Museums Moving Forward’s Post

🎨 Calling all Artists! 🎨   Shaping the Future of Public Art: Join the Conversation! Are you looking to develop your art practice in the public realm?   Want to take your career to the next level and learn from public art consultants FrancisKnight? We are excited to announce the development of an innovative Public Art Practitioners Professional Development Programme, set to launch in early 2025! For over 20 years, FrancisKnight has led over 60 public art projects, and now, we’re building a dynamic new programme designed to support artists who want to grow their practice in the public realm. But we need your input! 🗣️ Your Voice Matters We’re reaching out to artists like you to help shape this programme. What do you need to develop your skills? What challenges are you facing in the sector? This is your chance to influence the creation of a unique, practitioner-focused learning experience tailored to elevate your work in public art. 💬 Take Our Quick Survey! We’re asking for just 5 minutes of your time to share your thoughts. Your feedback will be invaluable as we design a programme that truly meets the needs of emerging and established artists alike. Click here to take the survey: https://bit.ly/3BKMOuw 💡 Why Participate? Not only will you have the opportunity to influence this exciting programme, but by completing the survey, you’ll also be among the first to be notified when the programme launches.              Help us make this programme something special, and let’s work together to inspire, support, and develop the next generation of public art practitioners. 🗓️ Survey Deadline: Get your responses in early to stay informed! Please click https://bit.ly/3BKMOuw to give us your opinion by 6 November 2024. #PublicArt #ArtistDevelopment #FrancisKnight #CreativeCommunity #ArtInPublicSpaces #ProfessionalDevelopment #PublicArtPractitioners Image description: This image promotes the Public Art Practitioners Professional Development Programme Consultation Survey by FrancisKnight. It features photos of artists at work, collaborative planning sessions, and public art installations, highlighting the hands-on and educational focus of the programme.

🎨 Calling All Artists - Final Chance To Take Part🎨 Shaping the Future of Public Art: Join the Conversation! Are you looking to develop your art practice in the public realm? Want to take your career to the next level and learn from public art consultants FrancisKnight? We are excited to announce the development of an innovative Public Art Practitioners Professional Development Programme, set to launch in early 2025! For over 20 years, FrancisKnight has led over 60 public art projects, and now, we’re building a dynamic new programme designed to support artists who want to grow their practice in the public realm. But we need your input! 🗣️ Your Voice Matters We’re reaching out to artists like you to help shape this programme. What do you need to develop your skills? What challenges are you facing in the sector? This is your chance to influence the creation of a unique, practitioner-focused learning experience tailored to elevate your work in public art. 💬 Take Our Quick Survey! We’re asking for just 5 minutes of your time to share your thoughts. Your feedback will be invaluable as we design a programme that truly meets the needs of emerging and established artists alike. Click here to take the survey: https://bit.ly/3BKMOuw 💡 Why Participate? Not only will you have the opportunity to influence this exciting programme, but by completing the survey, you’ll also be among the first to be notified when the programme launches. Help us make this programme something special, and let’s work together to inspire, support, and develop the next generation of public art practitioners. 🗓️ Survey Deadline: Get your responses in early to stay informed! Please click https://bit.ly/3BKMOuw to give us your opinion by 6 November 2024. #PublicArt #ArtistDevelopment #FrancisKnight #CreativeCommunity #ArtInPublicSpaces #ProfessionalDevelopment #publicartpractitioners Image description: This image promotes the Public Art Practitioners Professional Development Programme Consultation Survey by FrancisKnight. It features photos of artists at work, collaborative planning sessions, and public art installations, highlighting the hands-on and educational focus of the programme.

Journal 47 ‘Communities and care’ is now up on our website. Over the next few months we will be spotlighting the work of our contributors and revealing the second series of our podcast.  This week we are looking at 'How do we begin to tell the story of a river?'. The article was written by by Ali Reid and Claire Pounder with Dr Paul Stewart, all from MIMA (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art)/ Teesside University. This article is a reflection on the creative beginnings of MIMA's exhibition 'People Powered: Stories from the River Tees', which was on display in MIMA’s galleries in central Middlesbrough from July to December 2023. The last 20 years has seen a rise in gallery engagement practice towards new methods in terms of how publics experience exhibitions, artists and museums. From an educational aesthetics point of view, this is defined by Paul Stewart as viewing a particular type of gallery engagement and curatorial activity as a facilitation of, or an engagement with the aesthetic process, with the method of learning at its heart, rather than a substitutive process of translation or engagement to an existing curatorial activity. People Powered: Stories from the River Tees at MIMA is an example of this.  Communities and care is a response to the UK Government’s ‘Levelling up’ agenda connected to a perceived lack of culture or other infrastructure. At its core, is the idea of engaging communities, most often used in the professional arts sector to refer to collective groups working together, defined by a distinguishing factor across a shared experience. Take a journey through visual art practice, engagement and participation in the era of placemaking and levelling up, simultaneously exploring the uses of the word care in relation to this work. Login with your member details to read our journals: https://buff.ly/3Var3KO. #teesunicreativearts #teesside

🎨 Calling all Artists! 🎨 Shaping the Future of Public Art: Join the Conversation! Are you looking to develop your art practice in the public realm? Want to take your career to the next level and learn from public art consultants FrancisKnight? We are excited to announce the development of an innovative Public Art Practitioners Professional Development Programme, set to launch in early 2025! For over 20 years, FrancisKnight has led over 60 public art projects, and now, we’re building a dynamic new programme designed to support artists who want to grow their practice in the public realm. But we need your input! 🗣️ Your Voice Matters We’re reaching out to artists like you to help shape this programme. What do you need to develop your skills? What challenges are you facing in the sector? This is your chance to influence the creation of a unique, practitioner-focused learning experience tailored to elevate your work in public art. 💬 Take Our Quick Survey! We’re asking for just 5 minutes of your time to share your thoughts. Your feedback will be invaluable as we design a programme that truly meets the needs of emerging and established artists alike. Click here to take the survey: https://bit.ly/3BKMOuw 💡 Why Participate? Not only will you have the opportunity to influence this exciting programme, but by completing the survey, you’ll also be among the first to be notified when the programme launches. Help us make this programme something special, and let’s work together to inspire, support, and develop the next generation of public art practitioners. 🗓️ Survey Deadline: Get your responses in early to stay informed! Please click https://bit.ly/3BKMOuw to give us your opinion by 6 November 2024. #PublicArt #ArtistDevelopment #FrancisKnight #CreativeCommunity #ArtInPublicSpaces #ProfessionalDevelopment #PublicArtPractitioners

Big thanks to Rhiannon McKinnon who put me on to this episode of FuturePod where Kristin Alford (Director of MOD, a future-focused museum in Adelaide) Maggie Greyson MDes, APF (Chief Futurist and CEO of Futures Present, Toronto) and Elizabeth Merritt (Founding Director Center for the Future of Museums, Washington) talk about how foresight practices can be applied through museums to share these skills and ways of thinking with communities. Particularly valuable for me was the part where the three discussed the tension between the high level of trust the public tends to place in museums for presenting "facts" and the "truth", and the presentation of speculative futures. As Kristin Alford puts it: "if museums are well trusted places, and yet we're holding up speculations, that does create a space of risk, I think, for museums. As an example, the exhibition we had last year, which was looking at extending the boundaries of the mind and the body, we had an exhibition which was part speculative fiction about new, creation of new organs for the body that might serve different purposes, and an artwork that was really looking at a modular body that you could click and play body parts in thinking about life extension, paired with research from the university around organs on a chip and skin grafts and a whole lot of really innovative things. And for our audience, it was sometimes difficult to parse the speculative from the real. And that's what, that's what we were trying to do. We were getting them to think about these things, but it occurred to me that wasn't as straightforward as we had assumed. And there was a level of trust placed in us that the things that we were presenting were real, that when we were talking about advances in medicine and click and play modular bodies that people believed that was happening. And so I think it's a really difficult and interesting place for museums to play, in that place of speculation, when trust is so high and people believe us".

When you hear the word museum... I bet you think of stately buildings where you JUST look to learn. Even the emoji selection for museums reflect this! 🖼 🏛 Museums have played it safe for too long with the same ol' exhibits behind glass. But that observation only approach is kind of boring. It's time to ditch the beaten path and get creative with how we engage visitors: 1. Immersive story worlds that make you feel transported, breaking down the barrier between you and the displays. 2. Hands-on maker spaces for visitors to tap into their creativity by crafting their own inspired pieces.  3. Interactive storytelling sessions where you're prompted to share your personal reflections sparked by the artifacts, fostering deep connections and enabling you to weave your own narratives. With innovative twists like these, museums become way more than dusty collections. They spark personal metamorphoses through active participation, human connection, and thought-provoking surprises. Let's turn museums into vital, mind-expanding purposeful playgrounds where visitors craft their own meaningful experiences - not just passive info consumption. You'll walk away personally empowered, emotionally resonant narratives brewing in your mind's eye. The possibilities are endless when we're willing to color outside the lines and let imagination bloom. Who's game to remake the museum experience? Peek Kohl Children's Museum and KOHL EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION who are about ready to open an ART exhibit... that has play elements! Love it. Big thanks to Vito Gioia, Jr. for the behind the scenes tour! #museum #innovation #changemakers #playbasedlearning #inspiredimpact

WHAT IS THE UNIVERSAL? The Universal is a versatile, all-purpose Questioning Practice that can be applied to all types of art and objects and is suitable for any guided experience in any museum. The Universal evolved from my research into questioning strategies during my master’s thesis. By studying various questioning frameworks - both within and beyond museums - I found that a successful universal framework follows a structured progression: observation, inquiry, interpretation, and reflection. The 4 steps in The Universal enhance observation skills, encourage critical thinking, facilitate interpretation and promote reflection. LOOK: What do you notice? INQUIRE: What questions come to mind? INTERPRET: What might this be about? REFLECT: What insights did you gain? Designed for adaptability, The Universal can be applied across a wide range of museum and heritage experiences, creating space for rich discussions and connections. Curious to see how The Universal works? Try using the 4 key questions and see how they spark deeper conversations and insights. PS: For a deeper dive into The Universal and other related Questioning Practices, check out my book, or listen to Episode 137 of the The Art Engager Podcast (links below). ________ Listen to my podcast: https://lnkd.in/eKcV2ucB Subscribe to my Curated newsletter: https://lnkd.in/e76RAKEB  Get your copy of The Art Engager: Reimagining Guided Experiences in Museums: https://lnkd.in/eiei_Wga

We started Compass North because we love making our community more art literate.  Ok, big term, homie. What does that even mean?  It’s the ability to engage critically with art and culture. It’s feeling comfortable and excited talking to your friend about the movie you saw together. It’s understanding how a piece of art created today relates to one from two hundred years ago. It’s being able to easily and clearly write about the concepts and intentions behind your own art.  Art can be weird and vague. Being art literate, you can view, process and contextualise it. It isn't about being a theory junkie. It's about moving toward a more fulfilling connection with art by being able to make meaning from it (and the larger world it connects us to). The more you do the following, the easier it gets: 1. Read more about art. Look up reviews after you visit a show. Subscribe to arts media newsletters for their latest articles (or to our sticky teeth reading lists!).  2. Practice sharing your thoughts and knowledge about art. Bring a journal to galleries and jot down notes, or chat with your friend describing what you do and don’t like about certain pieces.   To go a step further: book a consultation with us on how to build art literacy into your art space or art practice, whether for yourself, your team or your audiences. https://buff.ly/4eo81rN Image ID | A beige background with black text reading, "WHAT IS ART WORLD LITERACY?" above a photo of a stack of books. #ArtWorld #ArtistSupport

My friend Andi Cuddington introduced me to the idea of your Museum of Almost a few weeks ago. The Museum of Almost is the space in your mind where all of those projects that you almost launched or ideas you almost sketched out or books you almost wrote or trips you almost took are on display. Your museum might be a prominent spot, where the exhibits are well-tended and have lots of detail. Or it might be a more out of the way space, where dust gathers and the lights are flickering. I like this metaphor because it acknowledges the work that is involved with hanging on to almost finished projects. Sometimes it takes a while for the moment to be right or for an idea to develop. But what amount of time and energy is lost on these museums to inertia, to not just getting on with things? Talking through the Museum of Almost with Andi and some other Design Thinking Zeal colleagues did get me moving on a few illustration projects that have been kicking around my museum for a while. With the nudge of our conversation, I drew a few of them and felt true satisfaction and openness. Creating a bit more space in my Museum of Almost is freeing up energy to get some of those bigger projects moving. My museum has a few projects that I'm working away on, that will likely leave the exhibition space in the next year. There are others that are receding into the shadows. And there are a few in-between that I am truly unsure about. Here's to curating the Museum of Almost with care and attention. And to the projects that are ready to get booted out. #DesignThinking #Illustration #Research #PhDCareers #Facilitation

[CONCEPT] [REDO*] The Center on Contemporary Art (CoCA) is one of Seattle’s longest running artist-led exhibition platforms.  Founded in 1980, with James Turrell creating the inaugural exhibit, the organization has brought truly cutting edge artists to Seattle, including new media artists such as Nam June Paik, Einsturzende Neubauten and Survival Research Labs.  In recent decades the momentum of community led arts organizations has fluctuated in Seattle seeing closures of beloved institutions like MoM, Consolidated Works and 911 Media Arts.  CoCA recently survived yet another brink of collapse, with now Interim Executive Director Ray C. Freeman III preventing the previous board from shuttering the organization altogether in 2023. I’m imagining an exhibit here, partially because I’m planning on proposing one to include myself and other new media artists whom I’ve worked with in the past, but mostly because I believe we, as a city, are enriched when cultural organizations with an entwined history such as CoCA thrive. As usual this concept is multi-channel projection of custom generative software written by the artist in the Processing programming language. #art #installation #concept #architecture #processing #customsoftware #generative #projectionmapping  – - - * The original version of this concept rendering used a modified photo from another artist’s documentation that they considered to be inappropriate use.  I admire this artist’s work and honor their view on this usage, even if I don’t 100% agree with their perspective on fair use.  This new background image is modified from CoCAs own photo posted to Google Maps to represent the space.