The changing shape of museums in an increasingly digital world

In less than two decades web 2.0 technologies have triggered a paradigm shift within museums, and seen visitors become active participants, rather than passive observers. Web 2.0 technologies, and the wider digital culture it has spawned has not only changed how we communicate museum practice, but also museum practice itself. These technologies have catalysed the development and implementation of an eclectic range of new modes of museum practice from social media to 3D Printing, to museums opening their own incubator hubs for new creative businesses. Whilst these changes may seem rapid and revolutionary, this chapter argues that the museum is a robust, reflective and adaptive institution, a flowing river rather than stagnant lake. The core function of museums has always been to collect and care for objects, but the ethos underpinning that has evolved from the original cabinets of curiosities, ‘look don’t touch’ mentality, to one of education, public engagement and entertainment

With Not For: Engagement Strategies in a Digital Age

In a digital age, everyone is a creative producer, a publisher and distributor – from Facebook posts, to YouTube videos. Creative production and knowledge distribution has been changed forever by Web 2.0 technologies. This chapter explores how this new operating environment has generated both challenges and opportunities for the cultural sector

AI: A Museum Planning Toolkit

In 2019 the Museums + AI network engaged with 50 senior museum professionals, and leading academics across the UK and US. Alongside these industry focussed events we were delighted to throw open the doors to the public through a series of events called Curator: Computer: Creator that encouraged diverse voices to join the conversation on what AI might look like for museums in the near future in partnership with the Barbican Centre (London), and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (NYC). During these workshops and events, we tested, challenged and refined models of practice, workshop formats, and development tools – this toolkit is one of the results of that work. We hope you will use this toolkit when developing future AI projects in your own museum, and signpost colleagues and peers to it as a free resource to support the development of ethically robust project concepts. The toolkit is designed to start a conversation, it does not provide all the answers, or indeed offer solutions, but instead it serves as a foundation for critical engagement with these technologies and the possibilities and challenges that they offer

La Red de Museos + Inteligencia Artificial: Guía para la aplicación de IA en museos

In 2019 the Museums + AI network engaged with 50 senior museum professionals, and leading academics across the UK and US. Alongside these industry focussed events we were delighted to throw open the doors to the public through a series of events called Curator: Computer: Creator that encouraged diverse voices to join the conversation on what AI might look like for museums in the near future in partnership with the Barbican Centre (London), and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (NYC). During these workshops and events, we tested, challenged and refined models of practice, workshop formats, and development tools – this toolkit is one of the results of that work. We hope you will use this toolkit when developing future AI projects in your own museum, and signpost colleagues and peers to it as a free resource to support the development of ethically robust project concepts. The toolkit is designed to start a conversation, it does not provide all the answers, or indeed offer solutions, but instead it serves as a foundation for critical engagement with these technologies and the possibilities and challenges that they offer

Museum Studies as Critical Praxis: Developing an Active Approach to Research, Teaching and Practice

This article proposes a new model of museum studies as critical praxis. I argue that rather than critiquing established practice, museum studies and associated academic fields need to take a more active approach and ‘do’ something. An argument that is evidenced through two case studies which test a design thinking based model of critical praxis pedagogy

Coworking Spaces, Accelerators and Incubators: Emerging Forms of Museum Practice in an Increasingly Digital World

Digital technologies have begun to radically disrupt museum business models. With more information available online today than ever before the role, purpose and ‘usefulness’ of museums, have been called into question. John Cotton Dana promoted the idea of a useful museum in the early 20th Century. As director of Newark Museum, he envisioned museums as beneficial for cities to own and he sought to bring art, science and industry into a conversation with each other. One hundred years on, a range of museums are creating in-house startup hubs, for creative entrepreneurs to work, collaborate and create within their museums. In doing so these museums are reimaging Cotton Dana’s vision for the useful museum into one that is fit for purpose in this digital age. This research focuses on three museums who are responding to the disruptions wrought through the proliferation of digital technologies by redefining the role, purpose and practices of their museums, and indeed the wider understanding of what a museum is and could be. By developing a space for creative entrepreneurs within their museums, Te Papa (New Zealand), New Museum (USA) and ACMI (Australia) are redefining what a museum of the 21st century could be. Through a series of semi structured interviews with senior managers at these museums this paper examines the strategic, practical and theoretical implications that these spaces, commonly referred to as ‘startup hubs’ have on museum practice. This research provides an analysis of an emerging mode of museum practice as a means to support museum professionals and academics that seek to critically engage with digital culture and emerging business models in museums

Rethinking participatory practice in a Web 2.0 world

In striving for greater participation, museums face a challenge: do they encourage open-ended participation or scaffold a more participatory model of facilitated visitor engagement.New modes of visitor participation challenge the traditional power relationships which have underpinned museums from the enlightenment to the present day. Appropriation, participa-tion and art did not begin with the internet: from Guttenberg’s printing press to Andy Warhol’s Soup Cans, what was once cop-ying is now art. The difference is that those doing the copying may now have a bigger online following than the museum which owns the original, which can create a power struggle between a museum and its visitors

When a 1981 Diary Meets Twitter: Reclaiming a teenage girl’s ordinary experience of the Northern Irish Troubles

The Northern Irish Troubles (1969-1998) have been the focus of many cross-disciplinary literature and official and unofficial storytelling projects. When reviewing the accounts produced by these studies and initiatives it is visible that less focus has been paid to everyday experiences of the Troubles, particularly to a young girl’s perspective of it. In this paper we take an unusual object of study: a twitter account set up by Bronagh McAtasney who recently rediscovered her 1981 teenage diary and has been tweeting entries from it since. By carrying out a textual analysis of her tweets and complementing it with an analysis of the original diary and one structured interview with McAtasney, our aim is twofold: firstly, we seek to re-claim an often marginalised experience of the conflict, that of a teenage girl; secondly, we explore and suggest the different roles personal forms of writing can play in Northern Ireland’s current transition to peace. The findings show that the very banality of her experiences can function as a counter-narrative to the overheard (male) heroic accounts of the conflict, adding a female and young perspective. Furthermore, despite its reliance on memory, the diary/tweets offer a welcome addition to historical accounts of the conflict, which have lacked plurality. As a result, the diary plays the important role of archival material and contributes to past and current official and unofficial storytelling initiatives. This potential can be maximised through the use of popular digital tools, such as twitter, which provide a new framework from which recollection and memory can be channelled

Musei E Intelligenza Artificiale: Un Toolkit di Progettazione

The Museums + AI network engaged with 50 senior museum professionals, and leading academics across the UK and US. Alongside these industry focussed events we were delighted to throw open the doors to the public through a series of events called Curator: Computer: Creator that encouraged diverse voices to join the conversation on what AI might look like for museums in the near future in partnership with the Barbican Centre (London), and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (NYC). During these workshops and events, we tested, challenged and refined models of practice, workshop formats, and development tools – this toolkit is one of the results of that work. We hope you will use this toolkit when developing future AI projects in your own museum, and signpost colleagues and peers to it as a free resource to support the development of ethically robust project concepts. The toolkit is designed to start a conversation, it does not provide all the answers, or indeed offer solutions, but instead it serves as a foundation for critical engagement with these technologies and the possibilities and challenges that they offer. The toolkit was first published in English in 2020, in 2022 we were approached by international partners who sought to adopt this work for use in their regions, in response to demand we worked with partners to publish a German and Spanish edition, with new case studies from each of these countries added to provide local context to the framework. In 2024 we published an Italian version of the toolkit. Partners for the international versions of this work are listed in each toolkit. The Responsible AI Development Frameworks included in the toolkit are standalone tools, which are timeless as they relate to development process rather than specific technologies and tools