Archive for the ‘Guest blogger - Terry Makewell’ Category

by Terry Makewell, National Museums Online Learning Project (Victoria & Albert Museum)

One of the main linchpins for the new Web 2.0 world is user generated content. As I mentioned in a previous post this is moving away from the read only web to a read/write web environment where the user really becomes part of the experience. They are no longer just a passive viewer of the content. They are adding to it and even creating if from scratch.

Within the museum sector many different websites have been created with the aim of getting the user to participate. There are numerous degrees to the model of participation. These range from users commenting, tagging or taking part in forums through to the sole creation of content on websites through bespoke methods or blogs.

One thing that is always difficult, if not impossible, to estimate is the size of user uptake. The ‘if we build it they will come’ mentality has been consigned to the pages of web history. When building a site that calls for user participation it is important to understand what are the star features that will get your users in and using it. The trouble is that it is often very hard to know what these are. The audience is constantly changing and evolving and what they want and what they have come to expect is constantly changing and evolving. Each new website raises the bar slightly higher.

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by Terry Makewell, National Museums Online Learning Project (Victoria & Albert Museum)

From beaches across the world to cultural learning organisations.

The Victoria & Albert Museum is currently undertaking the World Beach Project (www.vam.ac.uk/worldbeach) in collaboration with artist Sue Lawty. This is a global art project open to anybody in the world and the idea is for people to build on the experiences from holiday of making patterns on beaches and shorelines with numerous different objects. This site is a good example of how cultural organisations can use the elements of web 2.0 to bring in and engage their users through participation in both activities and via mash-ups. 

The idea has been borne from Sue Lawty’s blog on the V&A website. A particularly good post on this blog concerns a family from the UK who relocated to New Zealand for a few years and undertook a family version of some of her beach artwork. This is detailed in the blog post New Zealand Stones.

Bruce Bay - Stones on driftwood

Ensuring that this type of website is integrated into your working practices is important when thinking about sustainability. Ways in which this can be made possible have been investigated by Eva Moraga. She has undertaken the discussion of how cultural organisations need to define new organisational models in order to respond to the constant transformation entailed by new media and Web 2.0.

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by Terry Makewell, National Museums Online Learning Project (Victoria & Albert Museum)

You would find it hard to locate a museum in the world which doesn’t say that it is interested in engaging with its audience in new ways. A logical way of doing this is through the digital environment. This is especially apt as one of the foundations of Web 2.0 is user generated content.

There are many examples of museums inviting the audience into their digital environment, but there are also examples of museums getting the audience more involved in exhibitions themselves. This is not a new idea and has been implemented by many different museums across the world.

‘Inspired by…’ (an exhibition close to the heart of our project) is the Victoria & Albert’s annual art competition for people on part-time courses. The aim is for participants to create a work of art or craft inspired by the collections. These objects then make up the basis of the exhibition. It is solely for newly created work and doesn’t use anything from the collection itself in the displays. This video shows one of the people who exhibited this year talking about their work. There are many museums which run similar exhibitions where people have created work inspired by that particular museum’s collection.

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by Terry Makewell, National Museums Online Learning Project (Victoria & Albert Museum)

Online Culture in the United Kingdom currently appears to have three main drivers (the online cultural trident as I like to say). These drivers are the main force behind the cultural projects currently being undertaken. With the trident behind us we move ever forward (picture as you see fit).

The first driver is technological change. The advancement of new technology is just only being understood within the sector along with the plethora of possibilities it brings with it.

The second driver involves the UK Government policy aim of increasing democratic participation in culture. The online medium is a perfect way of involving those ’hard-to-reach’ audiences. 

The third driver involves the ways that people engage with culture and how it is changing and evolving. This is very much associated with the second driver. How has the way that people engage with culture changed in the last few decades? The advent of free admission to the national museums has obviously helped change people’s relationships with museums.

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