Get Fully Funded

AUGUST 24, 2021

Email is a powerful marketing tool, but to get results you need to learn how to write fundraising emails that connect emotionally and inspire people to give. Not the content (which most people skim in about 13 seconds or less). Start by being very clear what you want people to do after they read your email.

Results 122

Results email Fundraising Story 122

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

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?" Many teens love to perform for each other. First, teens often have incredibly tight social spheres.

Teen 49

Teen Social Museum Participatory 49

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 16, 2013

It's not every day that a visitor buys pizza for everyone in the museum. Then again, Saturday was hardly normal at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. It was an opportunity for people who participate with Ze Frank's projects online to come together in real space and connect with him and with each other.

Reflection 43

Reflection Community Museum Participatory 43

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

Last Friday night, my museum hosted a fabulous (in my biased opinion) event called Race Through Time. It was a local history urban scavenger hunt that sent teams of 2-5 people out into the city to track down as many historic checkpoints as they could over the course of an evening. Performances just for teens.

Audience 52

Audience Develop Museum History 52

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 3, 2008

I’ve received a few inquiries over the last year about museums and geocaching. to ask him all the dumb questions about geocaching and museums you can imagine… and a few more. to ask him all the dumb questions about geocaching and museums you can imagine… and a few more. Leary , is something of an expert. I sat down with Seth!

Museum 20

Museum Teen Arts Project 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 21, 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. MAH staff and trustees see downtown as a vibrant retail, dining, and entertainment district, packed with diverse people.

Community 34

Community Build Arts History 34

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. One of my favorite places for a long time now. Skill-sharing free schools.

Culture 49

Culture Alternative St. Louis Los Angeles 49

Museum 2.0

APRIL 18, 2008

Thanks to Bryan Kennedy from the Science Museum of Minnesota for providing this overview/reflection on the Museums and the Web conference that recently concluded in Montreal. Museums and the Web 2008 guest blogger Bryan Kennedy here. The Walker Art Center is turning its teen website over to the teens.

Museum 20

Museum Web Teen Flickr 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 18, 2008

I've long believed that museums have a special opportunity to support the community spirit of Web 2.0 People who engage deeply in any online community, whether a bulletin board or social networking site, want to meet in person. The event brought hundreds of hip, young professionals to the museum for lots of booze and partying.

Museum 22

Museum Hosting Model Community 22

Museum 2.0

JULY 31, 2013

I spent the weekend queuing up posts for my forthcoming blog-cation--nine weeks of guest posts and reruns from the Museum 2.0 You''re in for a treat, with upcoming posts on creativity, collections management, elitism, science play, permanent participatory galleries, partnering with underserved teens, magic vests, and more.

Museum 35

Museum Participatory Reflection Conference 35

Museum 2.0

MARCH 27, 2009

This week, the Denver Art Museum (DAM) opened a new temporary exhibition called The Psychedelic Experience , featuring rock posters from San Francisco in the heyday of Bill Graham and electric kool-aid. It is an incredible museum experience. The visitor is given a copy of her poster and the museum keeps a copy as well.

Denver 21

Denver Museum Arts Remix 21

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 24, 2011

This post features an interview with Sarah Schultz, a museum staffer at one of the institutions Light profiled in the book (the Walker Art Center). It's easier to secure grants for community-based programming or exhibitions, but it's not easy to get funding for some of the core work that museums do. That's how we build trust.

Arts 46

Arts Interview Teen Artist 46

NTEN

JUNE 21, 2011

The speakers for this panel include: Tracy Fullerton - Electronics Arts Game Innovation Lab Ruth Cohen - American Museum of natural History Elaine Charnov - The NY Public Library Jason Eppink - Museum of the Moving Image Syed Salahuddin - Babycastles Elaine Cohen: The New York Public Library 100 Years of the flagship library in New York.

Game 52

Game Culture Change Museum 52

Museum 2.0

JULY 6, 2016

FoodWhat's staff and teens have taught me a lot about what it really means to be relevant to people who are often overlooked or ignored. I firmly believe that all people have something meaningful to contribute to our communities, cultural work, and society at large--including youth. All you teenagers—this is the place for you.

Teen 25

Teen Arts Classroom Student 25

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 7, 2010

Last week marked four years for the Museum 2.0 People--especially young folks looking to break into the museum business--often ask me how I got here. Ed Rodley recently wrote a blog post about museum jobs entitled "Getting Hired: It's Who You Know and Who Knows You." This seems like an appropriate time to share the story.

Museum 52

Museum Boston Participatory Job 52

Museum 2.0

JULY 24, 2007

This week, thoughts on Chapter 12 of Elaine Gurian’s book Civilizing the Museum , "Threshold Fear: Architecture program planning." In this essay, Elaine discusses the various barriers to entry for non-traditional visitors to museums, that is, the threshold fear that keeps such potential visitors from walking in our doors.

People 20

People Museum San Jose Chapter 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 18, 2015

A small room, packed with gadgets, packed with fossils, packed with tools, packed with PEOPLE everywhere making and exploring and building and learning. The people were of all ages--moms with babies strapped to their fronts, six year-olds using skillsaws, pre-teens building robots, teenagers doing homework. That taught us a lot.

Green 20

Green Interview Share Community 20

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Unsurprisingly, some of my favorite museums are small, funky places run by iconoclasts—but that’s not useful to most professionals who work for organizations in which they have little control over size or leadership matters. I worked on one project in which the client institution thought they wanted unfettered teen expression.

Project 22

Project Museum Teen North Carolina 22

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

Museum 2.0

APRIL 7, 2009

Which of these descriptions exemplifies participatory museum practice? Museum invites community members to participate in the development and creation of an exhibit. 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.

Participatory 27

Participatory Design Difference Museum 27

Museum 2.0

APRIL 22, 2015

Communities are made of people, not rhetoric. You can define a community by the shared attributes of the people in it, and/or by the strength of the connections among them. A community by GEOGRAPHY is defined by place. It is made up of the people attached to a given location: a city, a district, a neighborhood, a country.

Community 20

Community Minnesota Teen Movie 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 28, 2008

Museums (and libraries) are trusted sources of information. In February 2001, AAM commissioned a study about the trustworthiness of museums and found that "Almost 9 out of 10 Americans (87%) find museums to be one of the most trustworthy or a trustworthy source of information among a wide range of choices.

Participatory 20

Participatory Museum Teen Voice 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 25, 2009

People answer questions differently in harshly lit interrogation rooms than they do in welcoming therapists' offices or in the privacy of their own computer terminals. Rabinowitz commented that "as a 40-year veteran of history museum interpretation, I can say that I never learned so much from and about visitors."

Design 31

Design Goal Difference Platform 31

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 7, 2008

It means seeking out people in their "natural habitat" of the social Web and paying attention to what they are blogging, writing, and saying about your institution. Defining the Museum Brand Charlene and Josh argue that your brand is defined by your customers' perceptions and expressions, not by your marketing.

Museum 20

Museum Teen Second Life Discussion 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 9, 2007

Last week, Elaine Gurian and I talked about radical change in museums. Former museum start-up queen, Jen is taking a small organization whose goal is to promote girls’ involvement in math and science through research and programming to new, innovative, exciting places. Braincake isn’t some fakey attempt to pander to teens.

Interview 20

Interview Museum Teen Myspace 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JUNE 3, 2005

Some of the entries of what you can read on the Walker Blog, may appear at first glance to be mundane details of cube life , but then you remember that it is a museum blog and it makes the institution seem more human. people at the Walker who may be represented by official websites but. audiences via the internet. week to writing.

Artist 50

Artist Arts Process Remix 50

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 16, 2007

While standing on line, I noticed something surprising: when a car full of riders came back to the boarding area after their ride, people in line stuck out their hands to slap the hands of the riders in the car. Step 1: people on line wait for rollercoaster. Step 2: people see car is coming and stick out their hands.

Museum 20

Museum Participatory Teen Game 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 4, 2013

This August/September, I am "rerunning" popular Museum 2.0 Diane is both visionary and no-nonsense about deconstructing the barriers that many low-income and non-white teenagers and families face when entering a museum. Most large American museums are reflections of white culture. blog posts from the past.

St. Louis 45

St. Louis Museum Audience Teen 45

Museum 2.0

JULY 4, 2007

On Tuesday, I reviewed Elaine Gurian’s essay, Choosing Among the Options , on museum archetypes and self-definition. Today, discussion with Elaine about ways museums choose their direction, how change is possible, and new museum types to be added to the list. What if you don’t want to be identified as one type of museum?

Museum 20

Museum Puerto Rico Change Boston 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

OCTOBER 19, 2006

This morning I attended the MacArthur Foundation Digital Learning briefing that was taking place at the Natural History Museum in NYC. and I have to put this into context for people who were not at this event and may have only heard of the MacArthur Foundation on NPR." local time).

Digital 50

Digital Learning Media Avatar 50

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 20, 2019

I tell the story of the one-man band because I think many museum professionals feel like him. We are spinning and performing, and most people have no idea of the preplanning it takes to make it look so easy. But, most importantly, few museum professionals have a free hand or moment. Museums are for people, after all.

Museum 29

Museum Accessibility Articulate Teen 29

Museum 2.0

JUNE 13, 2007

A museum experience I’ll always remember: In 2002, I worked at the Boston Museum of Science with a program in which high school students from a nearby charter school spent half their school time at the museum. They took regular classes, museum-specific classes, and had internship-style museum jobs.

Lesson 20

Lesson Museum Music Classes 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 16, 2007

The recent flurry of restrictions that has sent teens fleeing? Social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, even ExhibitFiles are tools that allows people--strangers and friends--to connect with one another. into the museum is the potential to encourage more positive in-museum interactions among strangers.

Museum 20

Museum Myspace Facilitation Social Network 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

AUGUST 3, 2008

And, on the sidebar, there are some links to young people's blogs. She is a real community person and is often promoting other people's projects. Nina Simon a proud member of Gen Y, writes the very awesome Museum 2.0 blog, but you don't have to be a museum person to get a lot of value from it. Both are essential reading.

Blogger 50

Blogger Change Social Philanthropy 50

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 7, 2007

It has the most photos from the most people and places. Where else can you find Pakistani bathroom signage or Mexican biker teens while researching a project? Even better, people have created specialized sets (i.e. But there are lots of sites for these activities. So what makes Flickr so useful? Now I always use Flickr.

Flickr 20

Flickr Work Photo Teen 20

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 30, 2007

This week, we're looking at the first section, Talking Back and Talking Together , which features comment boards, talk-back walls, and discussion forums at a variety of museums. Lesson 1: People want to talk, but not necessarily about the topics you suggest. People had opinions to offer and corrections to make.

Voice 20

Voice Museum Lesson Pledge 20