Encouraging Participation: Motivate Those Visitors!
- By Jenny Parker
- May 21, 2008
In researching our latest paper, Art of Storytelling, we discovered a lot about encouraging visitor participation and avoiding the inadvertent ways we might discourage participation. We also learned about the important factor of motivation.
Single greatest motivator for visitors, we found, was having an audience. Visitor-contributors prize the opportunity to have their work singled out and showcased on a museum’s walls or website. To be associated with a museum in such a way, is, in the words of MasterCard, priceless. Consider Night Kitchen’s storytelling project at the Delaware Art Museum: it featured a juried exhibition where selected storytellers could win $250 stipend and have their stories professionally recorded for a museum podcast. The project garnered over 350 contributions in less than six weeks.
Consider also the Speed Art Museum’s enviable grand prize for its Flavia DaRin project: having the winning submission displayed on a billboard outside the museum. A compelling and irresistible accolade for any local artist …
So if you are thinking about launching a visitor-contributed project, factoring in a “prize” that showcases visitor creations is definitely something to consider.
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