The Participatory Museum: A Must-Read Book for Current and Future Arts Managers

Traveling this weekend, I decided to put aside my school work, leave my laptop at home and finally read Nina Simon’s, The Participatory Museum. As an arts management student, I cannot emphasize enough just how relevant this book is for cultural institution administrators, especially future ones. I have decided procrastinating over the weekend was in the name of the future of museums (at least that’s what I’m telling myself…).

Nina Simon, the author of the book and Museum 2.0 blog, is the Executive Director of the Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz. Simon shares her own experiences of visiting, working and participating (or not) in museums throughout the book. What I find most critical to the book’s success in discussing participation in the museum setting, and doing so credibly, are the countless examples and case studies ranging from science museums to art museums, and Simon’s personal, professional accounts to events she observed and experienced. The case studies are relevant, contemporary, and thematically and geographically diverse.

The purpose of this post is not to offer a summary of the book, though if it were, I would say this: it is an introduction, resource and guide for cultural institutions on where/when/why/how to engage visitors as “cultural participants, not passive consumers.”

Instead, I will focus on three components of visitor participation and engagement: the different types of participants, the need for constraints and the four models of participation.

Until this weekend, I was under the impression there are two types of museum goers: those who will sit down at a computer screen to video record their reaction to an exhibition as prompted, and those, like myself, who will not. I don’t think I’m alone in that fallacy either. If video-recording or commenting on my experience is the extent of the museum’s participatory program, well then, I’m out of luck. Simon applies research conducted by Forrestor Research to explain the participatory trends and types of audiences in the cultural institution setting. These audiences are:

1.The creators

2.The critics

3. The collectors

4. The joiners

5. The spectators

6.The inactives

Think about YouTube and Flickr. These social media sites encourage participation from all types of audiences, including those who want to post content, share videos and upload photos (the creators); those who want to publicly like, dislike and rate content (the critics); those who like to aggregate the videos and photos they most enjoy in their own profiles (the collectors); those who are members or have an account on social network sites (the joiners); those who consume the videos, photos and blog posts of those who create them (the spectators); and finally, those who have no interaction with online social sites (the inactives).

Ah ha! So those of us who don’t feel comfortable sharing at the video commenting station aren’t lazy museum participants! Rather, the museum has neglected to incorporate a means of participation that engages our type of audience. It is often the case that cultural institutions engage either the creators of user generated content, or the spectators, polarizing the museum audience into those two groups.

Knowing there are critics, collectors, joiners and the inevitable inactives who have what Simon calls, “intermediate participatory behaviors,” a museum must create participatory experiences to discourage participation inequality and to encourage engagement.

Participation inequality leads me to my next point. To encourage participation from all audience types, exhibits must be designed with limitations, constraints and scaffolding. This may seem counter-intuitive if you want open, unrestricted and expressive responses from your audience. However, open-ended questions and activities cause many visitors to run away in fear and self-consciousness. My most favorite art-related quote (by Oscar Welles) so brilliantly addresses this barrier to participation, productivity and creativity: “the enemy of art is the absence of limitation.”

Simon writes

The best participatory experiences are not wide open. They are scaffolded to help people feel comfortable engaging in the activity. There are many ways to scaffold experiences without prescribing the result…A supportive starting point can help people participate confidently – whether as creators, critics, collectors, joiners, or spectators.

Scaffolding and constraints make participating less daunting and audiences feel more confident in themselves and their ideas. Simon provides examples and case studies of successful, constrained projects and activities that engage all types by limiting self-expression and open-ended opportunities. This is brilliant. Is it a completely new idea? No. But Simon provides all the information you need to create quality outcomes for all. She explores what limitations in the cultural institution setting are, how they work, why they work, who they benefit, and how you can implement them in your organization.

Now that we understand the diverse needs and types within the audience and how to scaffold the creative experience, we can now take a look at Simon’s four different models for participation:

1. Contributory

2. Collaborative

3. Co-creative

4. Hosted

The second half of Simon’s text focuses on each model of participation. You can access a handy PDF version of Simon’s matrix that organizes each model according to the organization’s commitment to community engagement, need for control in the participatory process, vision of relationship with the participants, goals for the participants and nonparticipants, etc.

Depending on the organization’s mission, capacity and the situation, different models of participation will be more effective than others. The most critical factor to determine when deciding what model of participation to employ is the extent of control the organization wants over the process and its participants. Once the question of control has been addressed, museums can then determine their vision and desired outcomes for the project, the type of participation activities required to reach those goals and the role of museum staff. The final task  is to measure the success and impact of the participatory project.

I recommend this book to current students and professionals in the museum field. As we enter an age of an increasingly diverse society, it will become even more critical for museums to create opportunities that encourage all audiences to attend, engage and participate.

The Participatory Museum is available in three formats: as a paperback book ($25), a downloadable file ($18), and online (free). I encourage our Technology in the Arts followers to read the book, or simply a chapter of it, and contextualize the material in terms of your own arts organization- be it a museum, community center, arts center or gallery. How do you currently encourage visitor participation? Are you engaging all types of participants? If not, what types of programs, projects or exhibits can your organization support to better engage more visitors?

For further information, check out this previous Technology in the Arts post on a talk given by Simon at the Pittsburgh Children's Museum.

Audience 2.0 - Condensed, Part I

In part I of this two-part post,  I summarize the findings of Audience 2.0, while tackling the problems, questions and lack of answers in part II. Audience 2.0: How Technology Influences Arts Participation, the newest study released by the National Endowment of the Arts gives empirical quantitative data to support how technological trends affect arts participation, the health of the arts in the US, and the ways that arts patrons use electronic media to engage in the arts.

Audience 2.0 takes data from the NEA’s 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts and the three other SPPA studies from 1982, 1992, & 2002 and “examines how Americans participate in the arts via electronic and digital media.” The media platforms: Radio, Audio recordings, Television, Video Recordings, Internet, & Portable Media Devices were tracked, but there is not consistant data available from every study.

The study cited three main conclusions:

• Technology is not going to be the downfall of live performances, the arts or culture in our society,
• Technology provides a new outlet for people to experience the arts who may not otherwise have participated at all.
• Participation in the arts through electronic and digital media actually spurs participation in live arts performances and exhibitions.

The study found that “people who engage with art through media technologies attend live performances or arts exhibits at two to three times the rate of non-media arts participants.” This statistic should quell many of the concerns arts organizations have about digital media replacing them and help arts institutions embrace technology as a way to reach enrich their patrons. The study shows that technology provides a way for people to interact with arts and culture outside of the traditional venue, but it does not replace attending the physical arts or event space.

“53% of US adults used TV, radio, CDs/DVDs, computers or portable media devices to view or listen to arts performances, programs about artists, art works, museums or programs about literature.” Far more people participate in the arts as a whole than those who physically attended arts events.  This shows a greater interest in arts and culture from Americans than many people had previously thought.

“For every arts performance outlet besides theater, adults were more likely to view or listen through electronic media than to attend live events.”  This statistic has many people concerned about the impact of technology on the arts, however; the data shows this to be a good thing because a majority of the participants who make up the media only category represent people who would never have attended an arts event in the first place. The NEA then draws the correlation that these people would not participate in the arts at all without media and electronic technology outlets. Technology helps to widen the breadth of reach for the arts and allows people to participate in the through new portals.

Adults who used electronic media and technology only to participate in the arts had a higher likelihood of lower-than-average household incomes, residing in rural residents, belong to racial and ethnic minorities, belonging to that age group 75+, and/or having achieved no more than some college in their life. This profile directly mirrors the profile of people who do not participate in benchmark arts events at all.

The big picture of this survey is that it really just repeated many of the SPPA findings from the past three decades through the lens of technology. Overall, Education still has the greatest weight in determining arts participation, racial and ethnic minorities participate less than non-Hispanic whites, and racial and ethnic minorities tend to participate more frequently in arts event that are associated with their heritage.

This study leaves more questions than answers and those will be tackled in part II of this series.