Wednesday, November 24, 2010

A Bulgarian (Museum) Revolution



What would you do if you lived in a country that had no Children's Museums or Science Centers?

That's currently the state of affairs in Bulgaria.  Fortunately for the Bulgarian Museum community, and Bulgarian museum visitors in particular, a determined and resourceful young woman named Vessela Gertcheva is working to change all that.  In fact, Vessela and her colleagues in the museum and cultural sectors are on the brink of a true Bulgarian Museum Revolution.

I just returned from a trip to Bulgaria where I was part of a three-person consulting team (myself, Deborah Edward, and Sally Yerkovich) funded by the America for Bulgaria Foundation, under the direction of the New Bulgarian University, to observe and provide advice on the pilot project designed to develop five "Children's Corners" (really small interactive exhibition areas designed to introduce children and family groups to hands-on exhibits) into five different museums around Bulgaria.

Vessela is spearheading the "Children's Corners" project as a way to build public awareness for the possibilities of interactive learning spaces in Bulgaria, and to ultimately pave the way for a free-standing Bulgarian Children's Museum there.  In this blog posting, I'll share some of the experiences of my trip to Bulgaria, as well as some of the museum and exhibit ideas I came away with.

But first, a little background.  Everyone I told about my trip before I actually left for Bulgaria was surprised and/or fascinated by my destination.  But most people (including myself, originally) weren't really sure where Bulgaria was located.  So, here's a map:




Bulgaria is bordered to the south by Greece and Turkey, to the west by Macedonia, to the north by Romania, and to the east by the Black Sea.  My sense of central Sofia, the capital, was that there were a few beautiful buildings surrounded by much blocky, oppressive architecture reflective of the Soviet-dominated, totalitarian past of Bulgaria.  This is changing since Bulgaria's entry into the European Union, but slowly.




Similarly, the Bulgarian museums we visited were decidedly "old school."  Large buildings whose interiors were dominated by rows and floors of artifacts and objects in glass cases (or as our Bulgarian hosts charmingly described them, "cages.")  While many of these traditional Bulgarian museums provided interesting staffed programs (such as weekend bazaars or the popular annual "European Bat Night" at the National Museum of Natural History) museum staff have become increasingly interested in exploring ways for integrating interactive exhibit areas geared toward children and families into their museums.



The first of the five Children's Corners opened in September 2010 at the Regional Museum of History in Blagoevgrad, in the southwestern part of Bulgaria.  Having seen the finished gallery, I am very impressed and think that the Blagoevgrad exhibition raises the bar high for the succeeding four galleries in this project to match.  (You can read my entire review and see a batch of pictures from the Blagoevgrad installation by clicking over to the ExhibiFiles website.) 



I also learned a new exhibit trick from our Bulgarian museum colleagues: their animal track stamping component makes use of "Moon Sand" in the central stamping area, which makes for sharper track impressions as well as limiting some degree of the messiness associated with traditional loose sand.



In visiting the other museum sites that will be creating their own Children's Corners, and by meeting with their directors and curatorial staff, I was struck by several things:

• It is exceedingly difficult to imagine the possibilities or develop interactive exhibit ideas if neither you, nor your visitors, have directly experienced a hands-on gallery or museum.  This is a key part of both the challenge, and the revolution, inherent in the Children's Corner project.  Fortunately, the completed gallery in Blagoevgrad is already serving as a model and benchmark to Bulgarian museum professionals and visitors alike.

• Prototyping and testing your ideas is the most effective way to achieve good results.  There was a little bit of the tendency in Bulgaria (as there is in the U.S. and elsewhere in the museum world) to want to design and develop the interactive children's exhibitions inside meeting rooms with a quorum of experts.  Fortunately, by the end of our trip to Bulgaria, our hosts seemed to be warming up to the notion of using prototyping as a way to answer exhibit design and development questions.

• Failure IS an option.  As I often say to my kids, "It's o.k. to make mistakes, as long as you learn from them, and don't keep repeating the same mistakes over and over."   There is an enormous degree of professional pride and pressure at stake for the Bulgarian Children's Corner project sites --- which might make some people decide to stick with very safe exhibit design and development choices.   Fortunately, the vast majority of project partners we came in contact with seem to realize that this is a time and opportunity that favors choices that may be difficult and risky.

We really are witnessing the start of a truly exciting museum revolution in Bulgaria, and I can't wait to see what happens next!  (Feel free to contact me with question or to request addition details about my work in Bulgaria.)



Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Free Updates" link on the right side of the blog. P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)

Monday, November 15, 2010

Stretch Your Exhibit Dollars with the Exhibits Exchange Group


Here's a chance to stretch your exhibit dollars:

Join the free "Exhibits Exchange" Google Group.

The Exhibits Exchange Group is a place to find, post, sell, barter, or exchange "Used but Usable" exhibit elements.  Check out a new batch of postings placed by Kathy Krafft from the Sciencenter in Ithaca, NY.

Please let friends and colleagues know about the group --- the more group members, and the more postings of "used but usable" exhibits, the better the entire experience will be for everyone!

Feel free to contact me if you have questions about the group.



Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Free Updates" link on the right side of the blog. P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)

Sunday, November 14, 2010

On the Road to Sofia



I'm off to Bulgaria to work with museum folks under the auspices of the New Bulgarian University and the Ministry of Culture.  We will work on ways to design and develop new exhibits and experiences that will be more engaging and interesting for children and family audiences inside existing Bulgarian museums.

I'm really looking forward to the new things I will learn from our Bulgarian museum exhibit design colleagues!

I hope to be able to post pictures and updates while I am in Bulgaria, but in the meantime I thought I would commend to your attention this previous ExhibiTricks post  --- an interview I had with Harry White --- to give a European perspective on the museum biz.

Harry has recently shifted his work from Techniquest in Wales to the @Bristol museum, but the insights and responses he offers to my interview questions still offer great food for thought.

Click over to the interview now, and stay tuned for the Bulgarian updates!



Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Free Updates" link on the right side of the blog. P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Let Me Give You A FREE Exhibit!



Recently my pal Clifford Wagner and I "liberated" a collection of retired (but perfectly functional) exhibits from a storage warehouse and decided to completely restore and refurbish them.  To our delight we were able to find new museum homes for every exhibit, except one --- The Poetry Machine (as seen in the embedded video at the top of this posting or here on YouTube.) It's a really great exhibit, so I'd like to find a new museum home for The Poetry Machine, too.

Alright, alright, you say, "But what about the FREE exhibit?"

Here's the deal:  In an effort to help museums stretch their dollars in these tough economic times, I've again teamed up with gizmologist extraordinaire Mr. Wagner to offer The Poetry Machine, for free, to the next museum that rents his "Contraptions A to Z" traveling exhibition (which itself contains a version of the Poetry Machine.) If you make the deal through this special ExhibiTricks offer we'll also knock 5% off the normal rental fee for "Contraptions."

That's it. That's the deal. If you're a museum that rents traveling exhibits, here's an opportunity to get a great traveling exhibition packed with fun and engaging interactives at a discount, AND add a new (well, completely refurbished) interactive exhibit component to your museum's permanent collection.

If you're interested, contact me, or contact Clifford, to sort out the details --- make sure to mention this ExhibiTricks posting when you do contact either of us. 

As the poets say, Carpe Apparatus Camena! or more practically, First Come, First Served!


Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Free Updates" link on the right side of the blog. P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)