THE MUSEUM WITHOUT A MANUAL

Photographer: Ricardo Martins

Last week I moderated a seminar which FUISM (The Swedish Association for Museum Educators) arranged in connection with the Spring Meeting, the annual meeting for the Swedish museum sector. The theme for the seminar was “Tomorrow´s audience – a challenge for the whole organization?” In the panel discussing the issue was Lars Amréus, director of The Museum of National Antiquities and chairman for the Association of Swedish Museums, Eric Åström, Swedish Arts Council, Maria Jansén, director, Östergötland County Museum and Eriqa Lindsten, Head of audience activities, Bohuslän County Museum. In today´s blog I am going to discuss an issue Maria Jansén addressed in her key note, The Museum without a manual.

An increasing number of present-day museums are open institutions where visitors are welcomed to take part in exhibition work and collecting activities. New media, mobile phones, Flickr and Facebook are tools for interactive methods using synchronic communicative and feedback possibilities to activate the visitor. This development is in line with the thoughts of the English sociologist Tony Bennet in his book ”The Birth of the Museum” where he discussed and clarified the museums´ role in the development of society and how new museums are formed from this function. Museums have become active meeting places, arenas for a dialogue on today´s and tomorrow´s topics.

This addresses new demands on how the exhibition communicates with the visitor. I see the exhibitions as a social meeting place – a media for meaning making. The exhibition offers a framework for meaning making processes through the way artifacts and ideas are shaped and presented. When signs, symbols, pictures and objects are put together to unities meaning is formed which builds on previous experiences and knowledge. The exhibition carries a pedagogical dimension as is, a dimension which has to communicate with the visitor without a guide explaining or interpreting. In the same way the Museum hold a pedagogical dimension where exhibitions, collections, archives and the Web must be accessible. A Museum without a Manual.

I mean that this pedagogical dimension to a high degree requires a pedagogical competence regarding the form, design and presentation of exhibitions and the museum. Sure, in the present-day museum everyone has a pedagogical mission, but this must not be mixed with pedagogical competence. The pedagogical competence is important when content is made accessible to the visitor. That is why I see the pedagogical competence as the single most important competence in the present-day museum which wants to reach and engage its visitors, the museums which want to make a difference. This “post-museum” builds on an understanding of the complex relationship between culture, identity, learning and communication, which is at the heart of tomorrow´s museum. A communication and pedagogy building on a Museum without a manual.

IS IT TIME TO TALK ABOUT INREACH?

Photographer; Pink Sherbet

A few weeks ago I was part of arranging a seminar at the Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg. The seminar was a co-arrangement between Swedish Travelling Exhibitions and the School of Global Studies at Gothenburg University. The theme for the seminar was "The Museum and the audience".

In the programme The Museum of World Culture told about their audience work. The Museum has young adults as their main target group and are very successful with their work towards this target group. During 2009 the museum had over 200 000 visitors, out of these 60% were younger than 30 years.

One perspective Katarina Bergil (acting director) and Klas Grinell (curator) adressed in their speech was the museum´s view on the audience. The starting point for their discussion was that the visitors possess knowledge and abilities which are relevant to the museum. Museums need to develop new methods in order to capture these capacities and to involve them in their activities.

A common expression when working with certain target groups and especially those which are socially underprivileged is "outreach". At the Museum of World Culture they are thinking in the opposite direction, should the museum talk about "INREACH"?

The ”outreach” expression often has an interpretation precedence embedded into it. We are aiming at groups who are underrepresented and underprivliged, but we do it with our culture and our views on culture, with our codes and language, with our methods. A form of cultural colonialism.

INREACH is about viewing the visitor as an active player, a carrier of knowledge and experiences, who can contribute and develop our perspectives and activities. It is a perspective which creates relevance for the visitor by us valueing their participation and by us looking for an equal meeting where both parties learn from each other.

INREACH becomes a turn of thoughts where we look upon an internal needs for development as something which is in the interest of both parties, as a common, socio-cultural process where we meet in a dialogue and where we interact with the surrounding world in order to learn from each other.

HAPPY 2010!

Photographer; dElay

Time to move forward into a new year. The picture above also depicts a new position for this blog. I got it from Flickr, a social media, where producers and consumers (aka procumers) of photography meet. Pictures, posted under the creative commons segment, made available for anyone to use, under certain given circumstances..

A new year also means news for this blog. During 2010 I´m going to blog once a month. 2009 tought me that once a week doesn´t work. It is too often. It is still going to be a professional blog aimed at people interested in learning and meaningmaking in connction with exhibitions and museums. During this year I will also present guest bloggers. All the blogs are going to be illustrated with pictures from flickr. Why is that?

There are 2 main reasons. At first I want to contribute to the use and development of social media by blogging, twittering and using flickr. Hereby I combine 3 social media. Secondly it is a standpoint against a control of intellectual property rights (IPR), It is my opinion that thoughts, ideas and views shouldn´t be a commodity, they should be "free of charge" thus creating a creative commons. We all need to contribute to a collective memory if we are going to solve the big issues of today and tomorrow, the environment, starvation and a global economical and social injustice.

On Friday I´m going to visit the newly opened Modern museum in Malmo, in the south of Sweden to see what it is like and how they work with meaningmaking in this newly opened museum. It is going to be exciting. Don´t forget to register as followers. This means you will get a message every time I post a new blog. You can also add me on Twitter. My Twitter alias is Goranzone.


We´ll be in touch!
Göran

THE EXPERT, THE AMATEUR AND CREATIVE COMMONS

Photograph: Leonard Gren

One thing that cultural institutions have to regard when entering the world of social media is the change of roles and relations between institutional experts and the surrounding world.

When using interfaces like Flickr, collections, information and knowledge are made accessible to a larger audience. Places, subjects and people, connected with and buried deep in different collections, are easily searched through a few clicks on your PC. Driven by a special interest a person can go scavenging through cultural layers searching for new information and knowledge on a topic of special interst. Often an interactive moment has been built in to the interface. As a novice I can contribute to information by telling where a photo is taken or who is depicted on it. The accessibility makes it possible for me to become an “expert” and add to the collective memory.

This goes for all the ”experts” in the world who has spent an entire life learning everything there is to know about majolica, butterflies or old houses. For these “experts” the Internet offers a new arena where information and knowledge can interchange and instead of a hierarchical relationship between the institutional expert and the common novice we get a more equal relationship where they meet on a digital, creative common.

This is a very interesting development where roles take on new meanings and where the communicative landscape is re-written.

HI EVERYONE .... DESPAIR!

I´LL POST SOME NEW BLOGS THIS WEEK ... THE LAST MONTHS HAVE BEEN ALL WORK AND TRAVELLING. GORAN

PEDAGOGY AND THE EXHIBITION

Photographer: Leonard Gren

”…you don´t need much to educate, but to lead the student to his own knowledge you need a lot more.”

”…L. Vygotsky (my translation)

A person´s meeting with art, whether it´s a painting or an installation, a piece of music or theatre, often gives rise to an emotional experience where we learn something about ourselves or about the society around us. The meeting may also provide us with knowledge about the artist behind this piece of art. A pedagogical process has taken place.

This means that the communication of the content in a piece of art or an exhibition fundamentally is a matter of pedagogy. How we design the logotype and the image which is going to carry the exhibition and attract an audience is about pedagogy, because if we pick the wrong font or the wrong picture we may not reach our targeted audience. How pictures are hanged and objects are placed in the gallery will affect how the audience moves through the exhibition and these kinetic patterns will affect our experience and what we get out of an exhibition. This means that this is about pedagogy as well.

So pedagogy is communicative by character. It exists in a social and a cultural interaction between people and artifacts. Since I work in a context where exhibitions are produced I will from now on call this perspective exhibition pedagogy

Why is it important to discuss pedagogy in context with art and exhibitions?

I mean that we need to understand the exhibition as a meeting place, a social arena for meaning making. To the child the exhibition offers a possibility to explore the world around their own self. Through concrete experiences, objects filled with narrations, through playing and exploring, the museum is turned into a perpetual source of events where the child can learn about colors, forms, animals, objects etc. Experiences and narrations which will contribute to a cognitive experience of the self and the world.

To youth the seeking of an identity and the construction if the own self, I-Topia, is a contemporary and a future project at the same time. Contemporary art offers through its multimodality fantastic possibilities for reflection and meaning making on the own self. The exhibition as a medium can function as an arena for youth participation and influence, a social meeting place for dialogue and reflection. I see it as an obligation to society to create these arenas, where also museums have to open their doors for youth and allow for their thoughts and perspectives to be heard.

To many pedagogy is about learning. Others equate learning and education. To me pedagogy is communication and dialogue where we learn in collaboration with others and the world around us. The opening quotation from Vygotsky is interesting from several views. Above all because ha already in 1930 did put the individual at the centre of the learning process. This paradigm shift, where we have moved from teaching to learning, has been accentuated by the web and new media. The process of learning is no longer teacher centered but student centered. For a museum or a gallery this puts the visitor at the centre if things. This means we have to understand exhibition pedagogy from the broad perspective I laid out at the beginning of this blog and not as applied pedagogy. Applied pedagogy is about methods how we work with the audience in an exhibition, school programmes and guides. This is only part of exhibition pedagogy.

To Vygotsky fantasy, play and creativity were key words when discussing learning. Let us understand pedagogy as the process where we in social collaboration develop knowledge and creativity.

PARTICIPATION & RELEVANCE

Photographer: Leonard Gren

One of the questions we currently try to focus on at the Swedish Travelling Exhibitions is how to view the audience. The significance of how it will affect the activity at a museum or a gallery and the consequences that will emerge if you move the visitor to the centre of target and policy documents.

We also mean that tomorrow´s audiences i.e. the Young, which naturally also are today´s audience, carry with them new demands on how exhibitions are produced and how they are presented. Communication scientists, sociologists and pedagogues agree on that the technical development, which means unlimited possibilities to look for information and to communicate, has created a paradigm shift. This is a development which we who work with the production of exhibitions have to address.

It is about a view on the visitor where he or she is transformed from a statistical neuter to a face and a name. It is about offering processes and participation instead of passive spectatorship. It is about being relevant through both content and ways of communication.

The challenge is big and it is easy to dismiss it and settle with the old middle class audience which is already there. But a lot of institutions in Europe have recognized the danger and taken action on it. I have earlier in this blog mentioned projects at Gulbenkian in Portugal, Musée Bargoin in Clermont-Ferrand in France and Zeeuws museum in Holland. Another interesting project is “Hot spot” in Malmoe, Sweden. To this list I can add mambo in Bologna and their ”City-telling” project, Tate Modern in London, the latter presented in our publication Future exhibitions which can be bought from our web-site.

As I am writing this I´m on my way home from the Venice Biennale and several great experiences of art, many which could serve as a starting point for a process of art-based learning. At the same time Almedalsveckan has started back in Sweden. It´s a week where people from all over Sweden gather in Gotland, the island in the Baltic Sea where our organization is placed, to present seminars on all sorts of topical subjects. More than 900 seminars are presented during the week, all free of charge and all open to anyone who wants to participate. It´s a gigantic Open source event with almost endless opportunities to informal education and discussions.

I believe that events as large as Almedalsveckan, or the Venice Biennale, are important as collective manifestations where views, thoughts and knowledge can be communicated from person to person. As Internet has developed and the globalization has rolled over of the World, immaterial property rights as a construction has to be challenged. I believe we need to understand that collective access to knowledge and information is important for a sustainable future. In this also museums and exhibitions have to contribute!