Don't Forget Your Workshop Suitcase!

I recently helped present a workshop on prototyping and exhibit development at the annual InterActivity conference organized by the Association of Children’s Museums.

Ably assisted by my co-presenters, Joe Cook and Blake Wigdahl, the three of us touched on how to move from basic exhibit ideas to testing and evaluation to the creation of the finished products. I even got to reveal the connection between ELVIS and museum exhibit prototyping! (Check out this related post here.)

A great workshop not only requires careful planning, but you also need some “stuff “to help take your stories out of a PowerPoint presentation on the screen and into the real world. I always bring a suitcase full of prototype examples and exhibit pieces to pass around and to help illustrate my main talking points. That combination of "stories" and "stuff" really creates a memorable social learning experience for your workshop participants.

So, the next time you are thinking about how to share your stories during a workshop or presentation, don’t forget to pack some extra ‘stuff” for the road!

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Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

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4 Things Exhibit Developers Can Learn From Trevor Noah

I knew a little bit about comedian Trevor Noah from his role as host of The Daily Show.

But I've learned a lot more about how growing up as a mixed-race child in apartheid-era South Africa shaped Trevor Noah's life by reading his memoir, "Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood."  Noah's book is an entertaining read that sheds light on a set of experiences that are by turns hilarious and harrowing.

As I was reading Born a Crime, I kept thinking about four key aspects of Noah's narrative that are worth keeping in mind when crafting the stories to share in your next exhibition project:

1) Make it personal  Too often museums tie themselves in knots trying to be "neutral" or by presenting what they hope is an unbiased editorial voice about the subjects of their exhibitions. That's bogus.  The very fact that an institution has chosen to interpret a particular set of ideas in an exhibition belies the notion of neutrality.  Trevor Noah shares some deeply personal incidents in his memoir, and that's part of what made it resonate with me.

2) Show your emotion(s)  Haven't you ever met someone who was so enthusiastic about an unlikely subject that you couldn't help getting enthused as well?  You and your team are intrigued and excited by the ideas and objects (or the "stories and stuff") in your exhibition, so share that emotional connection with visitors so they can get pulled into the experience as well.

3) Humor makes messages memorable Trevor Noah describes himself first and foremost as a comedian so you would expect Born a Crime to be funny.  But Noah's humor is gentle and always in the service of carrying a message forward.  How can you be a little more playful in delivering your content, and pushing past the "stuffy" stereotype that many people hold about museums?

4) Provide unexpected information I learned many new things about South Africa from reading Trevor Noah's book, but I never felt as if I was being lectured to.  The content in many museum exhibitions feels as if it is merely checking off a series of messages approved in airless meeting rooms.  If you can't get sincerely enthusiastic about presenting novel exhibition content, why do you think your visitors will care about it?

Narrative is such an important resource in the exhibit developer's toolbox that it's wonderful to encounter examples of great storytelling like Born a Crime that can provide inspiration for our own museum work.


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The Missing Ingredient In Exhibition Narratives?

I've been helping to develop some really great exhibitions recently, and one common thread between these eclectic projects is that they all feature prominent "Big Ideas" inside strong narrative arcs.

I've written before about the importance of finding these Big Ideas inside exhibitions, but one thing struck me recently about these exhibition narratives: it's not just about telling a compelling story, but instead framing the story in a way that will compel visitors to tell it to other people.

Museums often have a way of talking at folks instead of allowing visitors the space (and respect) to find the parts of the exhibition narrative that are so exciting and meaningful that they can't help but tell their friends and family about them!

And that's the heart of "word of mouth" advertising isn't it?

It might seem like a self-evident thing, but setting up exhibition stories so that visitors can (and will!) tell them to others has helped to shift my thinking about how to craft narrative exhibition experiences that are more fulfilling.


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Unpacking the Objects and their Stories. Takeaways from the 2013 AAM Conference.

I'm still buzzing a bit from the interplay of people and ideas (and crabcakes!) that I found in Baltimore during the 2013 American Alliance of Museums (AAM) Annual Meeting.

Normally I ignore the theme of most museum conferences, but this year's AAM theme, The Power of Story, resonated with me because of two particular sessions that bookended my experiences at the conference, and that have continued to make me think deeply about those two essential elements that great museum experiences provide: stories and stuff.

The first session, "Is it real? Who cares?" delved into the interplay between whether an object is perceived as "real" or "fake" and whether that notion has any impact whatsoever on whether a visitor's experience(s) with that object are successful or not.

During the session, different objects were described and projected onto a large screen at the front of the room.  Examples of objects included things like "Sue" the T Rex, the historic ship U.S.S. Constitution, or a recreation of a historic synagogue ceiling. 

At the same time, members of the audience were given smaller images of the same objects mounted on foamcore and were asked to weigh in on whether the object/story was more toward the "Fake" or "Real" end of the spectrum, and more toward the "Works" or "Doesn't Work" end of the spectrum, in terms of visitor engagement.  After each person holding an image weighed in on their impressions of the Fake/Real and Works/Doesn't Work continuum at the microphone, they went to stand at the front of the room and serve as a data point in a big 3D matrix.  (The front wall of the room was the Fake/Real axis, while the side walls were the Works/Doesn't Work axis.)

It was Uber Museum Geeky, but also lots of fun, especially once everyone was standing at the front holding their images and people from the audience could comment and move the human "data points" around to refine the big 3D matrix of stories and stuff.  (See image from the session at the top of this post --- that's me holding the U.S.S. Constitution firmly in the Real/Works quadrant.)

One thing that struck me was that at the beginning of filling in the matrix things were really clumped up toward the Fake/Doesn't Work part of the matrix, but after continued discussion, things spread more evenly between Fake and Real, and much more toward the Works for visitors end of the spectrum.

It really made me think how often in the museum world that we fetishize objects and their "authenticity" while sacrificing the primary visitor experience(s). 

The organizers of this session created a "Is it real? Who cares?" Tumblr site that they used while preparing their session, but which they have also opened up to continued conversation amongst colleagues on the topics that came out in the session discussion.

The other session that really stood out for me (and that connected in so many ways to the Is it real? session) was a dialogue between Elizabeth Merritt, founding director of the Center for the Future of Museums, and Rob Walker, one of the creators of the Significant Objects Project.  The session was entitled (unsurprisingly) "Significant Objects."

Walker started with a brief presentation about the idea behind Significant Objects, which I would summarize as a way to test the theory that an object (of fairly limited "value" like something you could buy at a garage sale) could be invested with significance by attaching a fictitious story to it.

Some of the stories for the first 100 Significant Objects were written by famous authors (like Jonathan Lethem and Bruce Sterling) while other "object stories" were written by less famous writers.  In the end, all of the objects + stories were put up for sale on EBay to determine whether people would pay more for these objects coupled to clearly fictional stories than they would for the objects by themselves.  It turns out that people did pay more for the objects with stories, but really you should check out the entire Significant Objects website to get a better sense of the entire scope of the project.

In the same way I usually don't pay attention to conference themes, I've rarely purchased recordings of conference sessions, but in this case I'm making an exception just because I found the conversations and references presented (especially by Merritt and Walker) so valuable and meaty.  Two in particular related to this thread of narrative and object include the book "Taking Things Seriously" written by Significant Objects co-creator Joshua Glenn, and the Museum of Broken Relationships.

You can go to this section of the AAM website to purchase recordings of conference sessions, including this "Significant Objects" session which happened at 10:15 a.m. on Tuesday, May 22nd.

As I departed Baltimore, I was left with the overwhelming feeling of the importance of objects in museums and visitor experiences, but only when coupled with strong narrative contexts, not as ends unto themselves. And that's really The Power of Story.



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