myseum

Codecademy

myseum — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 12:20:37 +0000

So, one of my many plans for this year is to learn to code. For a while now I’ve felt frustrated about my lack of knowledge on what goes on ‘under the bonnet’ of the web. Editing the website for work is part of my job – and it would be nice to have more control and not to have to call the Webdesk every two minutes when things don’t work as I expect them to. We’ve got big plans to improve our digital offer in the coming year. Like most museums, we want to keep pace with audience expectations. So, I signed up with Codecademy.

I’m pretty amazed that this service exists. And its free. You log-in and get started and before you know it, you’ve learnt stuff. You can work through exercises from basics onwards or dip in and out to learn more about topics that interest you. As a total novice I’m working through from the beginning. I’m enjoying the way Codecademy works to keep me motivated. I’m a simple creature and being rewarded with Badges works well for me. Apologies to all those getting bored of tweets from me exclaiming ‘I just unlocked the HTML Basics badge!!’ but you know, I’m excited and I feel the need to share. Also, I think I will need all the encouragement I can get to keep going when things get more tricky then HTML Basics.

So, I’m looking forward to exploring this brave new world. If you also are frustrated by your limitations on the web…then come and join me.

New Year, new you

myseum — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 13:50:17 +0000

It’s New Year’s Day. I’ve just been for a walk and seen many new runners and cyclists taking up their resolutions. So I’ve been thinking about my own resolutions. Last year I decided to take up running, and get fit in 2012. And I did. I kept it up all year and I’m feeling quite smug as I enter 2013 a bit fitter and a bit lighter then I entered 2012.

This year I’ve decided that my online presence should be fitter and lighter too. Its hard work keeping up with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, various blogs and goodness knows what else. I’m planning to unplug more often. I’m going to spend the evenings doing things, making things and thinking about things instead of browsing the myriad things that others have made, done and thought.

I’m starting with a cull. I’ve got more online profiles then I can count (Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Foursquare, Audioboo, Pinterest, YouTube, Vimeo, WordPress, Tumblr, Google+, Path, Nike+, Etsy, Picassa, and the now defunct Gowalla and Flook..maybe there are more?) Sometimes I just sign up to see what its all about. But it is really painful to delete them (what if I need it? What if I miss out on something?) Nevertheless…

I’m saying goodbye to Tumblr, Pinterest, Flickr (truthfully, I gave this one up ages ago, not sure I can remember my log-in) and Google+ (Did anyone really use their Google+ account?) Certainly the most painful of these to give up is Pinterest. It’s been fun collecting and curating my own little worlds. And it could genuinely be useful. But it’s also an addictive time-eater. And it wouldn’t be a cull if it didn’t hurt a bit.

With the new space in my brain that this cull will have created I’m planning to do more photography. A photo a day? I’m also going to be doing a lot of crochet, maybe learning to quilt and …oh yeah, we have a museum to reopen.

Here’s to 2013.

Thoughts inspired by #citizenbedford

myseum — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 16:06:10 +0000

Recently I’ve been working with the Town Team on Bedford’s Portas Pilot. And we’ve started on a project called #citizenbedford. The project is the brainchild of Erica Roffe who has been working with The Media Trust to train and inspire the citizens of Bedford to report on the Portas Pilot and the town. You can read more about the project at the Citizen Bedford Facebook page. Some of us spent the weekend getting media training from Adam Perry of Media Trust alongside a selection of local and national journalists, whilst others (including me) spent the day talking to the people of Bedford and mapping their thoughts and ideas about how they would like to change the town.

It was pretty inspirational stuff. We had lots of great contributions, and we spoke to lots of people that had ideas about how we can change the town for the better. Even more encouraging were the people that said ‘I love this town, I come here every day.’

But, whilst I was standing about in the cold talking to people about Bedford, I did wonder what all this has to do with my role as a museum marketing officer… And this quote from Nina Simon kept coming back to me.

When people can actively participate with cultural institutions, those places become central to cultural and community life.

Nina Simon argues that museums need to become participatory in order to become central to community life. Participation is a way for audiences to feel ownership for the cultural organisations that they are stakeholders in. We’ve definitely been working with this thought in mind at The Higgins. But this weekend got me thinking that there is another side to the participation coin. If we, as an organisation, really are going to become central to community life then we need to participate in that community, taking a proactive role in the civic life of the town and its future development. Acting as citizen journalists is one way to do that, being part of the Portas Pilot that is working to re-imagine the town centre is another and I’m sure we can find more ways to engage and participate in the town and surrounding borough.

Tony Butler has recently blogged on a related subject, emphasising the distinction between acting as part of the civic realm and as part of civil society. He concludes that

in order to treat communities as active partners museums should learn behaviours from civil society. This requires systemic change; opening up governance, allowing self-actualising networks to replace structures and strategies, stimulating social innovation and collective intelligence rather than tried and tested methodologies. If museums use all these assets to create inventive and imaginative programming they’ll then place their institution within the hearts of their communities.

So the two sides of the participatory coin are related and symbiotic. We need to do both for either to be effective.

Guest Blogging for SHARE

myseum — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 10:51:30 +0000

Recently I wrote a guest blog post for SHARE Museums East, talking about the redevelopment project at The Higgins Art Gallery & Museum, Bedford. Have a read here.

Tate Tanks

myseum — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 10:44:57 +0000

I visited the Tate Tanks recently with some friends. I was interested to see they have a post-it wall.

But the questions are quite challenging. Does live art have to be experienced? What is the role of the audience? How can art change society?

Now I really loved the tanks and enjoyed the experience. And I’m glad that Tate are trying to kick-start a debate on live art. But these questions aren’t really the kind that can easily be answered on a post-it.

It left me thinking about how tricky it is to design really good participatory experiences.

Experiment No. 3 – The Burning House

myseum — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 10:31:27 +0000

Its a simple premise. What would you save if your house was burning down? The truth is there isn’t much I really need. But if I had the chance, I’d save these things.

You can read the full description of these at The Burning House Blog. Its a great blog…have a look around.

It really made me think about what I really need, and how (un)important all of these material things are. I found it interesting to think about how someones life looks when it is reduced to a handful of material things…which is after all, a lot of what we do at the museum.

What conclusions would you draw, and what story would you tell if you were making an exhibition from these material remnants?

How to be an Explorer of the World – Experiment No. 2 – Sincerely L. Cohen

myseum — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 15:52:31 +0000

This is post two in a series of posts about becoming an Explorer of the World. Read post one here. I think I’ll do a few more explorer experiments around the house, to find my feet, before I venture to exploring outside.

Apparently Leonard Cohen meditates by sketching everyday things. So, in my mission to be become an explorer, I’ve been having a sketch of some everyday things.

I have always loved things. Just things in the world. I love trying to find the shape of things.
- Leonard Cohen

So I drew, a key, a fat bottomed jug that I use to water the plants, and a mug. It was actually quite tricky – most of my everyday things were not things I wanted to draw – phone, wallet, hairbrush, toothbrush…none of these appealed. I think my sister had similar difficulties when she tried the same thing. Anyway, whilst I, like Cohen, was fascinated with the shape of some of these things, I don’t think that drawing them is necessarily the best way for me to explore those shapes.

Wrapping string round things though…I like that. Like tiny mundane sculptures.

I suppose, it just goes to show, people explore ideas in lots of different ways.

Tiny story

myseum — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 14:47:18 +0000

I spotted this lovely film recently. It’s by Sebas and Clim. I’ve been watching it and thinking ‘museum’. It’s made me think about how we market the museum. Maybe we don’t need big photos of collections on all of our posters and banners anymore. A lot can be said with a dot and a line. We need to be marketing ideas as well as things.

How to be an Explorer of the World – Experiment No. 1

myseum — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 17:27:10 +0000

Whilst on holiday I made an impulse purchase of this book.

Source: amazon.co.uk via Gemma on Pinterest

And it has been something of an inspiration. I showed it to my sister and she wrote this blog post about it. Indeed, it is definitely a book that makes you think ‘a new notebook is required’. One of the ideas in the book is that you should ‘Create a personal dialogue with your environment.’ This really struck me.

At the museum where I work we spend a lot of time talking about how we want to build a relationship with our audiences and how we want audiences to build a relationship with us. Trouble is, its difficult to build a relationship with an organisation. And, the truth is, we often talk about ‘building relationships’ when we really mean ‘how are we going to make more money from our audiences?’ This is a valid question, we do need to be better at making money because we need to be sustainable. Maybe we’d be better at being sustainable, if we were better at building relationships. And relationships usually start with a dialogue right?

The idea of building a dialogue with a museum as a public space or as an organisation struck as something that could be both useful and fun. It could offer a whole new way for people to explore museums and in so doing they might build more lasting relationships with those spaces.

To that end, I thought I would start to do some of the experiments suggested in the book – starting a dialogue with my environment here in my flat, my street, my town. Then I might move on to see if I can apply the same strategies to some museums.

Im doing the same experiment that my sister did for her blog post. Just so we can compare and contrast…

Experiment No 1.

Write 10 things about where you are sitting right now. Do it quickly. Do not Censor.

1. My feet don’t touch the ground in this chair.

2. This room smells both of dust and of polish because I’ve been cleaning but not very efficiently.

3. I’ve been here too long. My back begins to hurt and the light is fading.

4. Its a windy day I can hear the breeze. The window looks out onto tree tops which is one of many reasons why I like this room.

5. I feel kind of guilty because I haven’t left the house at all today and I mean’t to cook a nice dinner but thats unlikely to happen now.

6. I’ve got some fossils on the desk – and there is a picture of Lyme Regis above the computer screen, which is where I collected said same fossils.

7. It would be good to live by the sea. In Lyme.

8. There is a note I wrote to myself on the desk. All the things and ideas I meant to write about, and explore further but haven’t yet.

9. I secretly think of this room as mine. My creative space. It drives me crazy when Keith puts his laptop infront of the mac.

10. I’m developing a collection of beautiful postcards on the wall here. They are in groups, sort of according to colour, sort of according to theme. Some of them are just here on a whim. I like it.

Okay, I’m off now. High time I left the house to buy some dinner…and probably some wine.

adventures in the public realm…update

myseum — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 16:21:46 +0000

I posted a while back about how I’ve recently been involved in the town team bid to become a Portas Pilot Town. Well the good news is…Bedford is now a Portas Pilot Town!!

Have a look at the video submission made by Tom Wild and the Bedford College Media Department.

You can read more about Bedfords Portas bid here. And more about the work already done by We Are Bedford here. Bedford is turning into a very creative, dynamic and exciting place to live these days. Im hoping all of this energy is going to feed into some exciting work for the Portas project. …

I’ll keep you posted.