Democratising Collections through Audience Participation: Opportunities and Obstacles

Tatsi, Taavi; Aljas, Agnes

doi:10.18848/1835-2014/cgp/v04i04/44362

Cited by 4 publications

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“…Runnel et al (2014) point out that while museums can be very open and invite participation and participants into some areas of its activities, they may restrict access to other areas. Tatsi and Aljas (2012) have analysed the impact of participatory interventions on Eesti Rahva Muuseum (Estonian National Museum, ERM) collections and concluded that ethnographic museum collections, where the history consists of at least 80 years of inclusive methods of collecting, typically include contributions from the public, and are influenced by the minimalist participatory mode; 4) Participation is also a method for analysing audiences. Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt et al (2014) have used different interventions to analyse and understand the changes in relations between audiences and museums.…”

Section: Museums As Participative Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Motivations for participating in museums’ interventions

Aljas¹

2015

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ABSTRACT:The article examines what motivates people to participate in a cultural institution's participatory interventions. In recent decades, the changing roles of cultural institutions and the concepts of defining museum audiences are brought together in the case study of the Estonian National Museum's participatory interventions. This paper indicates that motivations for participation are emotional and personal, that social goals are often overestimated, but the wish to cooperate and gain recognition from institutions have often been underestimated as motivators. The museum's roles to support intercultural dialogue and facilitate diverse views were not supported by the participational interventions. Analysis indicated that being a participant does not make people more critical or dialogical in a museum context, as the topics the participants chose to be involved with are appropriate to their own experiences, contexts and assumptions. CHanGinG roLes of MUseUMsThe modern cultural and institutional roles of museums are characterized by the complexity of the relations, pressures and goals surrounding them. Museums can be described as: temples of civilization, sites for the creation of citizens, forums of debate, settings for cultural interchange and negotiation of values, engines of economic renewal and revenue generation, imposed colonialist enterprises, havens of elitist distinction and discrimination, or places of empowerment and recognition etc (Kratz & Karp, 2006: 1-4). All of which generate new circumstances and opportunities of development.In order to examine the multiple roles of a museum, I selected the six most prominent topics in modern museum discourse: 1) Museums are governmental, collective and educative. The view that heritage is a valuable source of meaning making, a collective representation of tradition and ideals, which is closely connected to informal public education and guided by official cultural policy (for example Hall, 2005; Bennett, 2006: 59).2) Heritage as facilitator. The idea that the museum is in control of 'facilitating the world to people' , where heritage and tradition are envisaged as a social glue that might be used to stick together disparate bits of society and to attach those sectors that seem to have become detached (Macdonald, 2008;Ciolfi, 2012).3) Heritage's importance to cultural tourism and economy. In the contexts of the creative industry and cultural tourism, there are successful sectors amongst which heritage-related activities have considerable economic importance (Menger, 2010; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 2006). 4) Global and technological change. Museums are elements of globalized flows of information, people and ideas; they reach beyond their spaces and national boundaries through the Internet. Technology has caused changes in the notions of objects and exhibitions, and placed the concepts of real and original artefacts on the public agenda (Ross, 2010).5) Issues of expertise. Digitalised collections have made museum collections more open, more visible and more used ...

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Section: Museums As Participative Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Motivations for participating in museums’ interventions

Aljas¹

2015

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“…Carpentier argues that a critically informed view promotes that the term participation cannot be equated with “mere” interaction. Rather, participation is best seen as comprising two facets: participation “through the media” and “in the media.” The former concerns opportunities for self‐representation in public debates and spaces (laypeople voicing their opinions), and the latter concerns opportunities to shape the production of media output through involvement in media decision‐making (see also Tatsi and Aljas [] interesting elaboration on these concepts). A minimalist mode of participation is closer to participation “through the media,” where the emphasis is on the “ritual and symbolic forms of participation” (Carpentier, , p. 409), which usually involve mediated rituals (a museum visit is a good example).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Participatory Media and Discourse in Heritage Museums: Co-constructing the Public Sphere?

Noy

2016

Communication, Culture & Critique

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This article examines public discourse that visitors produce as part of their visit to a heritage museum. With the turn to the “new museum” of the 21st century, with its extensive reliance on new media, mediation, and an interactive‐participatory agenda, museums are community generators that invite and display public participation. The article inquires ethnographically into the settings offered by a new and large Jewish heritage museum in Philadelphia, for the pursuit of “ordinary” people's participatory discursive practices. The article then asks how visitors actually pursue their participation discursively, in the form of texts written on notes in response to the museum's questions. Finally, visitors' inscriptional activities are theorized in terms of current views of participation and the public sphere.

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Narrative affordances

Noy

2020

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Abstract Museums offer rich material environments for studying narration as jointly accomplished by institutions and audiences. Following the narrative and participatory turns museums have taken, the research explores the narrative actions audiences’ texts perform vis-à-vis museums’ narrations. It examines audience participation in two history museums, as elicited by response vehicles – onsite media that serve to invite and capture audience written responses. The research argues that museum response vehicles offer narrative affordances and entitlements, which shape how audiences negotiate participation as publicly documented and displayed. Comparative findings indicate that participation is shaped by response vehicles’ spatio-material affordances, including how brief textual segments function as audience-based contributions in and to the historical narration. A range of audience-generated narrative actions, entitlements, and speech acts are discerned and discussed, which typically conform with, but sometimes ‘override’, museums’ affordances. These narrative actions shed light on the mechanics, politics and policies of public narration and agency.

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Democratising Collections through Audience Participation: Opportunities and Obstacles

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Motivations for participating in museums’ interventions

Motivations for participating in museums’ interventions

Participatory Media and Discourse in Heritage Museums: Co-constructing the Public Sphere?

Narrative affordances

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