The eParticipatory museum

Electronic participation is often associated solely with political participation. But eParticipation tools are also used by companies like for example Starbucks. But Museums do not come to mind first when thinking about innovative ways to include the “users” into decision making processes. This first impression however is wrong. Many museums do try to use electronic tools to get their visitors more involved into exhibitions, events, etc. One example for a museum stepping into the world of eParticipation is the Helmsmuseum in Hamburg:

In January and February of 2008 this museum of local history in Hamburg utilized the DEMOS eParticipation approach to involve the local citizens and the museums visitors to plan a new exhibition on the local history of southern Hamburg. This experiment was aimed at involving the main target group for the exhibition in the actual planning to both make the exhibition more attractive visitors and to make use of the special knowledge of the participants. The museum was one of the first to take this innovative road in organizing its activities.

The participation platform (which can be viewed here) was set up and supported by TuTech Innovation. The moderation and community building work on the site was done by the museums staff after being training and instructed by TuTech. The topic chosen for the participatory action and the target group (local citizens of one borough of Hamburg) was relatively limited but still 72 people were actively involved in the discussion and posted 312 contributions. A total of 1.300 unique visitors where tracked on the site producing 19.000 page views. Taking into account the size of the project and the questions at hand these number are very respectable. The qualitative results where of course of much higher importance:

• The participation efforts helped the planers to select topics which may have been ignored and it integrates the individual knowledge and experience of the participants into the process. One example is that photo material and certain items which are owned by the participants and relative to the exhibition where indentified by the efforts.
• Besides strengthening the local position of the museum the activity also helped to raise the regional and national profile of the museum which used such innovative tools.
• After the initial effort the museum decided to keep the online platform running to continue the fruitful dialog with its visitors and active community members which they do to this day.

This example shows that eParticipation is a universal tool which is not restricted to political participation. Other entities like museums can also make use of the innovative approaches and tools available in this field. It also shows that even small scale efforts with a limited target group can be addressed if the method chosen is appropriate to the situation.

A great resource to learn more about innovative activities of museums and how to adapt them is the Museum2.0 blog by Nina Simon.

Tags: eParticipation, helmsmuseum, Innovation, museum