The idea of the audience-centered institution that is as relevant, useful, and accessible as a shopping mall or train station (with thanks to John Cotton Dana, Elaine Heumann Gurian, and Stephen Weil).
The idea that visitors construct their own meaning from cultural experiences (with thanks to George Hein, John Falk, and Lynn Dierking).
The idea that users’ voices can inform and invigorate both project design and public-facing programs (with thanks to Kathy McLean, Wendy Pollock, and the design firm IDEO).
I define a participatory cultural institution as a place where visitors can create, share, and connect with each other around content. Create means that visitors contribute their own ideas, objects, and creative expression to the institution and to each other. Share means that people discuss, take home, remix, and redistribute both what they see and what they make during their visit. Connect means that visitors socialize with other people—staff and visitors—who share their particular interests. Around content means that visitors’ conversations and creations focus on the evidence, objects, and ideas most important to the institution in question.
Rather than delivering the same content to everyone, a participatory institution collects and shares diverse, personalized, and changing content co-produced with visitors. It invites visitors to respond and add to cultural artifacts, scientific evidence, and historical records on display. It showcases the diverse creations and opinions of non-experts. People use the institution as meeting grounds for dialogue around the content presented. Instead of being “about” something or “for” someone, participatory institutions are created and managed “with” visitors.
Supporting participation means trusting visitors’ abilities as creators, remixers, and redistributors of content. It means being open to the possibility that a project can grow and change post-launch beyond the institution’s original intent.
Most institutions prefer to experiment with participation behind closed doors. Cultural institutions have a long history of prototyping new projects with focus groups.
This leads to an obvious question: does every visitor really want to participate in this manner in cultural institutions? No. Just as there are visitors who will never pull the lever on an interactive and those who prefer to ignore the labels, there are many visitors who will not choose to share their story, talk with a stranger, or consume visitor-generated content. There will always be visitors who enjoy static exhibitions conferring authoritative knowledge. There will always be visitors who enjoy interactive programs that allow them to test that knowledge for themselves. And there will increasingly be visitors—perhaps new ones—who enjoy the opportunity to add their own voices to ongoing discussions about the knowledge presented.
In 2006, researcher Jakob Nielsen wrote a landmark paper on participation inequality, introducing the “90-9-1” principle. This principle states: “In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.”
Despite the diversity and popularity of participatory options, many museums are fixated on creators. I share Forrester’s statistics with colleagues, and they say, “Yes, but we really want people to share their own stories about biodiversity,” or, “We think our visitors can make amazing videos about justice.” Many cultural professionals see open-ended self-expression as the paragon of participatory experiences. Allowing visitors to select their favorite exhibits in a gallery or comment on the content of the labels isn’t considered as valuable as inviting them to produce their own content.
This is a problem for two reasons. First, exhibits that invite self-expression appeal to a tiny percentage of museum audiences. Less than one percent of the users of most social Web platforms create original content. Would you design an interactive exhibit that only one percent of visitors would want to use? Maybe—but only if it was complemented by other exhibits with wider appeal. When I encounter a video talkback kiosk in a museum as a visitor, I never want to make my own video. I don’t choose to be a creator in those environments, and thus my only other option is to be a spectator. But I would love to rate the videos on display (as a critic) or group them (as a collector). Unfortunately, those potentially rich participatory experiences—ones which would develop my ability to detect patterns, compare and contrast items, and express my opinion—are not available to me in most museum settings.
Many cultural professionals are more familiar with providing visitor experiences than thinking about how visitors can usefully contribute to the institution.
In the book Here Comes Everybody, technologist Clay Shirky argued that there are three necessary components for a participatory mechanism to be successful: “a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain with the [participants].” The institution must promise an appealing participant experience. The institution must provide access to tools for participation that are easy to understand and use. And the bargain between institution and participants—regarding management of intellectual property, outcomes of the project, and feedback to participants—should accommodate participants’ needs. Even if your promise, tools, or bargains have to change over the course of a project, you should always be able to articulate what you offer and expect clearly and openly. Doing so demonstrates your respect for participants’ time and abilities.
Games researcher Jane McGonigal has stated that people need four things to be happy: “satisfying work to do, the experience of being good at something, time spent with people we like, and the chance to be part of something bigger.” Many people visit museums in social groups to spend time with people they like in the context of something bigger.
Visitors can place their creations on a conveyor belt that moves throughout the museum for all to see.
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Katz, U. (1989). "Strategies of adaptation to osmotic stress in anuran Amphibia under salt and burrowing conditions". Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part A: Physiology. 93 (3): 499–503.
Eichelberg, H.; Schneider, H. (1974). "The fine structure of the larynx muscles in female tree frogs, Hyla a. Arborea L. (Anura, Amphibia)". Cell and Tissue Research. 152 (2).
Art historical perspectives, e.g. on preparatory techniques or exhibition concepts
Pereira, H. M.; Ferrier, S.; Walters, M.; Geller, G. N.; Jongman, R. H. G.; Scholes, R. J.; Bruford, M. W.; Brummitt, N.; Butchart, S. H. M.; Cardoso, A. C.; Coops, N. C.; Dulloo, E.; Faith, D. P.; Freyhof, J.; Gregory, R. D.; Heip, C.; Höft, R.; Hurtt, G.; Jetz, W.; Karp, D. S.; McGeoch, M. A.; Obura, D.; Onoda, Y.; Pettorelli, N.; Reyers, B.; Sayre, R.; Scharlemann, J. P. W.; Stuart, S. N.; Turak, E.; Walpole, M. (2013). "Essential Biodiversity Variables". Science. 339 (6117): 277–278.
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