Tag: podcast

VOX POPS: Crowdsourcing Museum Definition perspectives for Museopunks

As you probably know, the International Council of Museums recently proposed a new definition for museums. Although the vote on the definition was postponed, the conversations that it sparked have been valuable and provocative. On the next episode of Museopunks, we wanted to try to unpack more nuance and perspectives than we can do with any single interview, so we’re crowdsourcing some responses to the following prompts or questions.

  • Do we need a new international definition of museums?
  • How might a new definition affect the sector and/or your work within it?
  • Is this discussion important within your national setting?
  • Has the conversation changed anything for you, or is this discussion a distraction?
  • Was this the right definition?
  • What is a museum? What is your vision for museums?
  • What else should we be thinking about in this conversation?

If you want to contribute, please send me a short (1min-5min) audio recording of your perspectives. In your recording, please identify yourself as you’d like to be represented on the show, as well as noting your country and if you’re an ICOM member.

We’re doing this as a bit of a sprint, so it would be amazing if you could send me your reply by Sunday this week (October 6).

We’ll be selecting a number of responses to go on the episode, but may also release an additional track online featuring other responses if we receive too many to feature on the show. We’d love to hear from people in different parts of the world too, so if you’re somewhere that we don’t always feature via our guests, get in touch!

Museopunks episode 3 – The Shape of Punk to Come – is online

This year, I’ve been super lucky to embark on a few different collaborative projects. One of the major ones was the paper that Danny Birchall and I co-wrote for MW2013, which kicked off a whole new line of investigation for me in research, and the other is the museopunks podcast that Jeffrey Inscho and I launched in April.

Both projects have been super rewarding, and I think it’s because they’ve eached pulled me out of my own headspace and the set of assumptions I port around, and forced me to push my work in new directions. Danny summed up similar feelings when he wrote about the experience of collaboration earlier this year:

When you’re working with someone towards a definition of a shared project, there are many modes in which you can operate. Sometimes you try to write down what you think they’re already thinking (and sometimes fail); sometimes you get to try your ideas out before they’re fully formed; you can take it in turns to lead the process. Most importantly, your paper or presentation goes beyond just trying to fill your audience’s cup with the knowledge you have, and moves towards making and thinking new things.

With that in mind, I’m super pleased to announce that the third episode of museopunks is online. In this episode, Jeffrey and I chatted to Bridget McKenzie from Flow Associates about future scanning and museums. It was a subject I was super keen to dig into a little further after being part of a session on Shaping the Future of Museums at Museums Australia 2013, and when I noticed all the Tweets from Bridget’s talk on a similar subject at MuseumNext, I knew we had to talk about the shape of punk museums to come.

This episode is actually the first of two with a focus on museum futures. Next month, we’ll be talking to Elizabeth Merritt from the Center of the Future of Museums, so if you have any particular questions you’re keen for us to investigate, feel free to send them through.

In the meantime, you can subscribe to Museopunks via iTunes, or check out our first two episodes. In Episode 1, we spoke to Michael Edson and Paul Rowe about museums in the Age of Scale, and Episode 2 focussed on museums, design and design thinking, with Dana Mitroff Silvers and Scott Gillam. If you have any ideas for topics you think we should dig into, or potential guests you’d love to hear from in future, please drop me or Jeffrey a line. We’re always eager to have our own ideas pushed a little further too.