Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 7, 2017

I first read about Story House Belvédère on Jasper Visser’s excellent blog, The Museum of the Future. This small, startup cultural project in Rotterdam works directly and intimately with community members to share their stories. It is a platform for social bridging and cultural exchange. The place surpassed them.

Storytelling 39

Storytelling Story Photography Museum 39

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 talk a lot at our museum about empowering our visitors, collaborators, interns, and staff by making space for them to shine. We work hard to name and build our culture in many ways. Naming our goals and our culture.

Museum 49

Museum Director History Teen 49

Connection Cafe

APRIL 21, 2014

According to the blog justgiving.com there are 5 key motivators for giving: to support a particular organization, because we are inspired by other’s stories, to support a cause, to feel good, and. Working with arts organizations there are often concern that your constituent stories aren’t as impactful. to participate in an event.

Arts 37

Arts Story Org Personal 37

Museum 2.0

APRIL 4, 2012

Museums have been grappling with this question for years ( here's a 2007 roundup of such projects ), most aggressively in zoos and natural history museums where staff hope to inspire conservation and in history/concept museums that focus on civic engagement and activism. No small task for a museum exhibition.

Story 47

Story Participatory Museum History 47

Museum 2.0

APRIL 14, 2011

Dear 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 ). I am closing down my consulting business at the end of April, but the Museum 2.0 Here are a few things that make the MAH an exciting museum to me: It's small.

History 55

History Museum Arts Consultant 55

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 14, 2013

One of the greatest gifts of my babymoon is the opportunity to share the Museum 2.0 First up is Beck Tench, a "simplifier, illustrator, story teller, and technologist" working at the Museum of Life & Science in Durham, NC. As a person who works for a science museum, I work in an environment that supports play.

Museum 51

Museum Roles Game Participatory 51

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 29, 2009

It's my "artistic rendering" of one of the most inspirational participatory projects I know of--the Bibliotheek Haarlem Oost book drops. Too often, cultural institutions design participatory projects that require visitors to learn new tools or make sacrifices to contribute. Tags: design participatory museum.

Participatory 40

Participatory Project Library Netherlands 40

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.

Museum 29

Museum Difference Participatory History 29

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 27, 2017

Our county board of supervisors had brought their official meeting to the museum. Then, for an hour, former foster youth who helped design the exhibition shared their stories with supervisors. In it, I argued that museums could give up control of the visitor experience while still maintaining (a new kind of) power.

Platform 31

Platform Impact Childhood Museum 31

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 15, 2009

Over the past year, I've noticed a strange trend in the calls I receive about upcoming participatory museum projects: the majority of them are being planned for teen audiences. Why are teens over-represented in participatory projects? The other three are cultural, and I'm not sure how accurate they are.

Teen 24

Teen Participatory Experiment Museum 24

Museum 2.0

MAY 22, 2012

Imagine you've just been tasked with developing an innovative, future-thinking national museum for your country's history. Blueprint is the story of a group of people who tried to create a Dutch Museum of National History (INNL). The Museum directors released Blueprint as a showcase for these plans. Where would you start?

Museum 36

Museum History Netherlands Create 36

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.

Model 98

Model Activities Active Activism 98

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?" We're hearing on a daily basis that the museum has a new role in peoples' lives and in the identity of the county.

Audience 47

Audience Museum Participatory History 47

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. The objects were interesting, the stories surprising.

Museum 20

Museum Audience Music Arts 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 9, 2010

Jasper Visser and his colleagues at the not-yet-physically-open National Historisch Museum of the Netherlands have impressed me with their innovative, thoughtful approach to developing a dynamic national museum. Last weekend my museum presented itself at the Uitmarkt in Amsterdam.

Museum 34

Museum Comment Experiment Participatory 34

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 20, 2009

I'm working on a section of my book about sharing social objects and am writing about the most common way that visitors share their object experiences in museums: through photographs. Revenue Streams: Museums want to maintain control of sales of "officially sanctioned" images of objects via catalogues and postcards.

Museum 54

Museum Photo Policy Open 54

Museum 2.0

APRIL 25, 2011

I've spent much of the past three years on the road giving workshops and talks about audience participation in museums. The Museum 2.0 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.

Question 49

Question Participatory Museum Evaluation 49

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 24, 2012

I like to ask myself this question periodically, challenging myself to find substantive ways for visitors to contribute to our museum. To that end, our exhibitions are full of participatory elements. They can contribute their own stories, objects, and creative work to exhibitions.

Platform 41

Platform Open Museum Participatory 41

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 lot of list is being able to say no.

Causes 50

Causes Change Museum Social 50

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 18, 2012

When talking about active audience engagement with friends in the museum field, I often hear one frustrated question: how can we get adults to participate? In children's museums and science centers, this relationship is at its most extreme. And yet in the museum world, we still see interactives as being mostly for kids.

Interaction 47

Interaction Design Museum Participatory 47

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

with cultural professionals, I like to use Tim O'Reilly's simple definition: software that gets better the more people use it. There are many participatory kiosks that are functional black holes--visitors make videos or draw pictures or write stories, drop them in a slot, and. When I talk about Web 2.0 nothing happens.

Participatory 35

Participatory Museum Rate YouTube 35

Museum 2.0

MAY 29, 2013

At our museum, we''ve gotten better at communication up from the front desk to the office. Within just a week of its creation, the "MAH Stories" private Facebook group had proven itself as a ridiculous success. Connectedness builds staff culture. participatory museum professional development'

Facebook 55

Facebook Museum Participatory Adopt 55

Museum 2.0

JULY 15, 2010

Dear Museum 2.0 It's been an intense year - finishing the book and spending lots of time on the road working with cultural institutions. My book, The Participatory Museum , has done incredibly well so far, but there's a problem: the interactive components aren't working. The book is still open to new ideas and stories.

Participatory 32

Participatory Chapter Museum Case Study 32

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. speculative (what if?

Technique 50

Technique Question Design Develop 50

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

MAY 9, 2012

Last week, I was in Minneapolis for the American Association of Museums annual meeting. Kathleen McLean led a terrific session called "Dangerous Ridiculous" about risk-taking in museums. Interestingly, at my museum, our team is naturally better at ridiculous than we are at dangerous. I found this idea really powerful.

Reflection 43

Reflection Columbus Museum Participatory 43

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. Or “I love the MAH because it is a truly participatory space where diverse groups can enjoy, express themselves, and learn from/about/with others.”

Public 27

Public Museum Arts History 27

Museum 2.0

MAY 24, 2011

When I worked briefly with the Balboa Park Online Collaborative to conceptualize a mobile phone-based game to connect visitors to the park to its cultural institutions and history, I knew Ken would be the perfect person to make it happen. Giskin Anomaly Right around Thanksgiving 2010 a strange story began to unfold in Balboa Park, San Diego.

Lesson 49

Lesson Game San Diego Design 49

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010

For years, I've been fascinated and a bit perplexed by the Elsewhere Collaborative , a thrift store turned artists' studio/living museum in Greensboro, North Carolina. By calling ourselves a museum, we respond to those cultural institutions that have separated practice from production, exhibition from process, and work from play.

Collaboration 36

Collaboration North Carolina Museum Artist 36

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 5, 2008

Reason #258 I'm glad to live in California: Cultural Connections. Cultural Connections is a group of museum professionals who meet up a few times a year and host excellent programs on a variety of topics. I was captivated by Chris Alexander 's story about participatory online/onsite efforts at the San Jose Museum of Art (SJMA).

Case Study 20

Case Study Participatory Studies Museum 20

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 5, 2008

I was fascinated by our discussion, and Bob came to mind last month, when I was asked to write an article for the Association of Children's Museums quarterly journal, Hand to Hand , about children's museums and Web 2.0. To understand more, I turned to Elaine Gurian's article The Molting of Children's Museums? Why the uniformity?

Classroom 22

Classroom Children Museum Model 22

Museum 2.0

JULY 10, 2018

The museum was in huge financial trouble. My expertise was on inviting strangers to participate in public settings like museums. I had lots of creative formats for drawing people out, sharing stories, and working collaboratively. I remember the first staff meeting I ever ran. I felt like a new teacher on the first day of school.

Hosting 31

Hosting Arts Help Museum 31

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 25, 2015

For the past two years, I''ve been working on a project to activate the concrete space adjacent to our museum as a vibrant, community plaza. We are hiring a temporary contract curator to activate the plaza this summer with 25+ cultural events. creative placemaking design Museum of Art and History programs public space'

Public 20

Public Activities Active Activism 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 18, 2015

There are lots of great science museum resources, but not where these kids can walk after school. Do you think there is also a cultural/ethnic aspect to the kind of access and design you use? For example, the Exploratorium is an extraordinarily participatory museum, but it''s not nearly as participatory as a Community Science Workshop.

Green 20

Green Interview Share Community 20

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

Museum 2.0

APRIL 29, 2015

These are the slides and notes for the talk I gave at the American Alliance of Museums conference on Monday, April 27 about the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. When I became the director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History four years ago, I took this work with me. They talked about community building.

Build 20

Build Community Museum Artist 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 15, 2015

We were discussing the potential for cultural organizations to have significant impact across communities: on planning, health, education, and quality of life. But I couldn''t fully imagine how a museum or an arts center could embody it. creative placemaking design participatory museum public space social bridging'

San Francisco 20

San Francisco Arts Design Marketing 20