74

Artist Classes Arts Local 74

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 22, 2014

Imagine an institution with a commitment to rigor, depth, and delight in the exploration of contemporary culture. Imagine a prize competition to develop new experimental approaches to engaging audiences. The Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona ( CCCB ) has just launched a new biennial Cultural Innovation International Prize.

Audience 42

Audience Ideas Proposal Museum 42

Museum 2.0

JULY 20, 2016

When we say we want our museum to be "audience-centered," what do we mean? My career first got moving at a brilliant example of the customer-centered museum: the International Spy Museum. Many of my favorite museums, libraries, and zoos are customer-centered places. They care about visitor comfort.

Museum 20

Museum Audience Music Arts 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

Last Friday night, my museum hosted a fabulous (in my biased opinion) event called Race Through Time. Race Through Time was designed specifically for this audience of 30 and 40-somethings looking for fun social events with a Santa Cruz bent. I've written before about the " parallel vs. pipeline " approach to new audience development.

Audience 52

Audience Develop Museum History 52

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 25, 2010

When it comes to user participation in cultural institutions and the arts, it's popular to launch projects that pit visitors against experts. at the Brooklyn Museum, where you could track how people of various levels of art expertise rated crowd-contributed photographs. This isn't a direct "audience versus expert" comparison.

Audience 38

Audience Music Artist Museum 38

Connection Cafe

DECEMBER 10, 2013

How can arts and cultural organizations start leveraging content marketing? Surely this doesn’t apply to zoos, museums, and theaters does it? There are 5 steps to start a content marketing program at your arts and cultural organization. The most successful content is the content that is personalized for an audience.

Arts 35

Arts Culture Content Marketing 35

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

DECEMBER 6, 2010

How Abundance Can Connect Arts Organizations With Audiences by Marc van Bree. A month or two ago, museums and galleries around the world participated in a Twitter event called Ask a Curator. The project was a success, but I felt that it lacked real engagement between the public and the museums and Ask a Curator came to mind.

Arts 101

Arts Twitter Examples Los Angeles 101

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 26, 2012

Writing my masters thesis for Gothenburg University’s International Museum Studies program while also working four days a week as the Director of Community Programs at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History this spring was certainly a challenge but also an incredible opportunity.

Museum 49

Museum Program Participatory Community 49

Museum 2.0

JULY 26, 2010

I've been spending time recently interviewing people who run unusual cultural and learning venues. I'm fascinated by these places because of their ability to attract diverse audiences to idiosyncratic experiences, and I'm curious how they stay afloat. Skill-sharing free schools. Community science workshops.

Culture 49

Culture Alternative St. Louis Los Angeles 49

Museum 2.0

JUNE 29, 2009

By a strange and lucky coincidence, I was at the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum (EMPSFM) in Seattle for a two-day workshop. EMPSFM is one of a handful of museums worldwide for which the death of the King of Pop is a very big deal. Are museums only relevant when they can serve our most pressing needs?

Museum 34

Museum Teen Learning Music 34

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 26, 2017

Different culture has different understanding of philanthropy and we use different words to represent various aspects of the concept. In most cultures, philanthropy existed a long time ago. One of them was the curator of the world largest archaeological museum, Grand Egyptian Museum. I was there as a new trainer.

Children 78

Children Philanthropy Japan China 78

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 15, 2014

This week, my colleague Emily Hope Dobkin has a beautiful guest post on the Incluseum blog about the Subjects to Change teen program that Emily runs at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. Subjects to Change is an unusual museum program in that it explicitly focuses on empowering teens as community leaders.

Teen 45

Teen Change Museum History 45

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 5, 2016

I've learned so much from my dad about making art, putting on a great show, inviting audience participation , and navigating celebrity. No museum puts up a label that says: “Our last curator thought this painting was lousy and kept it in storage. Their audience aged with them, and they slid from hot to nostalgic.

Arts 20

Arts North America Music Hawaii 20

Have Fun - Do Good

SEPTEMBER 6, 2006

Image & Identity: Culture behind clothes Deadline for submissions: May 1, 2007 Appearances aren’t everything, or are they? Clothes can express a part of who we are or the culture we represent. This is an amazing chance for up and coming women filmmakers to have their work viewed by a worldwide audience.

Museum 40

Museum International Story Music 40

Museum 2.0

MARCH 25, 2008

I'd love to see a museum offer temporary tattoos instead of stickers at entry. I expected it to be both physically and culturally uncomfortable, something like going to a dentist in a Harley garage. They are the kind of people we can't even get to the museum door, let alone through it. The music was loud and angry.

Museum 23

Museum Arts Artist Culture 23

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 19, 2015

One of my favorite comments on the first post in this series came from Lyndall Linaker, an Australian museum worker, who asked: " Who decides what is relevant? The curatorial team or a multidisciplinary team who have the audience in mind when decisions are made about the best way to connect visitors to the collection?"

Teen 20

Teen Museum Voice Collaboration 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 12, 2010

But then I started finding more humble projects related to broader issues, and I began to see Kickstarter as a potentially fascinating space for museums and cultural institutions. Why should cultural and arts organizations care about Kickstarter? Kickstarter is a symptom of changes in donor culture.

Fund 49

Fund Museum Pledge Game 49

Museum 2.0

JULY 3, 2007

This week, we look at Chapter 5 of Elaine Gurian's book Civilizing Museums , Choosing Among the Options: An opinion about museum definitions in two parts. First published in Curator magazine in 2002, this essay presents five different museum "types" and their distinct opportunities and challenges.

Museum 20

Museum Taxonomy Arts National 20

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 7, 2007

I got my copy of the fall issue of Museums and Social Issues this week. The theme is "Civic Dialogue," and the journal includes articles on the historical, cultural, media, and museum practice of getting people talking to each other (including one by me about such endeavors on the web).

Museum 22

Museum Lecture Denver San Francisco 22

Museum 2.0

JULY 20, 2010

Last week, I gave a talk about participatory museum practice for a group of university students at UCSC. During the ensuing discussion, one woman asked, "Which audiences are least interested in social participation in museums?" So what's a museum to do--especially one that is funded to encourage youth and teen participation?

Teen 49

Teen Social Museum Participatory 49

Museum 2.0

JULY 1, 2008

Dear Museum 2.0-ers, ers, Next week, I'll be going to DC for a meeting convened by the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Museum and Library Services on "Museums and Libraries in the 21st Century." Over the last 50 years, public-facing museums and libraries in the U.S.

Museum 20

Museum Library Participatory Wikipedia 20

Forum One

DECEMBER 13, 2023

Forum One worked closely with the AARP Livability Index team to meet the needs of its audiences with an easier-to-use website and accessible data that informs consumer and policy decisions nationwide. Forum One partnered with the Museum to launch their new brand to the world.

Celebrate 68

Celebrate Award Colorado Museum 68

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 3, 2009

Submitted by Nina Simon, publisher of Museum 2.0 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. questions that induce grappling.

Technique 50

Technique Question Design Develop 50

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JUNE 8, 2011

Vince noted that their concert-goers are most open to engagement right after the performance – with email open rates soaring to 80%. I pointed to the Jo Johnson and the London Symphony’s Facebook page as an excellent example of engaging audiences before and after concerts.

Social Media 116

Social Media Experiment Media Social 116

Forum One

DECEMBER 13, 2023

Forum One helped the AARP Livability Index meet the needs of its audiences with an easier-to-use website and accessible data that informs consumer and policy decisions nationwide. We partnered with the Museum to launch their new brand to the world. This beautifully designed branding and website won five awards this year!

Celebrate 46

Celebrate Award Colorado Museum 46

Forum One

MAY 17, 2023

This year, Forum One took home one platinum, four gold, and six silver awards in the categories of cultural, non-profit, science, health, and school/university websites, as well as digital branded content, arts and culture virtual experiences, and family and kids apps and software.

Award 80

Award Museum Kansas City Drupal 80

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 21, 2016

Looking closer, I saw that each seat had its own handwritten label, telling the story of the Philadelphia cultural institution from which it originated. For example, right now, Temple Contemporary's offices are packed floor to ceiling with broken musical instruments from classrooms across the city of Philadelphia.

Process 20

Process Share Philadelphia Arts 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. The most reliable question I'm using works in art museums. instead of what is?)

Technique 52

Technique Design Question Develop 52

Forum One

MAY 3, 2023

Forum One received 11 awards in seven categories in this year’s awards for excellence and distinction in website and app design, development, and digital strategy across the categories of non-profits, cultural institutions, science, health and wellness, and education. We partnered with the Museum to launch their new brand to the world.

Award 80

Award Communication Colorado Museum 80

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 3, 2009

Last month, the Christian Science Monitor published an article entitled, "Museums' new mantra: Connect with community." It took me a couple weeks (and various museum blog responses ) to realize what bugs me about this article--it treats "connecting with community" as a marketing ploy, a "mantra" rather than a mission.

Community 22

Community Museum San Diego San Francisco 22

Forum One

OCTOBER 4, 2023

Not only did we make the list one time – we made it eight times with two gold wins for non-profit and cultural institution websites and six silver wins for apps and websites in non-profits, health, families and kids, the environment and sustainability, science, and education.

Award 87

Award Museum Kansas City Drupal 87

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This is the second part of a two-part interview with John Falk and Beverly Sheppard on their book Thriving in the Knowledge Age: New Business Models for Museums and Other Cultural Institutions. I love this idea, but I often find that museum staff are really nervous about making any changes that might alienate current members/donors.

Interview 32

Interview Museum Phase Reflection 32

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 8, 2010

Growing a Strong Volunteer Culture Every year, thousands of new librarians and archivists graduate from MLS programs. This Pop Up Library just returned from a folk music festival. One lives a double life as a soul music collector and DJ. You go online, and that’s why physical culture is at risk.

Chicago 48

Chicago Library Public Culture 48

Museum 2.0

MAY 20, 2015

The magic can be more diffuse, the audience less attentive. If we walk by music and culture and conversations and kindness, we may feel better about ourselves and our community. Yes, the space is more chaotic, less intentionally-designed--and that may mean that the experience is less intense than in purpose-built facility.

Free 20

Free Classes Flash Arts 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 22, 2008

Why discuss gifting on Museum 2.0? One of my greatest interests is the "p articipatory museum," in which there is substantive, unfacilitated visitor-to-visitor interaction. When I heard the tollbooth story, I started thinking about gifting as a model for participatory experiences in museums. No, I'm not angling for a present.

Gift 23

Gift Participatory Museum Model 23