The Next Big Thing: Visitor Participation

• By Jenny Parker
• February 11, 2008

Museums looking for the Next Big Thing are finding it by rethinking the visitor experience. In addition to engaging visitors through traditional viewing, these museums are inviting visitors to creatively participate and contribute to the museum experience. Using Web 2.0 tools such as Flickr and WordPress visitors can respond to a collection or exhibit by blogging, writing creatively, or remixing objects into new themes and contexts.

Curious? Night Kitchen Interactive just researched several of these programs for our paper, The Art of Storytelling. Our research suggests that these programs hold vast promise for museums and visitors alike: from helping museums create more lasting impressions on their visitors to targeting new, untapped audiences.

Visitor-participation also opens up a wealth of new ways museums can partner with schools to supplement education.

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