Cultural Engineering Group

In our last post about Nina Simon, we mentionned The Participatory Museum, a practical guide to working with community members and visitors to make cultural institutions more dynamic, relevant, essential places. It is now published. Our member Evelyne Lehalle (owner of NTC, author of THE touchstone of the blogs about cultural tourism and one of the best museum experts in France) informed the group about this publication.

In order to give you a glimpse of this amazing and rather essential book, here is what Elaine Heumann Gurian, leading international museum consultant and author of Civilizing the Museum has said about The Participatory Museum : « Nina Simon’s new book is essential for museum directors interested in experimenting with audience participation on the one hand and cautious about upending the tradition museum model on the other. The book is well written, interesting, well researched, and useful.  It will encourage and support those who wish to begin.  Simon dissects the process of participatory change, showing how to make choices that will augment, without overturning, the museum’s current programs or mission.  In concentrating on the practical, this book makes implementation possible in most museums.  More importantly, in describing the philosophy and rationale behind participatory activity, it makes clear that action does not always require new technology or machinery.  Museums need to change, are changing, and will change further in the future.  This book is a helpful and thoughtful road map for speeding such transformation ».

For more reviews of The Participatory Museum, clic here.

Nina Simon is an exhibit designer, museum consultant, and the author of the Museum 2.0 blog. Her book is available for purchase, perusal, and discussion.

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