Throwing Spaghetti at the Wall
Figuring Things Out as We Go Along
I couldn’t come up with a turkey-themed post - but how about pasta (sort of)?
A few weeks before launching this blog, I presented some of the ideas and projects that inspired the Planning-Curious Museum Person to a small but mighty group of exhibit professionals at Feedback Friday.1 The group had great ideas and questions – some caused me to edit planned posts, others gave me ideas for future posts, including last week’s interview with planner Wendell Joseph. (Thanks for the help, FF folks!)
But one avenue of questions came up at FF is still slightly unanswerable. “What types of projects are you focusing on?” “What are the specific ways to start these projects?” These same family of questions came up at the conference sessions covering these kinds of partnerships.
And the true answer is: I don’t know – yet. I’m still at the “throw spaghetti at the wall” stage.
I’ve been collecting examples of museum-planner collaborations for a few years now. But - these are early days. Until we have a bigger set of examples, we really don’t know the secrets to getting the spaghetti to stick to the wall, much less be able to extrapolate a vetted set of ‘How To’s.
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, existing partnerships started serendipitously. Museums and planners were just doing what they do, bumped into each other, and started working together. Also, as I speak with folks, I find a lot of ‘near misses’ – museum projects that are super relevant to planning that just didn’t happen to cross a planner’s path. In fact, I think the ‘near misses’ and our parallel practices are going to be a big part of PCMP – because we need to find the lessons wherever they are. (The Feedback Friday group put several new examples on my radar, which I can’t wait to investigate!)
So, to start, the PCMP blog is an attempt to get the idea of museum-planner partnerships on people’s radar. To get professionals on both sides to start talking and exploring where they might collaborate at natural intersections of their work. My goals for the Planning-Curious Museum (as they stand at the moment) are:
Increase awareness – among museum and planning professionals of the intersections between museum work and planning.
Make museum partnerships with planning professionals as common tomorrow as our partnerships with schools and universities are today.
Identify, adapt, and disseminate promising museum practices such as hands-on learning and community science which could enhance community engagement in planning issues.
Develop a Community of Practice of museum and planning professionals to share ideas, inspiration, and best practices.
Someday, I’d love to pull together a convening of planners and museum folks and create a mutually beneficial research agenda. I’d like to create a guide for our collaborations like we already have for partnerships between university researchers and museums such as this and this and this. But that means having enough examples to see trends, identify best practices, and maybe generate a research agenda.
In the meantime, how DO you start? Just because I don’t have a perfect answer yet doesn’t mean it isn’t a great question. As I’ve written before, the first steps are doing some local research and starting conversations. Once you’ve found mutual interest in collaborating, look for the natural intersections in the projects on each of your horizons. I also suggest developing a common vocabulary and exploring mutually beneficial goals (something I’ll be diving into in a couple of future posts - see that subscribe button up above?)
After that? That’s what I hope gathering more examples and stories will help answer. So, share any projects you know about – including those near-misses! If you start working on a potential project, let me know! Have a cautionary tale? – Tell us what happened (with appropriate anonymizing) or see if the PCMP readership has ideas for a solution. Let’s see where this goes. Let’s throw some spaghetti wallward together, shall we?
~ Betsy Loring2
The Planning-Curious Museum Person
Sharing stories and ideas for other Planning-Curious Museum People and for Museum-Curious Planning People.
Feedback Fridays started as an activity under the umbrella of NAME (National Association for Museum Exhibition), one of the AAM (American Alliance of Museums) Professional Networks. With AAM’s recent jettisoning of all Professional Networks, including NAME, that umbrella is gone. But, while NAME is figuring out its next steps, Feedback Fridays continues on, thanks to the intrepid founders Sam Mera-Candedo, Exhibit Designer at the National Geographic Society, and Kate Curto, Exhibit Designer at the New York Hall of Science. Register using this link to join exhibit museum colleagues to celebrate the end of the week, network, and start building a new community of practice. The group gathers once a month to share projects, challenges, and feedback.
Betsy Loring is founder of expLoring exhibits & engagement. She has over 20 years’ experience in project management and exhibit development in multidisciplinary, indoor and outdoor museum settings. Her services include exhibit master planning, content and interactive development, and writing, with a focus on hands-on STEM. She also offers staff training in exhibition planning, formative evaluation, and prototyping. Special interests include multi-institutional collaborations, peer-to-peer professional development, and of course – collaboration with municipal planning practitioners.