Taking OFBYFOR ALL Out for its First Live Call to Action [VIDEO]

Last week, I had the great honor of launching the OFBYFOR ALL global initiative as the opening keynote speaker at MuseumNext in London. The talk is a 35-minute introduction to the OFBYFOR ALL framework, with a museum bent given the audience. I hope you enjoy it. Here's the link if you can't see the video embedded below.



This talk was a real challenge for me to write. In the past, I treated keynotes as opportunities to share insights and stories. I rarely shared explicit calls to action beyond the option to buy a book. I tried to do a great job, but it felt safe. I didn't feel like I had anything on the line.

With OFBYFOR ALL, the stakes feel higher. We hope this project sparks a set of tools AND a global movement. So I don't just want audiences to enjoy the talk. I don't just want them to learn something from it. I want people to take action. To sign up, join in, and help us build a more inclusive world.

I care deeply about this call to action, which increased my vulnerability and nervousness in writing the talk. It increased my sense that I needed the audience. Without them, without you, there will be no global movement.

So I got stuck. I agonized over the talk. I spent hours trying out and scrapping material. I was afraid I couldn't give a talk that would inspire people to participate.

I broke through when I realized I'd been here before. I realized I was feeling the same fear and excitement that comes with any truly participatory project. We've launched many projects at the MAH - and in my own personal work - that only succeed if people respond to our call to action. Exhibitions that only exist if enough people contribute artwork. Projects that only happen if partners show up to meetings. Books that only get edited if people decide they want to help.

For years, I've believed that the most powerful question you can ask to shift to a participatory mindset is: how can participants help make this project better? When you ask this question, your relationship with participants starts to change. You start to need them. The power dynamic swings towards them. If they are the ones who can make the project great, then you get really focused on inviting them in the most powerful way possible.

OFBYFOR ALL will only impact millions if many people at many organizations get involved. And so I tried, with this talk, to invite you to get involved. I hope watching this video will encourage you to do so too. And if it doesn't, let me know why. This project is in its earliest stages, and I'd love any and all feedback on how we can make the invitation to participate as strong as possible.

Want to Work at the MAH? Two New Jobs Building Community & Social Change

The Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History keeps growing and experimenting in our quest to build a stronger, more connected community. We have several jobs open right now, but I want to highlight two for people with passion for building community in new ways.

The positions are:

• OFBYFOR ALL Communications Catalyst: to fuel the OFBYFOR ALL movement by organizing civic and cultural professionals online and at conferences around the world. 
• Dialogue Catalyst: to work with local partners to co-develop an exhibition that sparks social action around issues facing socially-isolated senior citizens. 

Both these people will lead innovative work to build community locally and globally.

The OFBYFOR ALL Communications Catalyst will be the online host and voice of the growing global OFBYFOR ALL movement. In this job, you will welcome, motivate, and collaborate with civic and cultural professionals around the world who want to make their organizations OF, BY, and FOR their communities. If you're a great writer with experience leading digital community organizing or campaigning efforts, we want you. This is a full-time job with benefits and a salary range of $43,000-$48,000 per year. Here's the full description and how to apply.

The Dialogue Catalyst will be the community organizer for our next issue-driven exhibition focusing on the social isolation of seniors. In this job, you will recruit and work closely with a local committee of senior citizens, advocates, artists, and community members to co-create an exhibition and related events. The Dialogue Catalyst is the glue that keeps partners together and makes the resulting exhibition sticky and powerful. If you're a strong community organizer and event producer who cares about seniors  and social change, we want you. This is a part-time contract role, 24 hours/week, with a salary range of $17-$19/hour. Here's the full description and how to apply.

We believe that the strongest teams come from diverse backgrounds. You won't find requirements in these job descriptions to have a master's degree or many years of experience. You WILL find applications that ask you to demonstrate your talents and perspective. We hire high-performing people who are ready to work hard, collaborate, experiment, and get shit done in a fast-moving, fun, community-minded environment. We especially encourage people to apply who have experience feeling excluded or disconnected from the arts. A lot of our partners are in the same boat, and we want staff members who can empathize.

If you think that you are the right person for one of these jobs--or if you know the right person--I hope you will check out the job descriptions and consider applying. Both jobs are open until filled and we are ready to hire immediately. Thanks in advance for spreading the word.

OFBYFOR ALL: Let's Build Organizations that are OF, BY, & FOR our Communities

Today, I'm thrilled to announce the launch of a new global initiative, OFBYFOR ALL.

OFBYFOR ALL is a framework to help civic and cultural organizations become OF, BY, and FOR their communities. We're building tools, trainings, and hopefully, a movement for a more inclusive world.

This project is led by the MAH but global in scope. We're launching it with partners at community-based libraries, parks, museums, and cultural centers around the world. Our contexts are different. Our organizations are different. But we share a common passion for making our institutions of, by, and for our communities. We see OFBYFOR ALL as a way to share and spread that passion--and to convert it into action.

Many organizations think they have a "for" problem. They want to be for more people, or for different people, than they currently serve. I believe that in many cases, the best way to be "for" people is to become "of" and "by" them.

That's what we did to spark transformative change at the MAH. As our staff and board became reflective OF our community, more people felt represented. As we developed programming co-created BY the community, more people felt ownership. As we focused on being welcoming FOR the community, more people wanted to participate. The result? We turned a struggling museum into a thriving community center that is of, by, and for our county.

We are building OFBYFOR ALL to share this playbook for transformation, through proven tools and strategies piloted at the MAH and other community-based organizations around the world. We are building OFBYFOR ALL to help you:

• assess your organization's current strengths in OF, BY, and FOR work (try it free right now) 
• articulate goals for who you most want to involve and develop a plan of action to do so 
• tackle change, access creative tools and strategies, and get support 
• track your progress as you change 
• connect with supportive colleagues at a global network of organizations who are also taking action to become of, by, and for their communities

I'm excited to share the strategies we use at the MAH to be of, by, and for our community. But I'm even more excited to learn about strategies used by innovators around the world who get involved. We see OFBYFOR ALL as itself a project that must be of, by, and for the community of cultural and civic changemakers. We're building a global network across sectors, organizational types and sizes. I can't wait to learn how rural librarians are doing this work. How national parks leaders are doing it. How cultural activists are doing it. How you're doing it.

People all over the world, in many sectors, are talking about demographic change. Talking about inclusive practices. That's great. But I want to see more organizations doing it. I want to help make that future a reality. That's what OFBYFOR ALL is all about.

Excited? Here are three ways to get started:

1. If you work or volunteer for an organization, try the free OFBYFOR ALL organizational self-assessment. In 5-10 minutes, you'll get a baseline "OFBYFOR ALL score" for your current work. 
2. If you are ready to take action, sign up for an OFBYFOR ALL bootcamp. In a two-day training, we'll help you map out a vision for community involvement and an action plan for change. 
3. If you have a network of friends who need to hear about this, share it. Share the website, or this blog post, or one of our posts on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

Happy International Museums Day. Let's celebrate by getting to work to make our institutions of, by, and for all. 

How Will You Turn Those New Ideas into Action?

You've just come home from a conference. You finished a book. You aced that course. What are you going to do with all the notes in your journal and ideas in your head?

Over the past year, I've been learning more about what it takes to spark and lead large-scale social change (especially from these folks). One of the most important things I've learned is this: building awareness is not enough.

If you want to make change in this world, you need to start by raising awareness. There's a lot of evidence that suggests that people need to know about an issue before they will act on it. But there's also a lot of evidence that shows that knowledge alone will not catalyze action.

If you want to make change, you need to find ways to translate information into action. That means building organizational will and developing concrete ways to support behavior change. Information does not organically spawn organizational will to change. Organizational will does not magically morph to behavior change. Each of those is a leap, and you need to engineer the jumps.

Think about this in an individual context. Take sleep. Lots of us know that there are good arguments for sleeping 7+ hours each night. But only 40% of Americans do it. We are aware of the issues associated with too little sleep. We know what the solution is: sleep more. And yet few of us translate that knowledge into action. Why? Some people lack the will. Sure, it would be nice to sleep more, but if it's not a top priority, it may not feel worth trying to accomplish. Others have the will but lack the support to actually make the change. How will they carve out the time to sleep more? What can they change in daily routines to help them get to bed earlier? Without the will, without support for behavior change, we don't change. We stay tired.

Imagine efforts to enhance sleep that take the awareness as a given. You might focus on building will by showing before and after photos of people who have made the change. You might create a health calculator that helps people see how much they are hurting themselves by not sleeping. You might encourage couples to compete with each other to see who can sleep the longest.

Or think about behavior supports for change. You might offer sleep coaching and celebrate progress in terms of hours of sleep banked. You might make an alarm clock that will only wake a person 7 or more hours after it is set. You might create an app that rewards people for each morning they report 7+ hours of sleep.

I suspect any of these activities, even the silly ones, would achieve stronger outcomes than another research study on the benefits of sleep.

Now think about the parallels in institutional change. Take diversity and inclusion initiatives. Lots of us know that there are good arguments for making our institutions more inclusive of more diverse perspectives, stories, and participants. How can we translate that knowledge into organizational will? How can we translate that will into action? How can we spend more time and resources in those areas, and less in raising awareness?

As a writer and speaker, I spend a lot of time in the awareness-raising camp. Any time I write a blog post or give a talk, I'm contributing to knowledge that helps build awareness about issues and solutions related to community participation. That feels good. But as the executive director of a museum, I spend a lot less time raising awareness and a lot more time on will-building and behavior change. And that feels great. Any time we embark on an initiative at the MAH, my job is to rally people, get them moving, and support the change. We've led some major efforts at the MAH and in our community. We didn't do it through awareness. We did it through action.

It is incredibly satisfying to lead change in my community. Sometimes being a writer and speaker--raising awareness--can feel risky and fragile in comparison. I put ideas out into the universe without any infrastructure to help them blossom into change. I'm relying on readers and audiences--brilliant, amazing humans all--to do that work themselves. And while I have huge respect for how people convert these ideas into change, I believe there are ways I could be more helpful. I believe there are ways being helpful could help me keep learning and growing as an individual and as a leader of the MAH. I believe there are opportunities to actively, strategically build will and support change around the world.

I've spent the past year learning how to flex will-building and behavior change skills beyond our local context. I love being a participant in global conversations about the future of cultural and civic organizations, and I want to play a more action-oriented role. I suspect many of us do. Stay tuned for an announcement next week about a new MAH initiative to bring people together to do just that.

Let's turn awareness into action and change the world.

Which New Audiences? A Great Washington Post Article and its Implications about Age, Income, and Race

This weekend was thrilling for me. The Washington Post covered the MAH's transformation as part of an article about museums engaging new audiences. The whole second half of the article was dedicated to our work:

Smaller museums can be especially scrappy in finding ways to connect with the community. One that has found remarkable success is California’s Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. Executive Director Nina Simon, who was hired in 2011, says that in the years following the global financial crisis, the facility was struggling.  

“At the time, we thought it was financial trouble, but it turned out it was much deeper than that,” Simon says. Museum attendance was at about 17,000 a year, and primarily made up of retirees and schoolchildren. Simon knew something had to change.  

“We said, if we’re going to make this museum successful, if we’re going to make it meaningful in the community, we’ve got to increase the number of people we’re reaching and we have to diversify who they are,” says Simon, who explores the concept of audience engagement and participation in her books “The Participatory Museum” and “The Art of Relevance,” as well as on her blog, Museum 2.0. She says that the museum made changes in hiring and board recruitment practices, and invited the community in to help reshape the facility into a place that reflected and represented its people and their interests.  

The impact was dramatic. Within three years, attendance tripled. Audiences of all backgrounds found ways to connect with museums as it presented exhibitions with the help of foster youth, migrant farmers, roller-derby girls, mushroom hunters, surfers and incarcerated artists, among others.  

In September, the museum unveiled an adjoining plaza called Abbott Square, which includes an indoor public market and food hall with six restaurants and two bars (it’s managed by a partner/tenant, Abbott Square Market), along with an outdoor performance venue with live music, yoga and art events. The plaza serves as a kind of front porch to the museum, ushering visitors old and new.  

“I always say we did not transform our museum by building a fancy building or by bringing in van Gogh,” Simon says. “We changed our museum by reorienting on our community and really saying we exist to be of, by and for you, and to help build a stronger community.”  

It’s something that any museum, of any size, can work toward.

I'm extremely proud of this coverage and appreciate journalist Kate Silver for including us. I'm also always interested in how the national media portrays changes in the cultural sector.

This article subtly juxtaposes two interpretations of what it means to "engage new audiences." The first half of the article covers high-priced events like adult sleepovers and Museum Hack tours at major urban museums. The second half covers our work at the MAH (and by implication, at other "scrappy small museums") to collaborate with community members to co-create institutions for people of diverse backgrounds.

At one point in the first half of the article, Kate writes:

Across the country, you can see a burst of creative approaches within these cultural institutions, all designed to draw in new audiences: yoga classes, pop-ups, custom beer, cat film festivals, nighttime parties with signature cocktails and DJs, dog-friendly days, scavenger hunts and more.

What does this list have in common? Youth. Urbanity. Affluence. Whiteness. This list doesn't include many approaches that I see transforming museum audiences, like political activism, multilingual programming, intergenerational events, or cultural festivals. Even in the section about the MAH, Kate chose to only obliquely reference the work we've done to involve, feature, and hire more people of color. Race and ethnicity are not directly mentioned in the article, but whiteness is implied throughout.

Reading this article made me wonder: what are the greatest diversification issues in museums today? When we talk about the need to engage new audiences, who are we primarily talking about? This article implies that the most important new audiences are white, urban millenials with money to spend.

I'd argue that age and income diversity are important, but that racial and ethnic diversity is a bigger issue in museums today. This is both an issue of practice and of media coverage.

On the side of practice, there's a much longer history and body of organizations working on audience age and income diversity than on race. Conference sessions on reaching young people. Access programs aimed at low-income people. There are many examples across the US of organizations (including the MAH) that engage the full age and income diversity of their communities.

But when it comes to race, there are fewer exemplars, fewer shared practices, and less media coverage. Many are working on it, but only a couple has been recognized in the field or media for fully engaging the racial/ethnic diversity of their community (with the Queens Museum at the top of this short list). I see race as the most important audience diversity issue of our time.

Lots of institutions--and popular media--have helped change the perception that museums are for old rich people. But we're still a long way from changing the perception that they are for white people. We've got a lot more work to do--and a lot more articles to inspire--to effect that change.

The Art of Relevance is Now Available For Free on the Web (and Here's Why)

It's finally here! You can now read all the chapters in The Art of Relevance for free online. I hope you'll enjoy this resource and share it widely (with attribution).

You can still buy The Art of Relevance as a paperback, ebook, or audiobook--but you can also read any chapter, any time, online. You can also post comments on any chapter, adding your reactions and questions to the published content.

The chapters are short stories, and most can stand alone. Take five minutes and learn how the Science Museum in London created better experiences for deaf visitors. Or how Food What?! unlocks relevance for disinterested teenagers. Or how Felton Thomas fought the library union to make the Cleveland Public Library matter more.

Why make the book available for free under a Creative Commons license? I do it for three reasons:

1. It makes it easier for people to share and spread the ideas in the book. Sharing a link is often a lot easier than lending someone a book. I love hearing about staff, board, and student discussions prompted by the book, and I want to make it easy for you to have them. 
2. It expands access to the book. If you want to buy a book, by all means, do. But if you can't afford it, or you just want one section, I want you to have access to it. 
3. It helps sell more books. Ever since I started this blog in 2006, I've seen the power of giving away ideas. Over the years, the more I gave away, the more people wanted to pay me to consult, speak, and write. When I wrote my first book, The Participatory Museum, I released it concurrently as a paperback and free online. It went on to sell 5 times as many paperback copies as the top museum publisher predicted in its first year. I didn't have the time to do a concurrent release for The Art of Relevance because of the Abbott Square project, but I'm catching up now. Free previews are powerful. If you start checking out some of the chapters for free, I suspect you'll get even more excited to actually buy the book. And if you choose to read it all online, that's good too. 

At the end of the day, what matters most to me is that you read the book, think about it, share it, and act on it. That's worth more than all the sales in the world.

Ten Tips for More Powerful Public Speaking

I love presenting. Standing in front of an audience fills me with adrenaline and calm at the same time. The adrenaline comes from fear and excitement. The calm comes from a sense of mastery. Here's how to get that calm.

1. Get a ton of practice. Public speaking is a learned skill, even for those with natural talent. Find as many opportunities - professional or otherwise - to present. Make a toast at dinner. Get up at karaoke. Experiment with the same content in different contexts, for different audiences. I started in poetry slam, which was wild, ruthless, and a killer training ground. I learned to give talks in good rooms, lousy rooms, rooms full of drunks. When I switched to professional speaking, I already knew it takes a lot of practice to hone a talk. It's not uncommon for me to give the same talk 50 times in a year. Each time, it gets better. All that practice helps, a lot. 
2. Develop a meta-narrative for your presentation. What's the big idea or story? Is there a way to express it in a simple metaphor, image, or phrase? If possible, do that--and then repeat, layer, and deepen it throughout your talk. 
3. Consider using Marshall Ganz's Public Narrative technique. This is a formula that starts with a story of SELF, then a story of US, then a story of NOW. It's a great format for sharing your vision for a new initiative or desired change. I've recently started using this model and I love it, especially when I want to quickly focus people towards a call to action. 
4. Keep it short. Length is not your friend. Audiences respond better to short talks, and you'll have an easier time staying focused on presenting well. Try to create a 5 or 10 minute presentation, even if you are offered a longer time slot. It will clarify your thinking and tighten your focus. I learned this from doing a couple TEDx talks. Each time I've done one, I've been forced to revise a 60-minute talk into 12-18 minutes. It's ruthless and hard, but once I'm done, that short talk is a clear, powerful anchor--which I can then expand upon as needed. 
5. Find your own best way to get intimately familiar with your presentation. I take the approach of scripting the broad "moves" in the presentation but not the specific words. Others prefer to script the words and memorize. Figure out what works for you and then don't take any short cuts! You want to be at your most confident when presenting. 
6. Cultivate stage presence. Your authority as a speaker starts before you open your mouth. Practice a few simple things to establish presence as a speaker. Plant your feet before you start. Pull your shoulders back. If there's a microphone, hold it close. Make eye contact. Trust that if you pause, people will wait and listen. You will know you have presence when you can step up to a mic and people turn naturally towards you because something about your actions made them expect you to speak. 
7. Start strong. People decide whether to tune in or not in the first 15 seconds. Lead with a bold statement or a story. Do NOT start with a long lead-in or apology for what you are about to say.  
8. Pay attention to the sound of your words and pauses. You don't have to be Shakespeare to throw in some beautiful phrasing, rhythm, and images. Pauses are powerful too. Small theatrical touches will bring your audience pleasure and increase their interest in your talk. 
9. Give the audience room to participate. Even if your talk is not interactive, make sure to respect the time and space your audience needs to understand and react to your words. If you tell a joke, give a pause for laughter. If you drop an intense idea, give a pause for consideration. When you rush from one sentence to the next, you don't respect the time and space your audience needs to fully connect with your words. 
10. Use slides as a springboard, not a lifeboat. There are a million ways to use visuals in your presentation. I mostly use single images, occasionally punctuated with a bold statement or quote. But the most important thing is not which images you use but how you use them. Think of the images as complementary to your talk. They should add depth and reinforcement to what you are saying. Don't read your slides. Don't look to them as a lifeline. Focus on your audience, and have faith that your words and images will come together to create a powerful message.

What tips have helped you most as a public speaker?

p.s. I'll be speaking this year at RevitalizeWA, MuseumNext, and Next Library... I'd love to see you there!

This is What the Participatory Museum Sounds Like

It's late in the afternoon. I'm cranking away on a grant proposal, when suddenly, a classical rendition of "All the Single Ladies" wafts up the stairs. In the office, colleagues lift their heads. "Is that...?" someone asks. "Yup," another nods. We grin.

This is the magic a piano in the lobby makes.

We've now had a piano in the MAH lobby for several months. About once each week, a visitor walks in and blows everyone away. Sometimes it's a homeless person. Sometimes a lover's duet. This week, it was a little guy, attended by a stuffed toy on the piano bench. It's rare that someone sits down to bang out noise. 95% of our piano users play music, beautifully.

The piano is a simple invitation to meaningful visitor participation. The activity is clear and well-scaffolded. The outcome is open-ended and visitor-driven. It invites visitors to make the museum better. When visitors share their brilliance, it brings the museum to life.

I believe that every person who walks into our museum has something valuable to share. A creative talent. A personal history. A special skill. It's not their job to present their abilities to us. It's our job to welcome them, invite them to contribute, and give them the tools to do so. This is the participatory museum, played out loud.

Are Participant Demographics the Most Useful Single Measure of Community Impact?

Let's say you want your organization to be rooted in your community. To be of value to your community. To reflect and represent your community. To help your community grow stronger.

What indicator would determine the extent to which your organization fulfills these aspirations?

Here's a candidate: participant demographics. If your participants' demographics match that of your community, that means the diverse people in your community derive value from your organization. The people on the outside are the ones coming in.

We use participant demographics as a core measure at the MAH. At the MAH, our goal is for museum participants to reflect the age, income, and ethnic diversity of Santa Cruz County. We compare visitor demographics to those of the county. We use the county census as our measuring stick. We set our strategy based on the extent to which we match, exceed, or fall short of county demographics.

Is this overly reductive? Possibly. There are at least four arguments against it:

Serving "everyone" shouldn't be the goal. I understand this argument, but I think it's suspect when it comes to demographics (especially income and race/ethnicity). Organizations can and should target programs to welcome different kinds of people for different kinds of experiences. But should those differences be rooted in participants' race or income level? Would anyone say with a straight face that it's OK to exclude people based on the color of their skin or the balance in their bank account? I don't think this holds up.

People are more than their demographics. I agree with this argument, but in my experience, it doesn't invalidate demographic measurement. For years, we focused at the MAH on non-demographic definitions of community, seeking to engage "makers" or "moms seeking enrichment for their kids" as opposed to "whites" or "Latinos." I believe that there are many useful ways to define community beyond demographics. BUT, when we actually started measuring demographics at the MAH a few years ago, we saw that we were engaging the county's age and income diversity... but not the county's ethnic diversity. How could we credibly argue that this wasn't a serious issue for us to address? Was it reasonable to imagine that Latina moms didn't want enrichment as much as their white counterparts? When we saw our race/ethnicity mismatch with the county, we started taking action to welcome and include Latinos. We changed hiring practices, programming approach, collaborator recruitment, and signage. Taking those actions led to real results, helping us get closer to our participants matching the demographics of our county.

Participants matching your community's demographics is insufficient. This is an argument I'm still grappling with. It's an argument advocating for equity instead of equality. Many cultural resources are disproportionately available to affluent, white, older adults. So, to advance equity, your organization should strive to exceed community demographics for groups that may be marginalized or excluded from other cultural resources. This argument encourages organization to strive for a demographic blend that over-indexes younger, lower-income, more racially diverse participants. This argument is also often linked to related arguments that changing participant demographics without addressing internal demographics of staff and board is inadequate and potentially exploitative. I'm torn on this too. In my experience, you can't effect community impact without internal organizational change. But the internal changes are a means, not an end. I wouldn't use internal indicators to measure whether we succeeded in reaching community goals. 

Attendance is not the same as impact. I'm torn about this argument too. On the one hand, showing up is not a particularly powerful indicator of impact. You don't really know why the person showed up or what they got out of the experience. On the other hand, on a basic level, attendance is the clearest demonstration that someone values your organization. They're only going to invest their time, money, and attention if they think they'll get something worthwhile out of the experience. Attendance may not be a signifier of deep impact, but it is the clearest way that people tell you whether they care or not about your offerings.


What do you think? Are participant demographics a worthy bottom-line indicator of success? Or is another measure more apt?

Introducing Community Participation Bootcamp at the MAH

For the past five years, each summer, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History has hosted MuseumCamp. MuseumCamp is a professional development experience that is part retreat, part unconference, part adult summer camp.

MuseumCamp is amazing, but there are two issues that come up every January when we announce the new session:

1. The application process is very competitive, and hundreds of people end up being rejected or waitlisted. This is agonizing for everyone involved. 
2. Some people want an outcome-oriented training (as opposed to a community co-created summer camp).

This year, to address these issues, we're experimenting with hosting two camps instead of one:

• COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION BOOTCAMP, June 7-8, 2018. This new, experimental training is a hands-on deep dive into the MAH’s model. You will learn the theory and practice of how to open your organization to robust community participation. This bootcamp will be led by me, Nina Simon, MAH executive director. Registration is first come, first served. Learn more and register here.
• MUSEUMCAMP REUNION EDITION, August 15-17, 2018. This retreat is all about learning from each other. Come share your projects, challenges, questions, wild successes and epic failures with creative changemakers from around the world. 2018 MuseumCamp spots are offered first to MuseumCamp alumni. If additional spots are available, we will make an application process available in April 2018. Learn more here.

More about Community Participation Bootcamp

We're offering Community Participation Bootcamp as part of a broader exploration of ways the MAH might share our model with others. I've learned a lot from attending and teaching workshops this year. I'm excited to share the MAH's community-first model and to invite you to this in-depth, immersive learning experience.

Come to this two-day bootcamp to:

• Articulate your goals for community participation at your organization. 
• Map your community’s assets and needs and how they align with your goals. 
• Get a crash course in social capital theory and ways of measuring community participation. 
• Develop compelling, powerful participatory offers and promises for your prospective partners. 
• Gain new community participation tools you can take home and adapt to your organization. 
• Connect with diverse colleagues who can help you as you continue your journey. 
• Tour MAH participatory exhibitions and shadow MAH community events. 
• Get inspired, laugh out loud, and share honest lessons from the messy, joyful world of community participation. 

And it's not just for museum people.

Bootcamp is for working professionals seeking to implement community participation in your organization or program. While we will tour some of the MAH’s participatory programs and exhibitions, this bootcamp is not museum-centric. We welcome campers from diverse community, civic, and cultural sites. Our first registrants for Bootcamp are from a library and a religious institution. We'd love to have you here for this pilot year.

Want to support these events?

While our camps have a registration cost, we work with sponsors to underwrite camper scholarships. Most sponsors are generous former campers or amazing companies serving museums, libraries, performing arts organizations, and grassroots community organizations. If you are interested in helping provide financial aid for one of these amazing events, you'll be in good company. Thanks in advance for considering it.