Transcript

[Music]

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience, a podcast that explores the creativity, innovation, and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. If you’re new here, welcome. We’re happy to have you, and to our regular listeners, thank you for tuning in again. A brief reminder, my name is Abigail Honor.

Brenda: Hello, everybody. This is Brenda Cowan.

Abby: Today, we’re speaking with Joe Federbush, President and Chief Strategist of EVOLIO Marketing. Joe works with the entire event ecosystem plus partners with experiential agencies, organizers, and associations. Joe is most known for his expertise in measuring event success, data storytelling, and helping brands develop the most impactful experiences, all with one goal in mind, providing actionable insights that help brands deliver greater return on experience, investment, and objectives. I sound a bit like a walking ad for you. I clearly love your company and everything you do. Joe, welcome to our show.

Joe: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Brenda: Joe, could you tell us a little bit more specifically about what it is that you do? How do you go about doing your work?

Joe: Yeah, I mean, let’s face it, experiences, events, you know, they’re, not a lot of money is being thrown at them these days, we’re fighting for budget, you know, we’re fighting for attention in time with other marketing mediums and activities. So what we really do is those who are creating any type of experience, whether it’s in a museum, whether it’s at a convention, in a park, you name it, what we really want to do is just help them measure success by identifying KPIs, key performance indicators that are going to be the most important metrics to help them understand are they meeting, hopefully exceeding their objectives for that investment, for that brand, for that experience.

Abby: Wow, that’s cool. So, Joe, one of our focuses is storytelling, whatever it is we’re designing. So, I heard that notion of data storytelling, and it sort of piqued my interest. So, what specifically is that, and why is it important?

Joe: Yeah, data storytelling is extremely important, and it kind of plays off of your January 11th, 2023, episode about design experiences in storytelling, right? Now, we look at it the same way, but with numbers, basically. And you know, we’re inundated with data these days, especially when we went to virtual because everything was being captured. It almost did like a 180. Prior to the pandemic, there was not enough data or not enough good data. So now you have, you know, the whole challenge of rudimentary data, too much data. But, like, what’s compelling? What does it mean? What kind of decisions are they going to make from it? So, we look at it is whether it’s surveys, whether it’s, you know, digital data, you know, just what does it all mean? And most importantly, back to your point about the storytelling, what are we going to do with this data?

Actually, a good friend of mine, Victor Torregroza, he’s like an experiential expert at Intel. Years ago, he told me why you helped me so much is because you humanize data. You don’t need me to tell you how to read a pie chart, right? It’s about what are we doing with this information. Give you a perfect example, what seems like rudimentary data upfront when you look at like basic demographic of who’s coming to your event or experience, etc… You know, we look at it as, okay, well, what percentage are executives or what percentage are technical or tactical? Because your delivery has to really align with the audience, with your visitors, with their viewers.

So when you’re talking, alright, 60% of your audience is, you know, say, executive C-suite people, you want to make sure that you’re telling the story about how you can help their business versus, like if you’re talking to like technical or tactical people, you want to maybe show more product features and benefits.

Brenda: You know, I would love to play off of the, the human element that you were just mentioning and think about data collection. So, in my line of work, I’m pretty familiar with qualitative data, collecting focus groups, interviews, and all that kind of thing, and could you share a little bit, what does qualitative data collection look like for you?

Joe: Sure. So for us, you know, we are a full-service market research firm, and so when we look at qualitative, there are several aspects like you mentioned, focus groups, in-depth interviews, but now there’s also amazing AI tools that will take verbatim comments, whether it’s audio or it’s text and, really group it, combine it, code it into the right categories so you can start taking qualitative and actually convert it to quantitative to some degree, of course, depending on the volume of data.

But when we look at qualitative, you know, it’s just it’s getting that like emotion and that sentiment that you’re not going to necessarily get from a statistic. It’s that human connection and emotion.

Brenda: Listeners, you just missed two really alarmed or shocked or amazed expressions on Abby’s and my face when Joe started talking about AI. That’s incredible.

Joe: Yeah, we’re just scratching the surface now, and it’s mind-blowing. It saves and shaves so much hours of work, you know, which either A helps your margins or B, lowers your price so the clients get more value.

Abby: Are you worried you won’t have a job?

Joe: That’s the fear, right?

Abby: See, you didn’t even address that question! That was really slick. He’s like, I’m always going to be here, Abby.

Brenda: I’m not afraid, AI. Bring it on.

Joe: What I’ve learned about AI, the beauty of it is the information has to exist first. Allegedly.

Brenda: Well, but, and you were just talking about the emotional element and the human element, I don’t, I do not see how it is that you could possibly, when we’re talking about data collection in particular and when we’re talking about emotion, and when we’re talking about, you know, the nature of experience, I’m not concerned about AI sort of supplanting that human element.

Joe: I’m not yet either.

Brenda: Yet.

Abby: Yeah.

Brenda: Listeners, you heard that yet, right?

Abby: So when you think about an organization, how do they determine what they value, and how do you sort of quantify that? You know, what are the kinds of conversations you have to help people get at really defining or describing what value means to them?

Joe: Yeah, that is from my experience, in my opinion, that’s like one of the biggest parts of the project, actually. It’s not how to write a questionnaire or how to conduct the interviews. It’s literally all that due diligence and upfront work that has to be conducted to really get inside your stakeholders, your customers, and even their customers’ heads to understand what’s most important and what’s actionable.

You know, a lot of the time clients will come to us, for example, and they have a questionnaire already made, and you know, we kind of snicker at it like, what is this? What are you going to do with this information? So we kind of reverse engineer the process, looking at the end and working backwards. What decisions are you going to make based on, you know, this, this measurement research, etc.? Then let’s design A, the methodology to your point. You know, whether it’s a focus group, maybe it’s a survey, maybe it’s observations, maybe it’s behavioral tracking, maybe it’s social media. There’s so many data sources. What are the best data sources going to be to actually capture the right kinds of actionable information and help our clients really make true business decisions from?

Abby: What I was taught in school when I was in high school doing statistics.

Joe: Couple years ago.

Abby: Oh, I love you, Joe, was that, you know, you can sit there, you can look at a statistic, but it can be interpreted many different ways. So how do you make sure that you’ve asked the right question and you’re interpreting it in the right way?

Joe: Yeah, absolutely, and that’s why, you know, I was saying before about, like it always starts with your objectives and your KPIs so that you don’t really go down a wrong path. I mean, I love it actually a lot of the time when the data, you know, sheds light on something you didn’t think about. But the point is, you know, you don’t want to use data in a dangerous way. You know, it shouldn’t be malicious. Of course, we all go into it hoping for a certain hypothesis or a certain outcome, but really more, it’s about understanding how did we get there? Did we get there, yes or no? What worked, what didn’t? And let’s continuously improve so that the data does get us to where we want to be for continuous improvement.

It’s rare that anyone’s going to get it right the first time and then just be able to like use that as their BKM, their best-known method and just keep repeating, repeating, repeating because things change. And I think, you know, prior to the pandemic, the economy was good, the event industry was exploding, you know, so we were a little, getting a little complacent. Some, not all, of course, but you know, we had a real rude awakening and now with the significant increase in costs for experiential and event marketing, we all have to be smarter, you know? So, we do need data more than we’ve ever needed it before, to your point, Abby, to make those really strong correct decisions and not try to twist the data to do something that it’s really not saying.

Abby: Does it ever put you in conflict? If you’re just responsible for the data and I use the word small J. If you’re doing all data and you’re obviously analyzing somebody else’s work, right, somebody created this event. There’s a whole team or teams of vendors. Are you ever in conflict?

Joe: Unfortunately, yes. Fortunately, unfortunately, however you want to look at it. But the point is it’s not going to fix itself, right, so you may as well identify it when hopefully, it’s just a small problem before it becomes a much larger problem. But there has definitely been instances where, you know, it’s, it’s a little challenging to communicate results that aren’t so great. And that’s, you know, that’s another reason why, you know, EVOLIO’s an independent third party. So, we’re not measuring our own work, you know, so we are going to be truly unbiased in what we present.

Abby: I want your job. You come out always smelling the roses.

Joe: Be careful what you wish for.

Brenda: Well, I’m curious about when we’re measuring success and along the lines of what we’re talking about, companies need to make sure that there’s a return on investment, that they’re spending their money wisely. And I’m curious to know what are the pieces that need to be taken care of, attended to, in order to make sure that the ROI is healthy.

Joe: So our model or framework or methods to help get there are to really understand, you know, first start with again, what are you trying to accomplish? You know, so many events and experiences are designed around different factors and different goals, like whether it’s sales, whether it’s education, whether it’s information, whether it’s, you know, societal things like DEI and sustainability. You know, we see it all the time where we want to measure our ROI, and I have to ask most times, well, how do you define ROI?

Brenda: Sure.

Joe: And a lot of the time, their definition of ROI is not even really about ROI. It’s about ROX, the return on experience, the return on emotion, ROE, you know, the things that we, that you mentioned in the introduction, and then we find out, well, you know if you’re not going to deliver a great experience, why would you expect ROI? So I try to convince a lot of the people that we work with, let’s not start with ROI and look at that as the end result. Let’s look at that as the next phase, making sure that we’re truly delivering great experiences, connecting with the right people in the right way.

Brenda: So you said one of my favorite words, which is emotion, and I would love for you to just give us a quick definition. When you’re talking about return on emotion, what’s in your thinking with that one?

Joe: Yeah. So, couple of ways to go about it because everyone’s always like, oh, that’s intangible, you can’t measure emotion, and there’s so many ways you truly can. It starts with sentiment. And you know, if you think of it from like a survey question point of view, if you do like an intercept survey as people are leaving a museum or an event or activity, say, hey, I would love to ask you some anonymous questions about what you thought about the event. And you have very specific messages designed that they could rate their level of agreement with. And of course, you want to make sure those sentiment statements are not biased. So how happy did this event make you? That’s not the way you ask the question. You know, how do you feel towards this event? Did it make you, you know, on a scale, say, of, you know, excited to bored? And then, obviously the higher end of the scale is where it’s about the positive emotion.

That’s the easiest way to measure return on emotion, in my opinion. Now, the beauty of it is there’s, kind of going back to AI and some other tools, there’s cameras and things that really capture sentiment from like recognition from your biologics, and that can track your, your expressions on your face. And we’re starting to see those now being used at events as well. And the cool thing about that is that it’s capturing information of people walking by, walking by, walking by, stopped, looked, came in, checked it out. Cameras facing them, they could see their like, reactions, and it’s truly now generating the most accurate levels of return on emotion you can get.

Abby: You mentioned a good experience and talking about measuring it, but what is a good experience? What makes a good experience for a visitor?

Joe: Yeah, you know, first is connecting, you know, having that true organic natural connection where it’s not forced, you know, you’re not forcing people into a room to do something that they may or may not feel comfortable doing, seeing being around too many people at the same place, at the same time, obviously after the last couple of years, what we’ve all been through. So what makes a good experience is really like attracting and engaging with the right people, but having the engagers be truly engaging, you know, not to beat up the word, but, you know, so many times we walk into experiences that are designed so impeccably and beautifully, and then it falls flat because the people working it are like, not that excited to be there.

So you know, you’re halfway there, and then I think to get full-way there is, yes, you design something that connects with the right people that you’re trying to attract and engage, and then having that kind of support staff, that team, those ambassadors, whatever the case may be, that really know how to walk you through and treat you as if you’re having a VIP experience. That, to me, is the perfect experience. Now, you know, when you work backwards from that, it’s okay, well, who are the right people, and what do they like to see? And it’s not one size fits all. So you have to make sure that, you know, you’re not setting false expectations of what it is you’re visiting.

Brenda: Joe, I’m particularly curious to know about the arena of social impact and how it is that social impact and social action is being embraced by brands. And I’d love to know: how do you go about measuring whether or not there’s an awareness that social action has truly been prompted?

Joe: It’s huge right now, and I’ll start with those who are not yet doing it. We encourage them to look at ways of measuring, you know, societal metrics versus just business metrics. DEI and even DEIB. If you’ve heard of DEIB, the B is belonging, and this is something I think is so important, especially when you look at it from like an experiential element. If someone who’s not white walks into a room of white people and they just, it’s homogenized, you know, that’s not a good look for that event, for that experience, for that brand. You know, even when we look at it from like a speakers perspective, if you’re at a conference and there’s multiple speakers, multiple tracks, you name it, there has to be diversity with the speakers. It can’t always be equal, but the point is there has to be that introduction that, you know, it just can’t be this homogenized event. And you know, same thing on the sustainability side, you know, especially in the event world. Let’s talk about trade shows for a second, you know, there’s a lot of churn and burn, a lot of carpet, a lot of, fortunately, a lot of recycling, but, you know, reducing carbon footprints in events is extremely important more than it’s ever been because it’s got to go somewhere and it can’t keep going to dumps.

Abby: Now, that’s true. I completely agree with that. Even in terms of all of the design builds we do for all these events. They have to be recyclable. They have to be reused. They have to have that flexibility where especially when you got to take care of the environment. Yeah, I completely agree.

Joe: I mean, in some countries are still 100% build and burn. You know, they haven’t even thought about it yet. And that’s scary.

Brenda: Oh, that is, that is crazy scary.

Joe: Yeah.

Brenda: You know, I’m really curious to know, are there things that we’re talking a lot about, you know, what should be measured and how it could be measured, and I’m curious to hear, what should not be measured?

Joe: Yeah, I think that’s a great question.

Brenda: Where do you draw the line?

Joe: Yeah.

Brenda: Or where should we know to draw the line?

Joe: Yeah, I think, like what shouldn’t be measured are things that are obnoxious and pushy, you know. So, when are you going to buy this? You know, like, and a lot of it, it’s the delivery of how you’re asking. So, you know, how likely would you be to buy this product in the next X number of months is a nice way to say, will you buy this or not? You know, collecting the level of information you’re collecting about people, like personal information, that’s always a turnoff. So it’s like, let it be more of a natural opt-in process. Like, so if I’m answering a survey, that survey should be anonymous because if you want unbiased responses, you don’t want to start off by asking, you know who I am and what’s my email and what’s my job title, what’s my income, and how many kids do I have? And like, you know, like that’s a whole other story. But, you know, you could save those demographics for the end, but just for classification purposes. So we know, am I talking to a Gen Z or am I talking to a boomer because they’re obviously very different types of people, some of them, most of them, not me, but I’m in that gray area between. But yeah, so things that are just aren’t pushy or invasive.

Abby: So I really believe in making mistakes because without making mistakes, you can’t learn, and without learning, there’s no growth. So tell us some mistakes, some horror stories you’ve had along the way, and also some mistakes that clients often make so that anybody listening can try to avoid them.

Joe: You know, and I look through, like, all throughout my career, and I’ve been involved in, you know, event measurement for a pretty long time. And I look back, and it’s not even like those mistakes were always like 20 years ago, you know, just some even more recent where we let the client kind of dictate how to measure. So, there’s been instances where I’ve kicked myself, allowing the client to dictate to us what to do and how to do it. You want to, of course, get the business to help the client. So sometimes, you’ll sacrifice budget to get it done, and then you find yourself taking just a huge hit or a huge loss on the project. And I look at those as the biggest mistakes because then you’re setting the precedent for any future work where they’re like, oh, well, you did it this way last time, and you know, so then you’re kind of digging your own grave, so to speak.

Abby: Yeah, totally relate. Completely understand.

Brenda: Well, we would love to hear what you think in your own personal work, what you think is most successful about what you do.

Joe: I love what I do every day. And so, this is an easy question to answer, fortunately.

Brenda: Softball.

Joe: Yeah, right. Thank you. Thank you for the softball.

Brenda: A soft pitch. Is that what it is?

Joe: Yeah. So, I mean, I just love the fact that, especially if we look at more in the short term compared to the long term, but it’s always been the case. Budgets for event marketing and experiential marketing is always tight. And the fact that we can provide actionable data that helps our clients truly make decisions, it’s such a joy.

Actually, just yesterday, we were on a call with a client, and they did something very different with their experience, and they were really kind of sticking their neck out. We hope this works. So, they had the data because we did the research on-site post-show. The data supported that bringing all their brands together was an extremely successful experience, not only for them but for their customers. So in the past, they had like four different brands in four different locations. So the fact that A, they saved money by consolidating, B, they had more cohesiveness between their brands but still had their unique brand identity for their brands. But they had the data now to say, we did it, it worked, but it wasn’t 100% perfect. And then they realized, Wow, you know, next year we’re going to change this, and we’re going to do this more efficiently. So, it’s more like modifying and tweaking versus like, do we need to reinvent the wheel again?

Brenda: What are some of the lofty goals that you have for yourself for the next few years?

Joe: Yeah, I mean, for, for myself, you know, it’s just really grow the business and be the industry standard when it comes to measurement. You know, we’re working now on building experiential online, in-person, event B2B, B2C benchmarks, for example. So we’ve literally just compiled over 400,000 surveys that we’ve conducted since 2017. So over half a million responses now to create benchmarks for all of those normalized KPIs that a lot of clients want to know, but then, more importantly, be able to filter it between age and gender and geography and event type in industry and things like that. So that’s what we’re really looking forward to continue growing and expanding so that there truly is like normalized data out there so people can really feel good about, if we exceeded the industry benchmarks, congratulations if we’re close to it, congratulations. But if we’re under it, what are we going to need to do to improve our performance and outcomes so that we are exceeding benchmarks?

Brenda: So if you’re looking at years since 2017, I’m curious, what about the impact of COVID? How do you sort of take that into account when you’re looking at longitudinal data analysis such as that?

Joe: Yeah, and that’s a big piece of that segmentation with the benchmarks is, you know, the glory days prior to 2020. Of course, the 2020 through 2021 and a half where it was like, oh, and then now that things are rebounding because, you know, from 2021 when things really started coming back to in-person pretty strong till today, you know, there’s still that momentum that’s being rebuilt. You know, a lot of events, event organizers, associations, museums, you name it, they’re trying to get those bodies back. And now that, you know, social distancing is kind of being put aside, and we can get more bodies back together and not have the limitations of capacity limits and things like that, so we’re starting to see that rebound, and it’s rebounding pretty quick. I mean, I anticipate unless something drastic, God forbid, happens, I anticipate that early 2024 we’re going to be back to normal, whatever back to normal means. But, you know, we’re not going to be in any kind of state of fear, hopefully. But, you know, I speak with some people, and they’re like, oh, it’s not going to be for like two or three more years. I speak with other people, and they’re like it was yesterday, and it depends on your industry, of course, you know, but I think for, collectively and most globally, not all, but I think we will be in a good spot in probably like 9 to 12 more months.

Abby: So thinking about, you touched earlier on the changes that we saw happen due to COVID. How many of them are good and will stick around, and how many do you hope we’ll never see again?

Joe: So, great for QR codes, let’s call it, let’s say that.

Abby: That’s true.

Joe: Love it, digital payments, you know, things just connecting digitally.

Abby: Yeah.

Joe: But understanding where connecting digitally has its limits, you know, networking and all these things that were trying to be done digitally. Very, very difficult. And during the pandemic, we had measured literally hundreds of events, and, you know, it’s great for brand opportunities, excellent for education.

But from that building the connections and networking, you know, no matter how many matchmaking tools and things you tried and did, there were very, very few that were actually successful. I think building community so an event isn’t just three days, say, like now we, we, we understand how to make an event longer for the digital part of it. But yeah, the networking, connecting part, it just fell flat and hopefully, we never have to try to see it again.

Abby: Good. So, in-person still wins.

Brenda: Face to face.

Abby: People want to be with each other.

Joe: Without a doubt.

Brenda: I just remember the conversations back in 20, like 2012, 2013, 2014. Everybody was like, oh, we’ve got to go digital. We don’t need all this expense of face-to-face and, argh, getting people together, it’s so complicated.

Joe: Yeah.

Brenda: Well, here we are.

Joe: Yeah.

Brenda: We want to see each other in person.

Joe: Yeah.

Brenda: I find that very optimistic.

Joe: Hugely optimistic. And you know, digital has its place. We find it’s great for, like, keynotes and, you know, press launches and things like that, so, you know, for, for the masses. But for those that really want that connectivity and that build those relationships, it’s just so hard online. Yeah.

Abby: That intimacy. So three things you love about your job, Joe.

Joe: I love helping my clients with data versus, what is it, feelings aren’t facts. That’s my favorite line to my clients. Feelings aren’t facts.

Abby: I’m stealing that. I’m going to totally steal that.

Joe: Please steal it. I’ll put a little TM over it.

Brenda: TM.

Joe: Feelings are not facts. That’s my number one favorite thing. My number two favorite thing is owning a company and just having a team of employees that I truly love and care about, and I will do anything for them. And number three is just the hurdles. I love the hurdles. You know, everything can’t be easy all the time. And we’ve gone through some hurdles in, whether it’s education or experiential agencies. They only make us smarter and stronger.

Abby: Would you say then, because you’re clearly an entrepreneur, you own your own company, you’re running it very well? It’s growing year after year. Do you think it’s part of who you are? Wanting to be heading a team, wanting to be successful, and also wanting to be challenged? I think it’s like core to what I’ve seen in serial entrepreneurs is that they thrive off it. As soon as everything’s working, it’s boring.

Joe: Yeah. Oh, my employees hate that about me. When it’s working well, then it’s time to change it.

Brenda: Evolve. Let’s use the word evolve.

Joe: You know, that’s funny because EVOLIO literally means evolving your event portfolio, that’s, or experiential portfolio. So that’s where it came from, EVOLIO. It’s about evolution and constantly evolving. So, thank you for that.

Brenda: You betcha. I’m here for you, Joe. I’ve got your back.

Joe: You’ve got my back.

Abby: Yeah, well, you know, in some of my research, before we chatted to you, I did a few surveys.

Joe: There you go.

Abby: And one of them actually gave me a $5 Amazon gift card.

Joe: Only five?

Abby: I thought that was pretty good.

Joe: Oh, no. We do ten.

Abby: Really? Send me some surveys!

Joe: Yeah, between five and ten.

Abby: Is that the norm?

Joe: Yeah, yeah.

Brenda: Look at that. I don’t even like to check the box that says I agree to terms.

Joe: I know, right?

Brenda: That would have been like 10 hours of my time right there, which is how do I feel about these terms.

Joe: Exactly.

Brenda: You know, it took me ten years to get married, so I guess that you know.

Joe: Good things come to those who wait.

Brenda: Yeah, well, that’s for sure. That’s for sure.

Abby: I’ve learned so much today, Joe, from you. It’s incredible. Now I even know what data storytelling is.

Joe: All right!

Brenda: Oh my goodness, Joe, thank you so much for everything.

Joe: Thank you for having me.

Brenda: The work that you’re doing is amazing.

Joe: Well, thank you. And you guys as well. You just bring in some brilliant minds with brilliant people and your perspectives to it, and so thank you for having me.

Abby: Oh, thank you, thank you.

Brenda: Thank you.

Abby: And thanks, everyone for listening. If you like what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience wherever you listen to podcasts. We’ll see you next time. 

Show Notes

EVOLIO Marketing

Transcript

[Music]

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience, a podcast that explores the creativity, innovation, and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. If you’re new here, welcome, and a big hello to our regular listeners. As you know, my name is Abigail Honor.

Brenda: Hello, everybody. This is Brenda Cowan.

Abby: Today, we’re speaking with Jonathan Ullman, President and CEO of the Mob Museum: The National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement, located in downtown Las Vegas with the mission of advancing the public understanding of organized crime’s history and impact on society. Jonathan is responsible for leading the organization that’s been ranked number 20 on Tripadvisor’s list of top museums in the United States.

I think that’s kind of phenomenal. Jonathan’s museum career began at Liberty Science Center, New Jersey’s most visited museum, where he was intimately involved in the strategic planning and operation of the facility following a 109 million capital expansion. Prior to joining the Mob Museum, Jonathan was the president and COO at the National Soccer Hall of Fame, where he led the dramatic transformation of the organization’s operating model.

Jonathan has earned a huge list of accolades to his name, and it’s truly my pleasure to welcome him to the show. Jonathan, hello.

Jonathan: Hello. Thank you so much for having me.

Abby: So the first time I went to the museum was with the wonderful Cybelle Jones, SEGD’s CEO, and she was on the Gallagher team that worked on creating the Mob Museum, as she reiterated many, many times, working very, very closely with you, Jonathan. So can you talk about that time, the museum concept and design, and sort of the overall mission in those first early stages and how you collaborated with the experience design team to really create this truly wonderful institution?

Jonathan: Sure, they actually were involved with the Mob Museum twice; the initial opening in 2012, then in 2017, we embarked on what we referred to as the Museum Improvement Project, which was a renovation of the first floor. And then we also took the basement of our historic building.

You’ve been through the building, so, you know, it’s a former U.S. post office and federal courthouse, and it’s on the National Register of Historic Places. It’s this amazing 1933, just beautiful federal building and being historic, nationally significant, not just locally, but nationally significant because of events that took place in the courtroom. We had to be very careful about how the exhibits were developed and to not do anything that would alter the historic integrity of the building.

I think Gallagher did an amazing job of helping us create these really kind of just very immersive and kind of amazingly themed spaces, but doing it in a way that respected the historic integrity of the building.

Brenda: So you’re number 20 right now, which is pretty incredible. And my question, Jonathan, has to do with before you even opened. Did you have anxieties? Did you have doubts? Did you think there’s no way this is going to really happen and we’d love to hear what the thoughts were that were going through your head.

Jonathan: We don’t have enough time in the show to talk about my anxiety and doubts.

Brenda: Number one, number two.

Jonathan: But, I will say, look, you know, this project was an amazing opportunity. I mean, I think for someone like myself, having been in the museum industry, to know that you had, first of all, the support of the city of Las Vegas, you know, that was investing, you know, had the vision to, and the support at the highest levels. I mean, this is, you know, we still regard the then mayor, Oscar Goodman, as our chief visionary of the museum. And knowing that the organizations that were contracted to do the renovation were really world-class firms. So, there was no question in my mind that the quality of the experience, that this was going to be something unique and special, and amazing.

At the same time, Las Vegas marketplace is really tough and tough in a number of regards. I think one is if you take the list of metropolitan areas that are known for cultural experiences and museums, you’ll see, you know, right at the tippy top of the list, you know, Washington, D.C. Everybody knows, you know, some of the most amazing landmarks and museums are in Washington, D.C. People visit D.C. to go to those types of institutions.

Not quite the same thing in Las Vegas. You know, the first thing that comes to mind about going to Las Vegas isn’t like, you know, I’ve heard they have amazing museums.

Brenda:

Let’s have a cultural moment in Las Vegas.

Jonathan: You know, on the one hand, the visitor volume in this marketplace is extraordinary. I mean, there’s, you know, 40-plus million people come to Las Vegas every year. You know, the vast majority of people that you’re going to be attracting are people that are not from here, which, again, you know, cuts both ways. I mean, there’s this enormous base of people, but they also don’t necessarily have a lot of awareness or familiarity with what’s here, and there’s a lot of noise you have to cut through.

So, we felt really good about what we had created and knew that this was something that was really unique in terms of not just, you know, both the subject matter as well as the way in which we were delivering the subject matter, felt very confident in the quality of what we created. But that’s also just, I don’t know if it’s half the battle or just part of the battle, you know, you still have to make people aware of it and make certain that you’re operating at a really high level. So there certainly was a great deal of anxiety when we opened of whether or not would we be able to have that type of penetration and that success.

And, you know, there was this great surge of interest when we first opened. You know, the first six weeks, there’s a lot of attention, and there’s a lot of people that have been waiting to see it and, you know, come out, and then you start to go into this period where you have to, it’s not quite pound the pavement so much, but you have to encourage people to come create some urgency for people to come and you don’t start off knowing necessarily what the seasonality is going to be for your visitation.

February and March are great months. Things start to head down again in the summertime until you get to October, which is an amazing month in Las Vegas. The weather’s so, you know, fantastic. Lots of tourists come out, and things kind of come back up again. But the first time around, you don’t necessarily know if we’re, you know, hey, what’s going on here? Is this the natural kind of ebbs and flows of things, or is this all it’s going to be?

Abby: Can you talk a little bit about these sort of parallel stories? Tell the audience about those stories and how you struggled with which way to weight them, and also education versus entertainment at the same time.

Jonathan: Yeah. So, first of all, our mission is to advance the public understanding of organized crime’s history and impact on American society. Pretty broad. And when you go through the museum, you will see it becomes abundantly clear that this is very much a law enforcement museum. You know, we take visitors on this journey, starts at the turn of the 20th century, and you see how organized crime takes root in America. And you see the different factors. You know, it’s very much an immigration story. It’s a story about social mobility or the lack thereof and the things that allow, or at times even encourage crime to take root, but also at the same time, you know, it’s all of the tools and techniques and innovations of law enforcement and the criminal justice system and how they’re combating crime.

But, you know, there is this certain amount of romanticism that some people have for these stories of these mobsters. They’re familiar with movies like The Godfather, and they, you know, and they like to sometimes have fun with this kind of playacting, that sort of thing. And a certain amount of that is perfectly okay, right, but at the end of the day, we are a serious educational institution, and we also need to make clear to people that criminal behavior is not okay and that a lot of these mobsters that are at times, you know, that there’s this aura of glamour around their, you know, organizations, were doing really, really bad things, and the, actually, the heroes that we should be celebrating are on the law enforcement side.

So, you’re constantly trying to do this balance. You know, I think for us, it’s making certain that we don’t compromise the integrity of what we’re conveying, you know, the underlying educational messages and the historical facts and the importance of understanding how all of this fits into how our country has evolved.

Brenda: You’re making me think about an earlier podcast, and Abby was mentioning exhibitions at the Mob Museum that use empathy to challenge perceptions. Can you talk a little bit about how it is that you use empathy to encourage sort of enabling folks to think more multidimensional about your subjects?

Jonathan: Yeah, if we’re doing what we should be doing, we are helping to kind of transport people to other times and places and be able to see historical events or understand issues through the lens of people that live those experiences. Right, I mean, that’s what separates the type of environment that, you know, that a museum can create. 

So how do you create that kind of emotional connection and help people feel it? Some of that is just about creating the right environment. So, when you’re temporally transported back to a particular point in time. So, whether it’s going through the lineup experience or walking into a space that’s about very, very early Las Vegas or the vintage Vegas time period, and you have the bright lights, and you have the sounds of, you know, what some of us can remember when slot machines actually had coins in them, and they would clink, you know.

Brenda: They don’t have coins anymore? I had no idea. Okay.

Abby: Ruined, you’re never going.

Brenda: I’m learning. I’m learning every day.

Jonathan: But you try to create those multi-sensory experiences. We have these great interactives where you can listen to wiretaps, real wiretaps that were used to prosecute different criminals like a John Gotti, or you can see some of the undercover agents’ tools and try to imagine what it must be like to strap on one of these cassette players.

So, I think one of the experiences that Abby and I talked about a great deal on her visit when we renovated the first floor, we added a couple of new, more experiential spaces that are about policing. So there’s this interactive crime lab where you can go into this area and actually try ballistics testing and match striations of bullets as, you know, as you might see on, you know, a CSI-type program.

There’s also this whole area that we’ve dedicated to use of force. And I think people recognize certainly it’s, you know, it’s one of the hotbed issues of the day, and I think often with these types of conversations when you’re trying to understand these things, you know, we can talk about them in a very kind of intellectual and almost detached sorts of ways, and we convey a lot of the information in that way, also I mean, we do talk about, you know, what does the law say is appropriate or excessive force. But what we’ve created for our visitors is a way to kind of step in the shoes of a law enforcement officer by replicating the training that officers will often use. And we worked very closely with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department to develop this, and I think they’ve, you know, they are, you know, absolutely the standard bearers right now in terms of kind of training and a lot of the best practices with regard to use of force.

But you go through this simulator, you get paired up with one of our staff members who’s a training officer. You get a duty belt that has, you know, so it kind of replicates the heft and the weight of a real duty belt. You get a simulated firearm that has a, you know, it’s got a CO2 cartridge, so it’s got a little kick to it, and it’s got a laser sight on it. You get briefed by a real member of, senior member of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, you know, in a video underscoring that this is, you know, this is not intended to be an experience like a video game. This is designed to replicate training.

So, you then go into a couple of rooms where you first encounter these digital scenarios. So you see a video up on a screen that you are, you, as a police officer, are responding to a call, and it might be at a convenience store, it might be some other location. And you have to see what’s going on in this video, and you respond with these, you know, very basic shoot or don’t shoot situations. 

What really kind of cuts to the heart of this, though, is that when you get to the last room, we actually have a live-action role-play. So you go into this small space where an officer, you know, our staff member, now explains to you the call that you’re responding to. So maybe you are responding to a call of a suspicious person in a parking lot, and you have to respond to this call, and then you go through the door and you enter this room.

Ultimately, the goal you’re trying to accomplish is to resolve this situation without using force. And I think ultimately, you know, what we’re hoping to achieve with this is for people to recognize how complicated these situations are. And, how important it is for, you know, the 17,000 plus law enforcement agencies across the country that, you know, training is so critical and being able to do, you know, have training that is robust because these situations that you can be in are so complicated.

People generally do not characterize this experience as fun, but it is consistently one of the highest-ranked areas of the museum for our visitors. You know, there’s such an emotional component to it, and you are kind of transport added in this, you know, into this situation that has such kind of tension and kind of, you know, it brings you to another place that it’s it is really an extraordinary experience.

Abby: So, in this immersive experience, you’re putting the visitor literally in the shoes of the police officer, and you’re creating this really empathetic, immersive experience. This is an amazing storytelling device. It’s a way of getting people to challenge their preconceived ideas, and I think it’s really difficult to do, to come up with exhibits or moments in a museum that do this. And you found one which really, really is powerful. So, you know, if you were working in another museum completely, what would you recommend other directors or the designers of museums think about when they’re thinking about what experiences they should create?

Jonathan: Yeah, I think that’s for me, I think that’s the ultimate question. And there’s certain types of experiences, you know, I think this is, you know, this particular kind of experience that we’ve been talking about is, you know, is really provocative. But it also lends itself, I mean, there’s kind of a very clear way to how you can kind of create that type of experience.

Other types of, for lack of a better way of putting it, learning objectives are maybe more difficult. It kind of starts from a place of what are we trying to convey? Like what are we hoping to achieve with the guests, right? Like, what are we, you know, what do we want them to be understanding, and then how do we make it as multidimensional and rich as an experience as possible? Like all the things that touch people in terms of how they feel when they encounter a space, like how do you create that for whatever it is that you’re trying to convey?

I mean, I think that’s for us, as we, as we look ahead to how do we how are we going to grow and create new exhibit spaces and experience spaces like this, how do you accomplish that kind of visceral, emotional connection that is transporting people to another time, another place?

Brenda: You know, we’re talking about technology used for really specific aims and end goals and to develop perspectives and empathy and to enable people to have very rich, very personal, intimate, emotional experiences. And my question is about investing in technology. So, did you anticipate or plan for any potential redundancies in technology? Did you play it safe? How did you go through the process of determining how much you wanted to use technology and towards what aims?

Jonathan: Yeah, part of what makes that tough is that the world has changed so much in such a short amount of time. Right? When we created those experiences, you know, the crime lab, the use of force exhibition space, we also created this, you know, touch wall, we call it the global networks wall, where you can see how does organized crime manifest and law enforcement groups manifest, you know, internationally now.

You can search geographically or by crime groups or law enforcement groups, and it’s visually alluring, not as engaging as I think we hoped it would be. And I think that there’s there is a certain amount of a trap here, too, to be, be honest with you. I mean, technology is tantalizing.

You know, we have this amazing app, right? And it’s it’s, you know, there’s tours and missions that you can go on when you visit the museum. There’s this amazing ‘doppelgangster’ feature that uses facial recognition technology. So, if you take our app, you take a picture of yourself, and then it’ll search a database, and you’ll get three matches of people that are either criminals or members of law enforcement or kind of pop culture figures that were somehow related to organized crime and law enforcement.

And it’s super fun, right? But there’s big barriers to getting people to, you know, to pull out their phone, to download an app or to follow a QR code and then, you know, do this or do that. And I think it’s, you know, I also want to make a distinction between what we’re doing for the onsite experience as opposed to things that we try to push out for people that aren’t traveling here and to make it, you know, make some kind of rich an engaging experience through the website. I mean, I think that’s like that’s a different topic.

But for the onsite experience, I think it’s a, it’s a tricky mix. I mean, it’s always tempting to say that we want interactives, but we don’t necessarily mean the same thing when we say that. I mean, for a lot of, you know, museum professionals, interactive kind of like makes you think of, you know, that it’s some type of an interactive technology or digitally based exhibit.

You know, it’s touch screens. It’s something that you, that you’re manipulating as opposed to interactivity that, from the guest perspective, is often, it’s a confluence of things. It’s the exhibit, but it’s also the people that are helping to facilitate the experience on the staff side. And it’s being able to have, like, there’s a very important kind of human component of the experience that you can’t understate. And I think that you know, finding the sweet spot is using technology but also not abandoning the people and remembering that the guests want to share their stories, too, and they want to be met where they are. And so, you know, having a person that’s mediating that engagement between the guests and the exhibits and is part of that experience is really, really important.

Abby: Well, one of the things I know when I visited with you, Jonathan, was you had a mobster, I forget his name, what was his name, standing, talking to the audience?

Jonathan: Oh, well, there’s a fellow Frank LaPena, which we would characterize as mob adjacent. He’s not a mobster.

Abby: Sorry, mob adjacent.

Jonathan: Mob adjacent.

Abby: Got to be PC with my mob language. So, Frank was there, and he was talking, and as we approached the room, the room was packed with people. All the visitors were cramming around, and there was Frank telling these wonderful yarns about his time being mob adjacent. And so, it was really, really cool, and it reminds me of what you’re talking about. That interactivity from a visitor perspective is very different to the way that we use interactivity from a digital perspective. And what they get from these moments can be as simple as sitting and listening to a storyteller, and that can really be a transformative experience where you connect so much with the information, with the story. And so, I thought it was another reason why I’m such a fan of the Mob Museum is these different techniques that you use, some of them super, as old as humanity, storytelling, and you use them really effectively throughout.

Jonathan: Abby, thank you for saying that. You know, I think that there is a thread that runs through all of these experiences, and it’s really about authenticity. What’s so gripping about, you know, Frank LaPena is that he lived this life in which he was in, you know, he was around these mobsters, and he was actually not just prosecuted, but he was convicted of a very heinous crime, subsequently exonerated not just pardoned.

So, the life journey that he has been on is so captivating. And to be able to hear that story directly, what possibly could be more engaging and captivating? If you can figure out how to bring people that have had these real-life experiences and can convey that in a way that it’s, I mean, you could hear a pin drop in that room because it’s so mesmerizing and it’s so real.

Brenda: So I wanted to take a quick pivot, actually, and ask you about your return on experience. I’m wondering, do you think about your return on experience and what you’re seeing now as a result?

Jonathan:  You talk about timeless elements of, of, of museums, right? Measuring, measuring our impact is, is, you know, one of the timeless challenges that we face. So, we have a number of different metrics that we use. And I think we’re always seeking better ways to understand, but we, we do get feedback from people and survey people on how they consider the value of the experience, you know, across different categories.

So, you know, with educational value as well as entertainment value, as well as monetary value as well as time spent value. You know, the one metric that we follow the most is, you know, people’s likelihood to recommend the experience to a friend or family member. That doesn’t get you at the question of how much did they learn from the experience.

But it gets you to answer the question of: How much value do they believe they derive from the experience? And I, you know, never want to suggest that, you know, that there’s a pure relationship between how entertaining something is and how little or much educational value there is. But we do know that there are certain experiences that are a little bit light on content. And we do know that there are certain things that are really, really dense, particularly when we look at things like our educational outreach, for example.

We have this speakeasy experience where we take people back in time to the prohibition era. When you go down the end of the hall, you then get to, you know, two doorways, and on one side is the speakeasy space where we, you know, take people into an environment that’s about where people consume booze during prohibition. And then on the other side is the distillery space where we talk about how did it get there, how is it manufactured or bootlegged, you know, rum running and all that. And we’re actually distilling and making moonshine over there. And when you’re in this space, you’re not just transported in time, and you don’t simply see objects behind cases, but you can also get a drink, and you can have a bartender explain to you the history of how these things were made and why people were consuming it and what the you know, what the environment was like back then, right.

But anyway, part of the point is, you know, people also like to have a drink, like people like to hear the music. I’m proud of the fact that we have a menu that tells great stories and, you know, and educates people while they’re figuring out what they’re going to eat or drink.

Brenda: I’m so appreciating what, what you’re sharing with us right now, and I wanted to sort of underscore what you’re talking about. You know, Abby and I had the pleasure of speaking with John Falk in a prior podcast. and, you know, I think to your point about, you know, this is not solely about education or how do you actually measure education and the value of that and when there’s so much going on with all of these experiences, and John was sharing with us that actually in what he’s discovering is that the real value is satisfaction. And it sure sounds like folks who go to the Mob Museum and experience the exhibits and experience that drink at the speakeasy are having an awful lot of satisfaction.

Abby: And I can echo that because that was another thing is, is when we look at museums, they’re turning into, and they need to provide for the community. Because, John, when you’re thinking about your speakeasy, I know you have a lot of repeat visitors, people from the local community, so you’re tailoring to them as well as to the tourists, and it’s just an amazing place to be. And I think you’re also touching on the fact that people go to museums with different expectations and needing different things. And so, it’s up to, the jobs tough, but it’s up to a museum to make sure that there’s those very different access points where people can get out of the place, what they need, even on a given day, right?

Jonathan: That’s an excellent point. You know, we have this ability, and we take very seriously this notion that, I mean, museums should be gathering places. We have a very dense calendar of programs that we do that are very focused on the local community. You know, they can be historical topics, contemporary topics. They can be things that are, you know, very practical about living more safely in a community and what types of legislation might be coming up that people should be more informed about that relate to the topics in the museum. You have an ability with the folks that are here to continue to get deeper and deeper.

You know, I think with a lot of the tourists, you know, when you think about what’s the return and how do you know if you’re doing well, you know, if we can get people to say boy, I can’t wait to you know, I’d love to go back there again, you know, I’d love to go learn more about this and whether they learn more about this by coming back to us again or going somewhere else, you know, if we’re just whetting their appetite, you know, piquing their interest and they’re going somewhere else, then we’re doing our job. That’s what we’re supposed to do.

Abby: Tell me three things you and you got to be honest now, three things you absolutely love about your job, and three things you wish you could change but can’t.

Jonathan: I don’t know where to begin with what I love about my job. I mean, I’m, like, and I don’t for a second take for granted what a wonderful, how’d I get to have such a fantastic gig. I mean, this place is, place is amazing, and I get to work with such amazing people, and it’s so fascinating. I mean, it’s just tremendous opportunity. You know, we have the greatest board, the greatest staff, phenomenal city, the fascinating folks that we get to interact with, I mean, I, you know, real-life heroes. And to be able to couple that with the ability to be creative, to get to imagine things like the underground, the speakeasy space or, you know, new exhibit galleries, new experiences, whatever comes down the pike. I mean, it’s a phenomenal opportunity, and I’m super grateful. I mean, I’m very, very lucky. So I don’t know if that was three. I mean, I feel like that was maybe more than three. I feel like it was kind of two, but like a lot more than three. Yeah.

Brenda: They were big.

Abby: They were big, they were big. And you’re pleading the fifth on the three things you wish you could change.

Jonathan: It’d be great to have more resources. The team here is so great, and the number of ideas for how we can grow this organization and the number of potential partners, you know, there truly just, there aren’t enough hours in the day. I mean, the people that work here are so committed and passionate about what they’re doing that sometimes it’s hard to turn it off, and sometimes it’s frustrating that you can’t do everything that you wish that you could do, so, you know, so that gets to be a little tough, too, but it’s still worth it.

Brenda: Clearly, enthusiasm is, is coming from above, I can assure you. What an incredible pleasure to be speaking with you today, Jonathan.

Jonathan: Well, thank you both. This is an honor and a delight to be here.

Abby: Thank you so much, Jonathan, for joining us today. Thanks for listening, everyone. If you like what you heard, subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience wherever you listen to podcasts, and make sure to leave a rating and a review and share with a friend. We’ll see you next time.

Brenda: Take care, everyone.

[Music] 

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp. and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Show Notes

Gallagher & Associates

Interactive Experiences – The Mob Museum

Firearm Training Simulator – The Mob Museum

The Speakeasy – The Mob Museum

Transcript

[Music]

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience. My name is Abigail Honor.

Brenda: I’m Brenda Cowan.

Abby: So today we’re speaking with Cathy Sigmond, Head of Strategy for Kera Collective, a firm that specializes in research, evaluation, and strategy for museums and cultural institutions. Now, Cathy’s been called many things in her career. She’s worn many hats, ranging from evaluator, UX researcher to strategist. I’m keen to find out which hat fits most comfortably. So Cathy, welcome to Matters of Experience.

Cathy: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Abby: Okay, so I’m going to start off by setting the stage a little bit and in a bit of dramatic way.

Brenda: As always. Hold on, listeners.

Abby: I feel sometimes that museums and cultural institutions really need to evaluate their role in society, and to do that, they need to listen more to what the visitors want instead of assuming as an institution that they know what they want and assume that what they’re presenting is actually hitting the mark when often it isn’t. So overall, Cathy, how is the landscape for museums right now?

Cathy: Very big question, but an exciting one. So, I feel like the landscape for museums is really good and always has been. For me, I got into the field because I was always fascinated by how museums are this really great convergence of different stories and ideas and creative people who visit them and creative people who work in them. And I think that that blend of creativity and diversity just really keeps me fueled working in them and keeps me optimistic about the landscape for museums.

And you mentioned thinking about the idea of whether what they’re doing really hits the mark. Not everything is always going to, but that’s okay. I feel always optimistic that as long as museums are listening and learning, then the landscape is always going to be really good, and there’s always an opportunity to grow from any experience.

Brenda: Cathy, with your work, you aim to help museums, as you put it, make a positive difference in everyone’s lives, and that’s a very lofty, very important ambition, and we would love to hear. How do you think a museum can make a positive, lasting difference in someone’s life, and how do you capture everyone?

Cathy: Well, it is a lofty ambition. I’d say that it’s not just my own. It’s one that I share with all of my teammates at Kera Collective, and I feel that’s important because working with the team is really, really essential to how we work. But I think that that’s also not an ambition that’s unique to our firm and our way of working.

I think no one would be in the museum fields doing whatever it is the amazing work they do is if they didn’t believe that there was a possibility that museums could make a positive difference in someone’s life, right? It’s kind of like, what’s the point? Why are you here if you don’t believe that as well? And so we really seek to work with museums and our clients, both through formal official projects and through just conversations that we have with our colleagues in the field to keep everything really grounded on the visitor and the audience and thinking about, well you’re doing something for someone to receive it, right? And for me, keeping that sort of the center of what you do is, is really what drives me. Now, to your point about like, well, how can you possibly touch everybody positively? The thing is, is like not every single thing is going to, but that’s okay.

One of the things we do a lot of work with our clients on is clarifying through this initiative, right? So through this exhibition, through this program, through this app, who is it that you hope to most effect, really who is this for, and what would success look like for them? So if it, if there was a positive outcome, tell us what that would look like. What would people say? What would people do? What would you see happen?

I think it’s being really clear that it’s not sort of trying to make a positive difference with every single person through every single thing, but through the collective set of things that you offer as an institution, that’s really sort of where the magic is.

Abby: So overall, I think a lot of museums have a generalized idea of visitors. It’s pretty common in our industry. You group them into, you know, four – families, locals, tourists. Brenda, you have really fun names that you teach. What are your names?

Brenda: Oh, well, I don’t know how fun they are, but maybe you’re thinking of streakers, strollers, and studiers?

Abby: That’s what I’m thinking about.

Brenda: Okay. Yup.

Abby: But I think, though, that these groups don’t tell us what audiences value, right? Or believe in. Are you saying that we can’t group people anymore? So, just sort of give me your thoughts on this.

Cathy: The way that we like to think about grouping people in a way we find helpful for museums and really for any type of organization, if I’m being honest, is thinking about grouping people by their values. So it is not about, it’s not about demographics, it’s not about people’s age, it’s not about where they live necessarily. I mean, there’s very good reasons to focus on geography and demographics, which is sort of a whole other thing.

But generally, I find when you think about focusing your work and what you do for a group of people who value X or who are motivated by X, and you identify that as your target audience, you know that person could be an adult in their sixties who tends to visit museums alone, or that person who values this could be somebody of a much younger age who tends to visit, you know, in social groups, and there could be all sorts of demographics thrown into this bucket. But the common thing that this persona or this audience type has is that the motivations and values that they share.

Abby: So how does data, Cathy, help museums understand these groups better?

Cathy: Well, data is a big term. Working as a researcher, I love the word data, and I work with, with audience data every day. But the word data is also a bit misleading if you ask me because what you’re really gathering is like stories from people. Thinking of it as data can kind of like remove you a bit from the fact that it’s, it’s sort of a human talking.

But broadly speaking, if you have not just made assumptions about these audiences but really heard from them, heard from them through lots of different methods, could be through interviews, could be through focus groups, could be through some sort of survey, observed their behavior both in and outside of museum spaces. All of this data can help paint a picture for you of who these people are, and maybe it’s learning more about what brought them through the door. Maybe it’s gathering data on what they did while they were there, I’ve mentioned observations of people in spaces. Maybe it’s doing that and also talking to them after and seeing what you can learn both from what they share was memorable from them and what you observe them doing, and maybe any pain points or barriers that come up along the way.

Brenda: Isn’t it critical for evaluators especially to use the idea of, you know, or I’ll say your word, data? Isn’t that sort of layer of remove really critical so that there’s objectivity when you’re actually trying to measure success or determine value? When you are listening to people’s stories, don’t you need to really sort of think about it in a scientific way, for lack of a better word, so that you’re really, really being very objective?

Cathy: Yeah, totally. It’s kind of a push and pull that I think exists within the evaluation fields because, you know, on the one hand, we’re people too, and we, you know, we feel along with people, when people share sensitive information with us, you know, something that’s been difficult for them about their museum experience or that has been a barrier for them to coming, and we’re trying to understand why. And, you know, so it’s, it’s a bit false in a way for us to have to put on that like removed lens, you know, to be one step away from that. And we try really hard when collecting data and knowing that that when we’re quote-unquote, collecting data, you know, that means we’re speaking with, we have the privilege of speaking with members of a museum’s audience or people who aren’t museums audience yet, but who are important to them and who are in the community in some way.

And, you know, it’s really important for us that no one we’re ever working with to gather data from to learn about ever feels like they’re being treated as data. But you’re right that on the analytical side of things, one of the main jobs of an evaluation, evaluator at all, and particularly an evaluation firm like ours that operates in a consulting manner. And for us, you know, we are not the, we’re not as attached on a day-to-day basis to the work the museum is doing. We immerse ourselves in it as much as possible when we have the privilege to work with the place. But it’s also our role to be that third party and to say, Well, well, hang on. You know, this is sounds like a really great idea you have. But what we just learned from our audiences through X, Y, or Z method or methods tells us that maybe, you know, a different direction should be something we should consider. And so it’s our role sort of play that advocate for the audience based on the data that we’re gathering at all times.

It’s kind of a push and pull as I said, it can be tricky to maintain that level of quote-unquote objectivity. And, you know, everybody has their biases. So we’re, we’re as objective as we tell ourselves we are.

Brenda: I want to pull over to the word success, which has come up a couple of times now. Cathy, in your experience, how are museums and cultural institutions defining what success even means?

Cathy: Yeah, I mean, there’s no one size fits all definition for success. One of the things we work a lot with our clients on is helping them to identify what we call their distinct qualities. This is, you know, you could call it lots of different things, but it boils down to what as an institution makes you unique, you know, what do you offer or could you offer or do you have at your disposal that no other place has?

You know, we work a lot with our clients and helping them before we even get to any stage of evaluation, helping them think about what it is that they’re passionate about the work for, you know what, what drives them and their staff and their team, and what makes this place, this museum, the medium through which everyone who is there does their work for the public. What is it that you that sort of makes you unique? Then we can talk about what success will mean for each of those things.

I think when you think about it on a smaller level, not always this big institutional level because that’s that’s really hard, I guess is what I’m trying to say, like it’s really hard to think about what would make this museum successful as a whole, but thinking about what would make this exhibition successful for the target audience and really working with people to say, okay, well, what would you hope to see, in what ways would someone be changed? And we talk about it a lot about outcomes being maybe behavioral, so people would learn a new skill. We talk about outcomes in terms of cognitive outcomes, so that’s thinking about, something museums think about a lot, learning, right? What, what new facts or ways, or attitudes would people come away with?

We think about outcomes in terms of emotions. What kinds of emotions do you want this experience to bring up for people and why? And then we think about, okay, well, so those are the outcomes that you’ve defined would be successful. Let’s talk about what would you see people do? What would you hear them say? Sometimes it’s kind of it’s easy, but it, some of the outcomes, it’s like, well, well, that’s not measurable. You know, that’s not we’ll never know if that’s actually happening. That’s the outcome we’re aspiring to. But it’s not measurable. And we’ll say, no, it is, we, we can think about the kinds of things that people would say, what are some of the words they would say to describe this thing?

If you want them to think about, you know, outer space in this new particular way? Well, let’s talk about how, you know, what kinds of questions might they ask. And we try to get really specific with, like, let’s talk about success in the context of this initiative you’re working on now. Because I think that when you do that, and you do that regularly as part of your practice as a museum for each new thing that you do, there is a purpose behind each of it, and it adds up to some some sort of success on a bigger level.

Abby: So, Cathy, you don’t design, correct? Your company doesn’t do the designs. 

Cathy: We don’t. So it depends who you ask. No, we don’t do the designs, but we do work a lot with designers. That would be through what we call front-end or formative evaluation, where we’re doing contact testing for an exhibition. And concept testing, in that case, might be like, for example, we worked with the museum years ago that was designing a, an exhibition, an art exhibition on home and Brenda, you’ve heard this story many times. I think.

Brenda: I love this example so much.

Cathy: Yeah, it’s one of my favorites. I always come back to it. It was a beautiful concept, you know, the idea of home, something that that in some way, shape, or form, whether positively or negatively, everybody has a connection to this idea. And they had a couple of specific ways that they wanted to talk about the idea of home in the exhibition.

And it was an object-based exhibition with objects from their collection, but all sorts of art objects from all different years, all different types of art, you know, some sculptures, some photographs. And they had a few ways they wanted to talk about home, and they basically hired us to put some of these ideas in front of visitors to the museum and have a conversation with them before we even showed them anything about what home means to them. What comes to mind when we think of that idea, and then slowly introducing some of the ways through really rough, I wouldn’t even call it label text, just like a rough outline of, well, we might talk about this, and we might talk about this, or if I give you these key words like, what does this make you think of and show you these objects related to this phrase, what associations do you make?

And those aren’t literally the questions we’re asking visitors. Those are more the things that the museums wanted to know. And through some some really cleverly designed interviews, we’re able to extract so much information that helped to shape designs. So we were able to understand what kinds of associations people within the museum currently make with the idea of home, what objects that the museum has selected really do evoke an idea of home for people and which don’t and why? What kinds of questions people are asking about the idea of home, and what they wonder about other people’s experiences of home.

All this to say, we, we do a lot of sort of concept testing and front end evaluation early on to help shape designs, and then we do do prototyping in a more formative sense, you know, that could be hands-on prototyping or even really specific message testing when you’re at maybe 60, 60 percent design, something like that.

Abby: Yeah, because I was thinking as you were talking your process, you do an awful lot of research and obviously work closely with museums and cultural institutions. There’s a huge difference, though, from getting that list together. Everything looks fantastic for you. Everything looks great for the institution. But then the implementation, the design, you know, is a definitely a completely different stage, and I believe things can get lost. Things can get lost in translation, and if there’s not a lot of coordination and if you’re not there in some way, shape, or form, I can imagine that you know, a separate design team could interpolate the findings you have in a very different direction or completely ignore them.

Cathy: Yeah, and you’re totally right. I’ve seen it happen, but that needle has moved a lot in my experience with designers and museums. We used to have to fight for, for that presence with design teams, maybe a lot more. And I’m happy to say that at least in my, my small window of experience, that that has started to really shift.

Lots of people can’t quite pinpoint like what’s the point of human-centered research. And really, it’s to be the advocates for the people who are going to experience the thing that you are designing. Right? And, you know, we’re not here to be these sort of like data dictators and saying you have to do it this way because the data says. We’re sort of here to help guide and shape, just making sure that every decision is made with the audience in mind.

And sometimes, we have big gaps in our knowledge about what an audience’s reaction is going to be to something. Or, as I mentioned, you know, the motivations of this particular audience. We – an exhibition, for example, might be being designed because there is, on a global scale, a lack of knowledge, you know, about a really important topic. If you don’t bring people along for the ride, they don’t feel like it’s something that’s made for them. But you also are kind of designing a bit blind and working based off assumptions. So I really see the role of designers and evaluators slash UX researcher slash human-centered researchers slash strategists, you know, call them what you will, but I really see the, that tie between designers and data gatherers and synthesizers as really, really strong.

Brenda: On another note, tell us about a situation that you’ve been in because I’d be willing to bet that you’ve been in this situation where an institution is asking something from you, and you know that what they really need doesn’t match with what it is that they’re asking you to do.

Cathy: Well, I’ll say that this happens, but it doesn’t happen because any place is like completely, you know, has no idea what they need, and we’re the ones who can come in and tell you how to do everything. I find that happens in a very specific situation. It’s when we get contacted, you know, an email from somebody or a message of some sort about possibly doing a study or whether it’s an RFP that’s very, you know, it explains what the thing that they would like evaluated is, but then it’s very prescriptive on the methods that should be used to gather the data. You know, we want this many surveys with a sample size of this and, you know, this many interviews done exactly with these people.

It’s not to say that those methods are necessarily always a bad recommendation, but oftentimes we really like to get as many questions in early as we can because we find out more information later about, like, oh, you’re really actually wondering about this? Well, if that’s the case and this is what you would need to help you forward in your design work or to help you make decisions about, you know, about how to do this program differently for the next year, then we really should think about maybe not doing a survey, because a survey, while it gets you a lot of data really quickly, doesn’t really go deep with any one individual and doesn’t get at the nuance of people’s experiences. Maybe we need to do focus groups instead. Sometimes people have the best of intentions and they, they know what questions they’ve got, but they don’t quite know how to go about answering them.

Abby: Yeah, we also sort of see, an institution will come at the very beginning and think that they actually have one set of problems that they need to solve, but from our research, it turns out that it’s actually not the right set of problems and guiding them along this almost journey of self-discovery is really hard because I think as we are in our individual lives, you know what we want to be and what we are are often two very different things.

Bringing those two things together and being real, keeping it real and understanding sort of what problems you need to solve is often really difficult. Have you ever experienced clients that are potentially coming, thinking that if they can solve this set of problems, then it’ll fix everything, but actually, when you’ve done the research, you’ve realized it’s a totally different set of problems?

Cathy: In general, yeah, I think this kind of thing happens all the time that you know, sometimes this happens when an institution wants to go straight to doing evaluation. They want to go straight to some form of measuring, and we find that it’s almost too early to do that, that what really needed to be done and needs to be done is a defining of who this, who this exhibition or who this program or who this initiative is for, so defining of audience and then really articulating sort of the why, like the outcomes that you hope for and doing all of that before you go out and just measure for the sake of measuring. I find that that kind of thing comes up quite a lot.

But yeah, it’s definitely sort of we’re, we’re always learning as we go with clients and getting to know – because we’re not there every day. Like that’s a, that’s a consulting thing as well. But it sounds like you’ve experienced too where there’s often like sort of a second layer to peel back of what’s really going on. And it’s as you begin the work that you start to realize that there’s a lot more to it. And so that’s, that’s a part of being adaptable and we try to be very flexible in our strategy and evaluation work.

Abby: So, let’s think about success from your personal perspective. You can have a happy client, you can have a happy institution, but you know you’re not happy. And I know there’s been instances because that’s always those instances. So, when you think back to those moments, what is it that real success, you know, for Cathy looks like?

Cathy: So it’s funny. For being such an audience advocate through our work, I often don’t get to see the end result, especially when we are working primarily on those front-end concept testing and more formative prototyping or sort of testing designs as their further along. That’s still early and it’s before the thing is out there for the world to really experience at scale.

For me, like the satisfaction comes from hearing later, hopefully, you know, through just an email or conversation, that you’ve been returning to the data, that those tools that we left you with are continuing to be used. We were really fortunate several years ago to do a lot of prototyping and concept testing work as the Americans exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian, which is a Smithsonian Institution in DC, as that was being designed, and it was a new permanent exhibition, so meant to be up for quite a long time.

And it’s all about the pervasiveness of Indian imagery and in, in our lives. But it’s it’s a really powerful exhibition about our shared history with Native Americans and the testing that we did, and the time in the project at which we got to be audience advocates was quite early on. Then, you know, I – it was kind of not intentionally, but a bit of a closed door situation where then all of a sudden, you know, it was up later on, and I have to say that, you know, just going to visit that space on my own afterwards and overhearing some of the conversations that I got to hear from visitors unofficially, you know, I wasn’t, I wasn’t officially gathering data for any work at that point.

I remembered some of the messages and ideas that the museum had been going for and things that they hoped people would wonder about or, or the time that they hoped people would linger in the space. And I’m being a bad evaluator now, just speaking based on, based on, one anecdotal visit. But for me, I remember just thinking in that moment, oh, this is what they were going for, you know, and I’m so happy that the work that we helped do early on helped them get to a point of shaping the design that this was even possible to happen.

Abby: I was going to say, I don’t think you’re the only person who’s actually sort of haunted the halls after an exhibition has opened. I know I’ve done that, and it’s amazing because you just want to be that fly on the wall as people are enjoying and investigating and playing with your, your exhibition. So yeah, I think there’s a lot of people listening right now who’ve done the same thing.

So, what are some of the components of a contemporary museum experience? We chatted with Monica O. Montgomery about museums being community centers, a place for people to get together, share their stories. And I’m also thinking about social media and how important, quite frankly, that is to storytelling. So can you sort of talk about the components of a contemporary immersive experience from your perspective and what you’ve seen evolving over the last five years?

Cathy: Museums have to think about themselves as this sort of like, this like living organism that’s constantly changing, and you, you can’t just rest on your laurels of thinking of experience design and interaction with visitors as one handful of things that you know and do really well. It’s great to have a handful of things that you know and do really well, but there’s always going to be more that you could do.

And I think the thing that we do a lot as strategists and as human-centered researchers is really helping museums realize that every single touchpoint with a person matters and that there are so many possible touchpoints you could have that museums aren’t in the habit historically of always, always thinking about. If we are going to talk about an exhibition, well, let’s talk about it, and let’s really drill down into what you want to do with that thing.

But you also have to step back and realize it’s not the only thing that you’re doing, and it is not the only way that a person could come across something that your museum does. There’s all sorts of ways, through social media, through a blog post, through what your museum staff is writing on LinkedIn, through gosh, there’s so many different, there are many different avenues.

And I feel like hearing myself say that it sounds like I’m advocating for just do more, do more, do more, do more, do more. I think that’s not really it. It’s finding a balance between not being afraid to try new things but also trying new things with purpose and saying, okay, there’s always one or two things we already do and do really, really well. Let’s keep doing those while leaving a little bit of room to try some new stuff.

Brenda: I actually, as a strategist, I’m really curious, what have some of your favorite projects been that are really, really innovative?

Cathy: Putting me on the spot here to, to pick favorites in the museum world. But, I will name one organization that I’m now a very big fan of. They’re called Made by Us, and they are a coalition, a consortium of history museums and organizations. They have kind of a, a great team that’s coalescing all of these disparate organizations.

Their mission is really about engaging 18 to 30-year-olds with history and history museums, but not just for the benefit of museums, for them doing civic good in society. And I think, though, the way that they do their work is, is actually, it’s sort of museums operating in a totally different way, and it really has caught my attention.

It’s all digital, and it’s all remote, but they’re still trying to add some in-person events and it’s, it’s really building on the strengths that history organizations bring to the table and helping them be in conversation with 18 to 30-year-olds, which is a really pivotal time for doing public good, figuring out who you are. We were fortunate to do some evaluation work on their flagship program, which is called Civic Season. It runs every summer.

We’ve also had some great work recently with organizations doing innovative stuff in sort of the digital gaming space around teaching science concepts through gaming. And so that’s sort of an area that I’m really excited to see. And then, you know, for me, I’m really always going to be passionate about exhibitions. I’m by no means an expert on it, but I really look to all the great organizations that are experimenting with different immersive stuff out there, both in and out of museums, and so for me, that’s kind of an area to watch that I as an evaluator and an audience, audience advocate, I really love to be able to work more in.

Abby: Well, Cathy, thank you so much for enduring our rapid-fire questions today. I just love the way you describe a museum as a living organism that’s constantly changing. I think that’s absolutely fantastic and something we should all aspire to create. And that idea of balancing between sort of trying new things with purpose and keeping what’s working as part of that visitor experience, I think, is really an inspiration and keeps you on solid ground, so thank you so much for joining us, Cathy, and thanks for everyone out there listening. If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience wherever you listen to podcasts. Make sure to leave a rating and a review and share with a friend. We’ll see you next time.

[Music] 

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp. and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Show Notes

Kera Collective

Made By Us

Episode 18: An American Immigrant Experience w/ Annie Polland

Transcript

[Music]

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience, a podcast that explores the creativity, innovation, and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. If you’re new, a hearty welcome to you and to our regular listeners, thank you for tuning in and supporting our conversation. My name is Abigail Honor.

Brenda: And I’m Brenda Cowan.

Abby: Today we’re talking with Dr. Annie Polland, who is a public historian, author, and president of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. Previously, she served as the executive director of the American Jewish Historical Society. She is also an author, and we will have links to her books in our notes.

Annie, I was recently at the Tenement Museum and discovered that it defines itself not as a history museum but as a storytelling museum. For those who are new to the museum, it tells stories of working-class tenement residents who immigrated and migrated to New York City. The Tenement Museum refreshingly does not talk about famous people. In fact, it prides itself on talking about real people in real families. Annie, welcome to the show.

Annie: Thank you so much. It’s wonderful to be here.

Brenda: We are so excited to have you here and like so many people, I’ve been a fan of the Tenement Museum since, really since its beginnings in 1988. And if you do not know this, listeners, visitors can take immersive building tours of these recreated homes, of these apartments, their hallways, the stairwells, kitchens, bedrooms, it’s so intimate, of former residents between the 1860s and the 1980s.

And they can also take walking tours that the museum offers throughout the neighborhood on the Lower East Side. Annie, could you share with our listeners your own journey and how it is that you came to be the institution’s president?

Annie: Sure. So, I was a fan of the Tenement Museum. I remember I came to New York for graduate school in the 1990s, and then I worked for a company called Big Onion Walking Tours, which employed graduate students to tell history, you know, to give walking tours of New York neighborhoods and talk about the history, and I was assigned for my first tour, the Lower East Side.

And at the time, those tours met at the Tenement Museum. And so, I remember I was so nervous to go. I had like studied on the train and the books I was reading fell apart because I was grasping them so tightly. And I showed up, but as soon as I got there and saw the people who were like in line clamoring to learn about history, I was sold.

It was almost like a religious experience, like to be able to walk in, in this neighborhood with so many 19th century buildings still standing and to bring history alive for people and to see people’s reaction. That was really exciting for me. And so it was, again, like a conversion experience where I realized like, oh, I’d like to do this, I like this. This is why I came to New York.

Abby: Did I read in The New York Times this summer there was a moment when it was going to close, or there was speculation?

Annie: Absolutely, yeah, no, no, no, you got it. So in April of 2020, when the pandemic had just begun, The New York Times wrote a story, and I think it was headlined “A Museum That Tells the Story of Survivors Faces Its Own Fight to Live,” and talking about how the Tenement Museum, perhaps more than other museums, was affected adversely by the pandemic, because for so many years, the Tenement Museum relied on earned income. So as soon as the doors closed and everyone started to know by April that this was not going to go away any time soon, the museum was in jeopardy, and a lot of people throughout the country and even in other places in the world saw that article and realized like their responsibility to help the museum. And so donations came in that were helpful in rebuilding.

Abby: Was that the first time that donations had been elicited or, or come in? It was mostly, as you mentioned, just on, on ticket sales and merch sales and things like that?

Annie: Yeah, well there had always been a development department and philanthropy of course was always part of it and fundraising always so important. And yet almost because the earned revenue was something that you could plan and you could kind of schedule and you could, you know, it was viewed as a wonderful thing that we were paying our way, so to speak.

But I think the pandemic taught everyone that there was a need to kind of really develop that development even more and that philanthropy even more to keep the cultural institution going and to help it thrive. So, I guess that would be another silver lining in a way, is the kind of the understanding of how as we rebuild, how do we want to balance that philanthropy and the development versus our earned revenue.

Abby: Right. I found the Tenement Museum very progressive for a museum. You seem to have come at this whole industry from a really unique perspective, as you mentioned, the walking tours. Do you see yourself as a progressive institution?

Annie: Well, first, I have to pay homage to the founders of the museum. They were the truly progressive ones who could look at a tenement and say that should be a museum. And so a lot of the innovation and the progressive ideas came from the museum right from the beginning, and when you think of that as 1988, that was not a time that immigration was really part of the national narrative.

So that was a big deal for them to kind of put that stake down and say this was this is what it’s about. And, of course, in addition to being an immigration museum and having that be innovative, it was really a museum about the working class, which doesn’t get told as often as it should. When a museum starts with that premise, you really you can only go forward with it.

It’s hard to go backwards. Like I think it pushes you to keep thinking about how to do things in new ways, how to share the story, how to expand the stories. I think that was also the really, you know, innovative spirit that we feel like, you know, it’s in our blood and it’s in the air of the Lower East Side, certainly to kind of keep that, keep that moving.

Abby: And then, in terms of when you’re at the American Jewish Historical Society, how is that different? Because I can imagine after being at the Tenement Museum with this very immersive, very innovative place, then moving there, what were some of the challenges?

Annie: When I first moved there, I was so captivated by the archives, but what I missed was the people. I missed being able to just get up from my desk and say, I’m going to give a tour right now, which is what I’m able to do at the Tenement Museum.

Brenda: You’re still giving tours yourself?

Annie: I gave one today. Yes.

Brenda: Fantastic.

Annie: Well, that’s how you know. I mean, that’s how you are able to see what people like, what they don’t like, what they respond to, what you can test out. It’s storytelling, but it’s, it’s messy storytelling. It’s storytelling that’s not set in stone, and so because it’s not set in stone and it’s not written down in a script, you get to play with that.

And so that, you know, for me to run a museum in which that’s what’s happening, I need to do it too. I would love to give one every day, but they don’t let me out of my office as much as…

Brenda: I love messy storytelling, I think that that’s a thread that we need to definitely keep going.

Abby: Yeah, and I love that theatrical aspect of it as well, that the way that no performance, quote unquote, is the same. Like when you’re there, you could go back on the same tour a week later, and it will be different, and it’ll evolve. I think it makes a very dynamic and alive and living museum.

Brenda: It’s really apparent and really palpable at the Tenement Museum, you know, I’ve gone on a number of tours, the exact same tour a number of times, I should say, and it is always genuinely different, and it is different because the shape of the, you know, visiting group has been different, and, and also the fact that clearly your interpreters are able to really bring themselves and their own passions and their own areas of expertise, I think, into each of the tours as well. It’s one of the best repeat museums that I know of.

Annie: Oh, well, that’s good, and tell people that because I think that…

Brenda: I just did. You hear that, everyone? Write that down.

Annie: Come back again. No, and, you know, a tour that I gave today was about Nathalie Gumpertz. It’s the 1870s. There’s been a panic of 1873. And when I first came to the museum in 2009, it was right in the wake of the recession. And a lot of the focus on that tour then was on the panic of 1873. And what was that, and how did that affect people? It’s who’s on the tour, it’s who’s giving the tour, and it’s also what’s going on in the world that kind of shapes the emphases of the interpretation.

Abby: Well, I think that’s what’s so successful about it because the same thing happened when I was on the tour. Everything was relatable to today, and that was what was so amazing is this ability to connect with the past and also to see the future, which is, I think, these stepping stones and that we’re always connected with our ancestors.

Brenda: I’d like to expand upon the conversation about relevancy to today and a question that’s really been percolating for me. I would love to hear, Annie, your thoughts on, you know, how one of the museum’s major aims is to build inclusive, expansive American identity. How does the work of the Tenement Museum fit within current national views of culture and immigration in the United States today?

Annie: One of the things I’ve thought about a lot is that you know, in some ways, the Bible of the Tenement Museum is the census. You know, we want to tell the stories of real people who lived in these buildings, and the census provides that map to be able to do that, and it’s also important for us to step outside of that and say who was not able to be here?

All the people, by virtue of them being in the building, were included in some way, but who at the time in American history was excluded? So, we spent a lot of time with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. And so what that meant is there were certain people that could come and live in these buildings and, and others that couldn’t, and that how could we even as we’re telling the stories of those who were there, also talk about those who were not there.

The idea of inclusion and exclusion also makes us think about the black community that was on the Lower East Side and in Lower Manhattan, albeit in lower numbers than the immigrant groups that were rising at the same time that their numbers were diminishing. What we found was that black New Yorkers were living in the Eighth Ward, which is what is now Soho, and there are no tenements still standing there to tell that story.

And we realized that it would be important to tell that story in our building as well. So, we’re kind of bending the original rules with regard to methodology, although not with mission. So, we’ve been thinking, I think, quite concretely about inclusion and exclusion and how we, how we honor that even as we honor the place based and the importance of real stories too.

Abby: Has the Tenement Museum ever had to face the challenge of inviting the public in without what I’ll call the storytellers that, the docents like, they seem incredibly integral to your visit.

Annie: Absolutely. It’s like one of those things where the strength of the museum is that it is a storytelling museum and that it’s a person telling you the story. Like, I just don’t think it would work if you were walking around with headsets and listening to, you know, an audio guide like I, I think that works in some museums. It doesn’t work for ours because of the intimacy that you both…

Brenda: It’s very dialogic and visitor to visitor as well as visitor to docent.

Annie: It’s the educator that can stitch together a story that includes the people on the tour and all of their backgrounds. It speaks to the person whose story they’re telling, in other words, the resident of that apartment, weaves in the primary sources, makes them accessible to people, and weaves in the objects and kind of puts that together, and you just can’t do that in a with an audio guide. I mean, you could do a more static passive version of it. But again, it’s that dynamism of the messiness of trying to put all of that together that I think makes it work.

Abby: So you keep calling them educators. When I was there, that obviously educating you, they’re telling you information, but that’s why I really gravitate more towards the fact they’re storytellers, and there were so many questions getting answered. We were all stimulated. We’re all asking questions. Other people are answering, had a fantastic time there, touching when I wasn’t supposed to be touching, you’re not supposed to touch anything and I was secretly smelling too, because I like smell and I just wish that there’d been a little bit more because I just sort of wanted to play a bit more.

Annie: Yes. No, and we learn through touching things. And I think you’re, when you’re in a building like that, you see so many surfaces. And, of course, with 97 Orchard, we don’t have things behind ropes or glass or anything. So, one of the first tours that was created for consumptive use, meaning you could touch things and sit on things, was the apartment of Victoria Confino. And so that apartment was recreated with consumptive use. You could sit down, and especially for kids, they could pass around a manta, they could pass around the blanket that she would have slept on.

Brenda: Let’s talk about a remarkable recreated sewing factory at the Tenement Museum. It’s absolutely incredible.

Annie: I know, I love it, okay, so we recreated a portion of a garment shop. We had real sewing machines. And basically, there’s a point at the tour where visitors can just explore. You touch a sewing machine, and projected onto the cloth is a story, a video, and you can, you know, pick up the headset and listen as well. And different sewing machines have different stories. There’s a rice cooking machine that also allows you to access the story. And so basically using the things in a shop that people would touch to be places to embed the story. We joke that you know, you don’t have to sew a garment, but you get to piece together a story.

Abby: It sounds wonderful, but then you don’t need the storytellers as much, right?

Annie: Exactly. The storyteller, the educator, is still important and kind of scaffolding that up and setting up the story and then kind of stepping back, but then kind of bringing everyone back together, really building in time in that sequence for the dialog, for the conversation, for the visitors to react to the stories and ask questions.

Brenda: Every time I hear you talk about the scaffolding of the experience, part of what I keep thinking about is, of course, the environments that they’re in and then also the objects. And, Abby, I absolutely, this is so cool. So they’ve got, of course, the original wallpapers and original linoleum and some original objects, things that were found during the renovation, the restoration.

But then they also have some objects that were bought on eBay because they were just like the one that they saw in the photograph of the family that was living in that living room. And what are the discussions that are happening at the museum around that?

Annie: That’s a great question. And another pool are the ones that the descendants of the families have given to us. Now, you know, people get rid of the old furniture, and it doesn’t get passed down in the same way you would if, you know, you had a very wealthy great aunt who passed down a beautiful like painting to you.

So, but in certain cases, we’ve been able to add objects that the families have donated to us, like sewing shears. And those are then embedded into the exhibits or in some cases in like display cases where we also put things that were found under the floorboards. But you’re absolutely right. In the early years, it was going to fairs and finding things.

And now you’re right, it is more eBay, you know, putting together an assemblage of objects that would have been from the time period and and, you know, trying to kind of create that, I guess, mise-en-scène. So what is real or what is authentic? I guess, you know, what’s authentic are the floorboards of the Tenement Museum that we’re now so meticulously preserving as part of this construction project.

But the most authentic thing, I think, are the documents. That is what we have to kind of provide the base to let people explore and stitch the story together so the authenticity comes in. This is what we know of the family, and this is the story we’re going to tell based on it.

Abby: Well, I love that reference to reality, because what really is reality, and I completely agree, I think as long as the experience resonates with you as one that is perceived as reality or could have been reality or very authentic, which again, being authentic and being real, two different things, I think.

Annie: And I think what we try to do is be transparent about everything as much as possible. And I think the most important thing is visitors are empowered to go back and think about their own family histories. What do they know? What are the memories that were just passed down? Everyone has gaps in family history. No one, there’s no one walking around right now that knows the complete family history because there are some things that are passed down, and there are some things that are quite, quite purposefully not passed down.

Brenda: I would love to take another perspective on the question of authentic and likewise playing with the idea of objects. I’m thinking of Your Story, Our Story. So, this is your online collection, and it is populated by the public, and it is the sharing of images of personal objects, family objects, and very short little stories with each. And it is now a massive collection. And tell us about Your Story, Our Story, and what you see as being the most meaningful part of it.

Annie: That’s what people do with the object that’s been passed down to them. And in that effort to kind of write a few, a paragraph really about that, it requires them to kind of think about that object and, and understand it. And usually, I would say most of the time, the stories and the objects that are put up are not of real, you know, any kind of monetary value.

It’s the story value that they have that, that’s really important. And it started when my daughter went to a elementary school in Kensington, Brooklyn, which is a very diverse neighborhood. And so we started working with the teacher, the teachers at the school and had the fifth-grade classes who came to visit the museum experiment with this. So, before it was a website, it was just a school program.

And the most moving thing about that is that we invited the parents and grandparents and the students to share their objects at the museum. So, the students first came to the museum, went on a tour, saw the objects that were in the family apartments, did this assignment. The teachers did a lot of work, you know, guiding this, shepherding this, then brought them back so they could share this as a kind of assembly with the message being your stories and your objects are as important as the objects that are showcased at the museum.

And then to see the connections being formed across different cultures. And this is, again, a very diverse school ‚Jamaican, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, you know, Irish, Italian, Chinese, Jewish, Black, Puerto Rican, like this is all in one school. So any one class is going to have this multiplicity of stories, and yet the thread that binds them together are the way in which this is a way that people are making sense of their own culture. And so now teachers across the country can actually even create their own web page within the website so that they’re able to see their students year after year.

Abby: My next question was going to be how do you take this very personal and intimate on-location experience that a lot of people from around the world or even in New York City will never be able to have for one reason or another, and how do you make the mission reach all those people? And it sounds like just naturally because of who you are, which is why the Tenement Museum is so lucky to have you as president, you’ve started to do that through a relatively simple personal program with your local school, and then you’re always thinking about scalability. How do I see what works? How does it ladder up to our mission? How do I listen to our visitors, to people who are interacting with us? And then how do I grow bigger and bigger until now, it’s global?

Annie: Right, and I think always keeping in mind the relationship between bricks and mortar and digital, right, that that you want to have the digital mirror as much as possible, the kind of bricks and mortar interactions. And so, you know, we created the website so that even when they put the website up, they can then print it out and put up like an exhibit board in the classroom.

Also, really important to all of that are the relationships that can be formed with teachers so that we’re hearing what’s happening and we’re able to support that, and also the IMLS gave us that grant to scale it. So none of this can be scaled without funding. So again, a big shout out to funders like the IMLS or the NEH, for example, that has helped us in, in that work and kind of taking some of our ideas and scaling them to reach more people.

And it goes back to this idea about inclusion and exclusion. We only have so much space in these tenements, like there’s only so many stories we can do. How can we create other venues so that we’re able to keep adding stories and learning from the stories? And then, oh my God, my favorite, where we were dealing with a lot of college students in the New York area, CUNY students, and a number of them brought dictionaries.

And what these were were their parents, when they first came to this country, carried dictionaries with them. Chinese-English, Russian-English, Spanish-English. And so, the fact that then their children, now grown, were picking those as objects that was about their family history, I thought was so important. And then to bring it back to the Tenement Museum, once in a while, we’ll have people who will say something like, oh, immigrants back then learned English faster or, you know, immigrants today, they’re not learning English.

That kind of, of rhetoric. It’s amazing to kind of then use this example of the dictionary that people are carrying with them from place to place, from job to home to the subway, in order to learn this language and to grapple with it. It takes away the way that people can kind of simplify something in a statement. And the object makes us think about this, this process and this ordeal of coming to a new country and having to learn.

Brenda: The level of nuance between the storytellers and the objects themselves and the residents of the space is really quite remarkable. And again, the fact that the storytellers get to respond and even encourage, I think, questions and perspectives and points of view that they can then work with and weave together and braid together. And maybe that’s a nice, it’s a way that I like to think about the nature of the dynamic experience is that it is very much so, like a co-created weaving that each of the story ends up being by the very end.

Abby: So going back to one of my pet peeves still. It seems very everything’s very natural for you. You have the theatricality of it. You have the storytelling, you have the education, you’re listening to the visitor, you think visitor experience is important, like you’re here because we think you’re a shining example of how to do everything right. I see sometimes people may come away and go, well, we just don’t have the stories that Tenement Museum has. I think some people don’t listen to their visitors and don’t understand the stories that the visitors want to be told. They’re not listening. They’re doing the top-down decision-making. And for me, everything you’re saying seems very natural. And this is, of course, how it should be, but I don’t think it is that way everywhere.

Annie: But for us, we have to. Right. So I think that just the nature of how the tours were set up, the nature of the building, the kind of, I think the philosophy of the museum from the beginning, which was to make stories accessible and tell the stories of of ordinary people, of regular people. I think all of that just kind of lends itself to almost relying on hearing what it is that that people, the questions that people have and, and adapting to that.

Annie: Like we don’t have the luxury of creating a gallery, putting beautiful art on the wall, and just saying, you know, walk around.

Abby: Sure, sure.

Annie: Although, I mean, I think that’s a wonderful thing. I love to go to art museums and walk around, but.

Abby: But I think it’s not enough. I think the problem is that these places are going to age out or that people are going to go to more of the pop-up immersive experiences like King Tut, where you’ll start to learn about history in a different way, in maybe a more accessible way. So, I think this is an accessibility issue happening with some of our older institutions that needs to be tackled to get people in, to have fun, and be excited about history again instead of it being a group of I know objects are really important, but just objects that I don’t understand why I should care about them.

And so, I think what can be learned from your example is that you’re not special and that everybody should be doing what you’re doing within reason, obviously. The way that you’re approaching your mission and your visitors through storytelling, I think is something a lot of other institutions need to think about.

Annie: I’m trying to think in my mind if I had to decide what was more important, an immersive space versus a storyteller and educator, and I don’t know because I think they’re both so important. But I’m just wondering, you know, I find I love going to museums where there is an immersive space. So, I grew up in Milwaukee, and the Milwaukee Public Museum has this amazing exhibit. It’s called The Streets of Old Milwaukee. And they recreated a Milwaukee street from the turn of the 20th century, and I remember as a child, like every kid who grew up in Milwaukee, remembers walking through the cobblestone space. There’s like an old grandmother on a rocking chair that’s a little eerie. There’s like water that you could pump, and then you looked into stores and could see, like, again, these scenes.

And I think that fires up the imagination more than any card or text, wall text, or audio. It’s being able to kind of be thrust into the middle of a scene and have to make sense of it. So, you know, I think there are ways other museums can kind of like create interesting immersive spaces that get into the background of the artist or the writer or the inventor that they’re doing just to kind of set a scene for people and engage people in a slightly different way.

I saw this, the New York Public Library, I don’t know, maybe a decade ago, had a whole thing on writing, and you got to go into a room and try out different types of writing utensils to kind of get a sense of how things were put together. And it was so, you would have loved it, so multisensory and so hands-on.

And so, you know, I think there are really creative ways that people can kind of complement, even take a traditional exhibit, put the traditional exhibit up, but create something on the side that is speaking more towards the visitors’ need for a multisensory experience or the visitors need to get in the mind or the space of, of another creator.

Brenda: One of the things that Abby and I talk with folks about are digital technologies, and I’m thinking about our museums and the big digital immersive experiences that are all the rage these days. So, I’m just curious, how far do you push it? Because you could, you could really go a great distance with technology. What do you? What’s the conversation?

Annie: Where we are experimenting more with technology is actually in our virtual programs. So The Washington Post in December 2021 did this really great piece, and we’re so forever grateful to them where they use something called photogrammetry to recreate our saloon space and our Rogarshevsky apartment and our Levine apartment, and essentially it’s like they take these 3D photos, a million photos, and stitch them together in a digital model.

And so the experience is really immersive, and there’s real texture to the spaces. And so we then got a grant to have the whole building photogrammetry-ed, I don’t know, I’m sure there’s some a better word to use. And so then we’re able to, on our virtual field trips, be like, oh, here’s the Baldizzi apartment and actually use, use that or here’s the front hallway.

Brenda: That’s brilliant.

Annie: And I use it even teaching with my college students. And we were on their campus, which was very different from the Lower East Side, but to be able to kind of use the space, you really feel like you were there. Like the next day, I was like, oh, I was just at 97 Orchard, but I wasn’t, what was going on?

And I was like, Oh yeah, I was in that building. So I think there are great ways that technology can help us recreate the immersive experience and be able to kind of send our tours throughout the country again with the partnership of teachers who are willing to experiment with us.

Abby: She’s speaking my language. I love it. I couldn’t agree more. I was going to say that I think also what really gets me excited about the way you’re talking about these experiences is what, you know, at Lorem Ipsum, we talk about all the time, which is merging that physical interaction, the digital interaction, the visitors with the docents, with even digital docents, how you use lighting, how you use actors, how you use projection and use all of these tools in the toolbox.

And I think it’s at the very, very beginnings. I think we’re seeing more and more different places start experimenting, and I think there’s definitely no right and wrong. So it’s just really exciting to hear that the Tenement Museum is so innovative as well in the way that they’re presenting the information, the technology you’re open to using, and the storytelling you’re doing always, always thinking about the stories you’re telling and how they connect to the visitors.

Brenda: Where’s the Tenement Museum going to be in ten years?

Annie: It’s funny because my guess is that it will be some combination of looking back to our roots and always being inspired by the work that Ruth and Anita and so many of the founders of the museum did. Being inspired by our visitors and being inspired by our educators to kind of help us, help us move forward again, grounded in, grounded in some of the dynamics that were discovered and evolved early on in the, in the museum.

Abby: And so you’re not saying AI, then? I’m not hearing AI.

Brenda: Oh, stop it.

Annie: No. I don’t, no. I mean, the whole here’s what it is. I think, again, that so many people now we rely on, you know, our phones for community. We rely on computers for this and that. I mean, what makes the Tenement Museum innovative these days is how old-fashioned it is. It’s the fact that it is a bunch of people in a room trying to understand history, like how nerdy is that, but also how unique is that?

And that becomes, in some ways, the most radical thing is, is coming together in real-time with real people to tell the stories of real people.

Brenda: And it’s real people also trying to understand themselves.

Annie: I think that’s right, yeah.

Brenda: And each other, and that’s definitely something that plays out at the Tenement Museum.

Abby: Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Annie. This has been really a joy to hear all about your experiences and get to share them with everybody today. And I encourage everyone to head over to the Tenement Museum. Check it out for yourself, and you’ll have an amazing, amazing time. And if you like what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience wherever you listen to podcasts, and make sure to please leave a rating and a review and share with a friend. We’ll see you next time.

Brenda: Thank you, everybody.

Annie: Thank you so much.

[Music] 

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp. and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.
 

Show Notes

Tenement Museum

American Jewish Historical Society

Amazon.com: Annie Polland: Books

Your Story, Our Story | Tenement Museum

Streets of Old Milwaukee

The Washington Post’s Lede Lab takes readers inside the Tenement Museum in New York City using high-resolution photogrammetry

Tenement Museum Virtual Tour using Photogrammetry – Washington Post

Transcript

[Music]

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience. My name is Abigail Honor.

Brenda: I’m Brenda Cowan.

Abby: So today we’re speaking with Cathy Sigmond, Head of Strategy for Kera Collective, a firm that specializes in research, evaluation, and strategy for museums and cultural institutions. Now, Cathy’s been called many things in her career. She’s worn many hats, ranging from evaluator, UX researcher to strategist. I’m keen to find out which hat fits most comfortably. So Cathy, welcome to Matters of Experience.

Cathy: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Abby: Okay, so I’m going to start off by setting the stage a little bit and in a bit of dramatic way.

Brenda: As always. Hold on, listeners.

Abby: I feel sometimes that museums and cultural institutions really need to evaluate their role in society, and to do that, they need to listen more to what the visitors want instead of assuming as an institution that they know what they want and assume that what they’re presenting is actually hitting the mark when often it isn’t. So overall, Cathy, how is the landscape for museums right now?

Cathy: Very big question, but an exciting one. So, I feel like the landscape for museums is really good and always has been. For me, I got into the field because I was always fascinated by how museums are this really great convergence of different stories and ideas and creative people who visit them and creative people who work in them. And I think that that blend of creativity and diversity just really keeps me fueled working in them and keeps me optimistic about the landscape for museums.

And you mentioned thinking about the idea of whether what they’re doing really hits the mark. Not everything is always going to, but that’s okay. I feel always optimistic that as long as museums are listening and learning, then the landscape is always going to be really good, and there’s always an opportunity to grow from any experience.

Brenda: Cathy, with your work, you aim to help museums, as you put it, make a positive difference in everyone’s lives, and that’s a very lofty, very important ambition, and we would love to hear. How do you think a museum can make a positive, lasting difference in someone’s life, and how do you capture everyone?

Cathy: Well, it is a lofty ambition. I’d say that it’s not just my own. It’s one that I share with all of my teammates at Kera Collective, and I feel that’s important because working with the team is really, really essential to how we work. But I think that that’s also not an ambition that’s unique to our firm and our way of working.

I think no one would be in the museum fields doing whatever it is the amazing work they do is if they didn’t believe that there was a possibility that museums could make a positive difference in someone’s life, right? It’s kind of like, what’s the point? Why are you here if you don’t believe that as well? And so we really seek to work with museums and our clients, both through formal official projects and through just conversations that we have with our colleagues in the field to keep everything really grounded on the visitor and the audience and thinking about, well you’re doing something for someone to receive it, right? And for me, keeping that sort of the center of what you do is, is really what drives me. Now, to your point about like, well, how can you possibly touch everybody positively? The thing is, is like not every single thing is going to, but that’s okay.

One of the things we do a lot of work with our clients on is clarifying through this initiative, right? So through this exhibition, through this program, through this app, who is it that you hope to most effect, really who is this for, and what would success look like for them? So if it, if there was a positive outcome, tell us what that would look like. What would people say? What would people do? What would you see happen?

I think it’s being really clear that it’s not sort of trying to make a positive difference with every single person through every single thing, but through the collective set of things that you offer as an institution, that’s really sort of where the magic is.

Abby: So overall, I think a lot of museums have a generalized idea of visitors. It’s pretty common in our industry. You group them into, you know, four – families, locals, tourists. Brenda, you have really fun names that you teach. What are your names?

Brenda: Oh, well, I don’t know how fun they are, but maybe you’re thinking of streakers, strollers, and studiers?

Abby: That’s what I’m thinking about.

Brenda: Okay. Yup.

Abby: But I think, though, that these groups don’t tell us what audiences value, right? Or believe in. Are you saying that we can’t group people anymore? So, just sort of give me your thoughts on this.

Cathy: The way that we like to think about grouping people in a way we find helpful for museums and really for any type of organization, if I’m being honest, is thinking about grouping people by their values. So it is not about, it’s not about demographics, it’s not about people’s age, it’s not about where they live necessarily. I mean, there’s very good reasons to focus on geography and demographics, which is sort of a whole other thing.

But generally, I find when you think about focusing your work and what you do for a group of people who value X or who are motivated by X, and you identify that as your target audience, you know that person could be an adult in their sixties who tends to visit museums alone, or that person who values this could be somebody of a much younger age who tends to visit, you know, in social groups, and there could be all sorts of demographics thrown into this bucket. But the common thing that this persona or this audience type has is that the motivations and values that they share.

Abby: So how does data, Cathy, help museums understand these groups better?

Cathy: Well, data is a big term. Working as a researcher, I love the word data, and I work with, with audience data every day. But the word data is also a bit misleading if you ask me because what you’re really gathering is like stories from people. Thinking of it as data can kind of like remove you a bit from the fact that it’s, it’s sort of a human talking.

But broadly speaking, if you have not just made assumptions about these audiences but really heard from them, heard from them through lots of different methods, could be through interviews, could be through focus groups, could be through some sort of survey, observed their behavior both in and outside of museum spaces. All of this data can help paint a picture for you of who these people are, and maybe it’s learning more about what brought them through the door. Maybe it’s gathering data on what they did while they were there, I’ve mentioned observations of people in spaces. Maybe it’s doing that and also talking to them after and seeing what you can learn both from what they share was memorable from them and what you observe them doing, and maybe any pain points or barriers that come up along the way.

Brenda: Isn’t it critical for evaluators especially to use the idea of, you know, or I’ll say your word, data? Isn’t that sort of layer of remove really critical so that there’s objectivity when you’re actually trying to measure success or determine value? When you are listening to people’s stories, don’t you need to really sort of think about it in a scientific way, for lack of a better word, so that you’re really, really being very objective?

Cathy: Yeah, totally. It’s kind of a push and pull that I think exists within the evaluation fields because, you know, on the one hand, we’re people too, and we, you know, we feel along with people, when people share sensitive information with us, you know, something that’s been difficult for them about their museum experience or that has been a barrier for them to coming, and we’re trying to understand why. And, you know, so it’s, it’s a bit false in a way for us to have to put on that like removed lens, you know, to be one step away from that. And we try really hard when collecting data and knowing that that when we’re quote-unquote, collecting data, you know, that means we’re speaking with, we have the privilege of speaking with members of a museum’s audience or people who aren’t museums audience yet, but who are important to them and who are in the community in some way.

And, you know, it’s really important for us that no one we’re ever working with to gather data from to learn about ever feels like they’re being treated as data. But you’re right that on the analytical side of things, one of the main jobs of an evaluation, evaluator at all, and particularly an evaluation firm like ours that operates in a consulting manner. And for us, you know, we are not the, we’re not as attached on a day-to-day basis to the work the museum is doing. We immerse ourselves in it as much as possible when we have the privilege to work with the place. But it’s also our role to be that third party and to say, Well, well, hang on. You know, this is sounds like a really great idea you have. But what we just learned from our audiences through X, Y, or Z method or methods tells us that maybe, you know, a different direction should be something we should consider. And so it’s our role sort of play that advocate for the audience based on the data that we’re gathering at all times.

It’s kind of a push and pull as I said, it can be tricky to maintain that level of quote-unquote objectivity. And, you know, everybody has their biases. So we’re, we’re as objective as we tell ourselves we are.

Brenda: I want to pull over to the word success, which has come up a couple of times now. Cathy, in your experience, how are museums and cultural institutions defining what success even means?

Cathy: Yeah, I mean, there’s no one size fits all definition for success. One of the things we work a lot with our clients on is helping them to identify what we call their distinct qualities. This is, you know, you could call it lots of different things, but it boils down to what as an institution makes you unique, you know, what do you offer or could you offer or do you have at your disposal that no other place has?

You know, we work a lot with our clients and helping them before we even get to any stage of evaluation, helping them think about what it is that they’re passionate about the work for, you know what, what drives them and their staff and their team, and what makes this place, this museum, the medium through which everyone who is there does their work for the public. What is it that you that sort of makes you unique? Then we can talk about what success will mean for each of those things.

I think when you think about it on a smaller level, not always this big institutional level because that’s that’s really hard, I guess is what I’m trying to say, like it’s really hard to think about what would make this museum successful as a whole, but thinking about what would make this exhibition successful for the target audience and really working with people to say, okay, well, what would you hope to see, in what ways would someone be changed? And we talk about it a lot about outcomes being maybe behavioral, so people would learn a new skill. We talk about outcomes in terms of cognitive outcomes, so that’s thinking about, something museums think about a lot, learning, right? What, what new facts or ways, or attitudes would people come away with?

We think about outcomes in terms of emotions. What kinds of emotions do you want this experience to bring up for people and why? And then we think about, okay, well, so those are the outcomes that you’ve defined would be successful. Let’s talk about what would you see people do? What would you hear them say? Sometimes it’s kind of it’s easy, but it, some of the outcomes, it’s like, well, well, that’s not measurable. You know, that’s not we’ll never know if that’s actually happening. That’s the outcome we’re aspiring to. But it’s not measurable. And we’ll say, no, it is, we, we can think about the kinds of things that people would say, what are some of the words they would say to describe this thing?

If you want them to think about, you know, outer space in this new particular way? Well, let’s talk about how, you know, what kinds of questions might they ask. And we try to get really specific with, like, let’s talk about success in the context of this initiative you’re working on now. Because I think that when you do that, and you do that regularly as part of your practice as a museum for each new thing that you do, there is a purpose behind each of it, and it adds up to some some sort of success on a bigger level.

Abby: So, Cathy, you don’t design, correct? Your company doesn’t do the designs. 

Cathy: We don’t. So it depends who you ask. No, we don’t do the designs, but we do work a lot with designers. That would be through what we call front-end or formative evaluation, where we’re doing contact testing for an exhibition. And concept testing, in that case, might be like, for example, we worked with the museum years ago that was designing a, an exhibition, an art exhibition on home and Brenda, you’ve heard this story many times. I think.

Brenda: I love this example so much.

Cathy: Yeah, it’s one of my favorites. I always come back to it. It was a beautiful concept, you know, the idea of home, something that that in some way, shape, or form, whether positively or negatively, everybody has a connection to this idea. And they had a couple of specific ways that they wanted to talk about the idea of home in the exhibition.

And it was an object-based exhibition with objects from their collection, but all sorts of art objects from all different years, all different types of art, you know, some sculptures, some photographs. And they had a few ways they wanted to talk about home, and they basically hired us to put some of these ideas in front of visitors to the museum and have a conversation with them before we even showed them anything about what home means to them. What comes to mind when we think of that idea, and then slowly introducing some of the ways through really rough, I wouldn’t even call it label text, just like a rough outline of, well, we might talk about this, and we might talk about this, or if I give you these key words like, what does this make you think of and show you these objects related to this phrase, what associations do you make?

And those aren’t literally the questions we’re asking visitors. Those are more the things that the museums wanted to know. And through some some really cleverly designed interviews, we’re able to extract so much information that helped to shape designs. So we were able to understand what kinds of associations people within the museum currently make with the idea of home, what objects that the museum has selected really do evoke an idea of home for people and which don’t and why? What kinds of questions people are asking about the idea of home, and what they wonder about other people’s experiences of home.

All this to say, we, we do a lot of sort of concept testing and front end evaluation early on to help shape designs, and then we do do prototyping in a more formative sense, you know, that could be hands-on prototyping or even really specific message testing when you’re at maybe 60, 60 percent design, something like that.

Abby: Yeah, because I was thinking as you were talking your process, you do an awful lot of research and obviously work closely with museums and cultural institutions. There’s a huge difference, though, from getting that list together. Everything looks fantastic for you. Everything looks great for the institution. But then the implementation, the design, you know, is a definitely a completely different stage, and I believe things can get lost. Things can get lost in translation, and if there’s not a lot of coordination and if you’re not there in some way, shape, or form, I can imagine that you know, a separate design team could interpolate the findings you have in a very different direction or completely ignore them.

Cathy: Yeah, and you’re totally right. I’ve seen it happen, but that needle has moved a lot in my experience with designers and museums. We used to have to fight for, for that presence with design teams, maybe a lot more. And I’m happy to say that at least in my, my small window of experience, that that has started to really shift.

Lots of people can’t quite pinpoint like what’s the point of human-centered research. And really, it’s to be the advocates for the people who are going to experience the thing that you are designing. Right? And, you know, we’re not here to be these sort of like data dictators and saying you have to do it this way because the data says. We’re sort of here to help guide and shape, just making sure that every decision is made with the audience in mind.

And sometimes, we have big gaps in our knowledge about what an audience’s reaction is going to be to something. Or, as I mentioned, you know, the motivations of this particular audience. We – an exhibition, for example, might be being designed because there is, on a global scale, a lack of knowledge, you know, about a really important topic. If you don’t bring people along for the ride, they don’t feel like it’s something that’s made for them. But you also are kind of designing a bit blind and working based off assumptions. So I really see the role of designers and evaluators slash UX researcher slash human-centered researchers slash strategists, you know, call them what you will, but I really see the, that tie between designers and data gatherers and synthesizers as really, really strong.

Brenda: On another note, tell us about a situation that you’ve been in because I’d be willing to bet that you’ve been in this situation where an institution is asking something from you, and you know that what they really need doesn’t match with what it is that they’re asking you to do.

Cathy: Well, I’ll say that this happens, but it doesn’t happen because any place is like completely, you know, has no idea what they need, and we’re the ones who can come in and tell you how to do everything. I find that happens in a very specific situation. It’s when we get contacted, you know, an email from somebody or a message of some sort about possibly doing a study or whether it’s an RFP that’s very, you know, it explains what the thing that they would like evaluated is, but then it’s very prescriptive on the methods that should be used to gather the data. You know, we want this many surveys with a sample size of this and, you know, this many interviews done exactly with these people.

It’s not to say that those methods are necessarily always a bad recommendation, but oftentimes we really like to get as many questions in early as we can because we find out more information later about, like, oh, you’re really actually wondering about this? Well, if that’s the case and this is what you would need to help you forward in your design work or to help you make decisions about, you know, about how to do this program differently for the next year, then we really should think about maybe not doing a survey, because a survey, while it gets you a lot of data really quickly, doesn’t really go deep with any one individual and doesn’t get at the nuance of people’s experiences. Maybe we need to do focus groups instead. Sometimes people have the best of intentions and they, they know what questions they’ve got, but they don’t quite know how to go about answering them.

Abby: Yeah, we also sort of see, an institution will come at the very beginning and think that they actually have one set of problems that they need to solve, but from our research, it turns out that it’s actually not the right set of problems and guiding them along this almost journey of self-discovery is really hard because I think as we are in our individual lives, you know what we want to be and what we are are often two very different things.

Bringing those two things together and being real, keeping it real and understanding sort of what problems you need to solve is often really difficult. Have you ever experienced clients that are potentially coming, thinking that if they can solve this set of problems, then it’ll fix everything, but actually, when you’ve done the research, you’ve realized it’s a totally different set of problems?

Cathy: In general, yeah, I think this kind of thing happens all the time that you know, sometimes this happens when an institution wants to go straight to doing evaluation. They want to go straight to some form of measuring, and we find that it’s almost too early to do that, that what really needed to be done and needs to be done is a defining of who this, who this exhibition or who this program or who this initiative is for, so defining of audience and then really articulating sort of the why, like the outcomes that you hope for and doing all of that before you go out and just measure for the sake of measuring. I find that that kind of thing comes up quite a lot.

But yeah, it’s definitely sort of we’re, we’re always learning as we go with clients and getting to know – because we’re not there every day. Like that’s a, that’s a consulting thing as well. But it sounds like you’ve experienced too where there’s often like sort of a second layer to peel back of what’s really going on. And it’s as you begin the work that you start to realize that there’s a lot more to it. And so that’s, that’s a part of being adaptable and we try to be very flexible in our strategy and evaluation work.

Abby: So, let’s think about success from your personal perspective. You can have a happy client, you can have a happy institution, but you know you’re not happy. And I know there’s been instances because that’s always those instances. So, when you think back to those moments, what is it that real success, you know, for Cathy looks like?

Cathy: So it’s funny. For being such an audience advocate through our work, I often don’t get to see the end result, especially when we are working primarily on those front-end concept testing and more formative prototyping or sort of testing designs as their further along. That’s still early and it’s before the thing is out there for the world to really experience at scale.

For me, like the satisfaction comes from hearing later, hopefully, you know, through just an email or conversation, that you’ve been returning to the data, that those tools that we left you with are continuing to be used. We were really fortunate several years ago to do a lot of prototyping and concept testing work as the Americans exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian, which is a Smithsonian Institution in DC, as that was being designed, and it was a new permanent exhibition, so meant to be up for quite a long time.

And it’s all about the pervasiveness of Indian imagery and in, in our lives. But it’s it’s a really powerful exhibition about our shared history with Native Americans and the testing that we did, and the time in the project at which we got to be audience advocates was quite early on. Then, you know, I – it was kind of not intentionally, but a bit of a closed door situation where then all of a sudden, you know, it was up later on, and I have to say that, you know, just going to visit that space on my own afterwards and overhearing some of the conversations that I got to hear from visitors unofficially, you know, I wasn’t, I wasn’t officially gathering data for any work at that point.

I remembered some of the messages and ideas that the museum had been going for and things that they hoped people would wonder about or, or the time that they hoped people would linger in the space. And I’m being a bad evaluator now, just speaking based on, based on, one anecdotal visit. But for me, I remember just thinking in that moment, oh, this is what they were going for, you know, and I’m so happy that the work that we helped do early on helped them get to a point of shaping the design that this was even possible to happen.

Abby: I was going to say, I don’t think you’re the only person who’s actually sort of haunted the halls after an exhibition has opened. I know I’ve done that, and it’s amazing because you just want to be that fly on the wall as people are enjoying and investigating and playing with your, your exhibition. So yeah, I think there’s a lot of people listening right now who’ve done the same thing.

So, what are some of the components of a contemporary museum experience? We chatted with Monica O. Montgomery about museums being community centers, a place for people to get together, share their stories. And I’m also thinking about social media and how important, quite frankly, that is to storytelling. So can you sort of talk about the components of a contemporary immersive experience from your perspective and what you’ve seen evolving over the last five years?

Cathy: Museums have to think about themselves as this sort of like, this like living organism that’s constantly changing, and you, you can’t just rest on your laurels of thinking of experience design and interaction with visitors as one handful of things that you know and do really well. It’s great to have a handful of things that you know and do really well, but there’s always going to be more that you could do.

And I think the thing that we do a lot as strategists and as human-centered researchers is really helping museums realize that every single touchpoint with a person matters and that there are so many possible touchpoints you could have that museums aren’t in the habit historically of always, always thinking about. If we are going to talk about an exhibition, well, let’s talk about it, and let’s really drill down into what you want to do with that thing.

But you also have to step back and realize it’s not the only thing that you’re doing, and it is not the only way that a person could come across something that your museum does. There’s all sorts of ways, through social media, through a blog post, through what your museum staff is writing on LinkedIn, through gosh, there’s so many different, there are many different avenues.

And I feel like hearing myself say that it sounds like I’m advocating for just do more, do more, do more, do more, do more. I think that’s not really it. It’s finding a balance between not being afraid to try new things but also trying new things with purpose and saying, okay, there’s always one or two things we already do and do really, really well. Let’s keep doing those while leaving a little bit of room to try some new stuff.

Brenda: I actually, as a strategist, I’m really curious, what have some of your favorite projects been that are really, really innovative?

Cathy: Putting me on the spot here to, to pick favorites in the museum world. But, I will name one organization that I’m now a very big fan of. They’re called Made by Us, and they are a coalition, a consortium of history museums and organizations. They have kind of a, a great team that’s coalescing all of these disparate organizations.

Their mission is really about engaging 18 to 30-year-olds with history and history museums, but not just for the benefit of museums, for them doing civic good in society. And I think, though, the way that they do their work is, is actually, it’s sort of museums operating in a totally different way, and it really has caught my attention.

It’s all digital, and it’s all remote, but they’re still trying to add some in-person events and it’s, it’s really building on the strengths that history organizations bring to the table and helping them be in conversation with 18 to 30-year-olds, which is a really pivotal time for doing public good, figuring out who you are. We were fortunate to do some evaluation work on their flagship program, which is called Civic Season. It runs every summer.

We’ve also had some great work recently with organizations doing innovative stuff in sort of the digital gaming space around teaching science concepts through gaming. And so that’s sort of an area that I’m really excited to see. And then, you know, for me, I’m really always going to be passionate about exhibitions. I’m by no means an expert on it, but I really look to all the great organizations that are experimenting with different immersive stuff out there, both in and out of museums, and so for me, that’s kind of an area to watch that I as an evaluator and an audience, audience advocate, I really love to be able to work more in.

Abby: Well, Cathy, thank you so much for enduring our rapid-fire questions today. I just love the way you describe a museum as a living organism that’s constantly changing. I think that’s absolutely fantastic and something we should all aspire to create. And that idea of balancing between sort of trying new things with purpose and keeping what’s working as part of that visitor experience, I think, is really an inspiration and keeps you on solid ground, so thank you so much for joining us, Cathy, and thanks for everyone out there listening. If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience wherever you listen to podcasts. Make sure to leave a rating and a review and share with a friend. We’ll see you next time.

[Music] 

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp. and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Show Notes

Kera Collective

Made By Us

Transcript

[Music]

Abby: Hello and welcome to Matters of Experience. My name is Abigail Honor.

Brenda: And I’m Brenda Cowan.

Abby: Welcome to this week’s podcast, The Object of it All, where we talk all about objects, those in our everyday lives, and especially those in museums and institutions.

Brenda: Let’s play that game where you tell me what you would grab if your house was on fire, God forbid, and you could only save one thing. What would it be and why?

Abby: Okay. Well, first, Brenda, little known fact and small segue, and not to be too macabre, but I actually was in a house fire.

Brenda: Oh, no!

Abby: Can you believe it? Yes. Well, obviously, I got out alive.

Brenda: Oh my God! This is the trauma podcast. I’m so sorry.

Abby: Well, we had a chip pan fire, and that’s where you sort of like – in England, it’s called a chip pan, sort of like this place where you put a lot of fat, and you chop up your potatoes, and you put them in, and you make you make chips a.k.a French fries here.

And my mum had run out of potatoes, but she already had the chip pan on because you need to sort of heat it up, and she comes in, and she says, “we’ve got no — can’t make you any chips, girls. I’ll go out and buy, go to the chippy, and get some French fries there.” So off she went, and we were in the back playing on our computer, and then my sister rushes in, and she goes, “there’s a fire!”

And you know, that moment, you know, we have jokes backwards and forwards with my sister, you know, always pulling each other’s leg. But, you know, there’s a moment where somebody is really telling the truth. So I stood up, rushed out, and there, sure enough, coming out of our former chip pan, all the way up to the ceiling, licking across the ceiling, is this fire.

So I’m like… “run!” Worried about the cat because I’m like, oh my gosh, we had a cat. “I hope the cat’s okay,” puddled over, and it was all like little tiny pebbles. And we had little socks on. It’s wet and rainy in England. So, “ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!” as you’re running on the stones, get to the neighbor, and then obviously they called the fire brigade.

My mum drives home, suddenly realizes, “Oh my goodness, I’ve left the chip pan on. Oh my goodness,” you know, “what’s happened to my girls?” Gets there. We’re all fine. It was no problem. Everything had been put out. But yeah, ironic, ironic story, just to let you know.

Brenda: Oh, my God. And the cat was okay.

Abby:  Everybody was okay. It just needed a repaint. But suffice to say, I didn’t pick anything up when I left. That was the last thing on my mind. So I always actually, fondly love this, this game, because I’m like, if I was going to hang around, what would I grab? So I would grab a small card that my mum was given when I was born.

It has on it, B and F, which stands for baby female, and my date of birth. It’s got my time of birth, the length of my body, my head circumference, which obviously seems incredibly important as you grow, and weight, all on it. And so it’s sort of like, I think why I keep it, and it reminds me of me so much is because it’s the first record of my existence, even before my birth certificate, I had this little card. So yeah, it means a lot to me. And it’s, it’s not very nice to look at. It’s just like a little piece of card with words on it. But yeah, it’s kind of very poignant.

Brenda: This is really, really interesting because you are the third person who I’ve asked about a meaningful object and who has mentioned one of these types of identification cards. When you really think about that card and how it makes you feel, what is that feeling that you have?

Abby: It’s definitely a feeling of comfort. That’s what I would say first. It’s like nobody can take that away from you. And it also makes me feel very attached to my mother, for some reason, because it was, it was given to her, and it has her last name on it. And also that she kept it because it could so easily have been thrown out. It’s not a certificate. And, you know, I was her first born, and she tells me how harrowing and awful it was trying to push me out for those hours and days, and then finally I came out.

Brenda: Listeners, you needed to know.

Abby: And so for me, this is maybe the, the nicest moment, and the fact she kept it and thought it was important and gave it to me makes it even more poignant and important.

Brenda: We’re talking about objects that are evocative and the evocative nature of things. So when I’m talking about an object being evocative, such as your identification card, objects that are evocative are repositories of memories. They bear witness to important life events. They are companions, they are silent life partners, and it sounds like that little card is a lot of those things for you.

They’re also numinous and numinous, evocative objects – now, this is where things get really interesting – numinous objects, and I have to give a shout out to Kiersten F. Latham, who’s really this expert in numinous objects, but a numinous object is transformative. It can be even spiritual. Sometimes people have objects in their lives that prompt really transcendent feelings, and it’s an amazing characteristic of some objects.

But when I’m talking about evocative objects, what I’m talking about is what you expressed in just this tiny, you know, quick little back and forth. What you expressed is the meaningfulness of this little piece of paper that is very evocative to you, and the fact that it’s kind of like a legacy that it was passed down to you is another aspect of what makes it evocative for you.

Abby: It sounds almost romantically magical and almost like it stepped out of a Harry Potter novel when you talk about numinous objects, right?

Brenda: Yeah, When we’re talking about numinous objects, we’re definitely talking about how some people would use the word magic. And it’s all associative. It’s all subjective. This is all personal. This is what a person sees in an object, and it truly can be described as magical, this sort of like heightened characteristic that we’re talking about in particular. 

But there’s also, you know, it doesn’t have to be such a heightened experience either. And I want to go back to some of your other object experiences, because I know that you have some other objects that are meaningful to you. Tell me about those.

Abby: So, in England we have cases for your pajamas, Brenda, and mine is a teddy bear. So you imagine it has a head of a teddy bear, body of a teddy bear, arms of a teddy bear, and where teddy bear has legs, has a huge voluminous skirt. So I was given it when I was born. It’s gone everywhere with me, even to university, even when I moved to America, not for my pajamas anymore, because obviously it became one of those little keepsakes. It’s my little teddy bear, and still have it. But, you know, it’s tucked away again in a box.

Brenda: I love this, so much, and I love the fact that you keep it in a box, and clearly, this isn’t something that you look at every day.

Abby: No.

Brenda: But it’s important to you, right?

Abby: Yes.

Brenda: That it’s in the box, that you know where it is. And it makes no sense.

Abby: No sense.

Brenda: This makes no sense at all, does it?

Abby: No, because I actually don’t – I get rid of a lot of things. I think I’m quite streamlined at home. We don’t like a lot of clutter, and I don’t think we’re overly sentimental either. 

Brenda: Yeah, and again, the thing that I love about talking about the objects that are meaningful to people is how little it makes sense, and yet when you think about it and when you think about what it is that objects actually do, all of the sudden they become absolutely and utterly essential. One of the things that I love is a quote, this is Sherry Turkle, who’s another object expert, and she talks about how objects that are evocative are things that we feel at one with. They resonate with us. They’re a part of our lives, and very much so, like these objects that are very difficult for you to get rid of.

Abby: Can I ask you a question, Brenda? So do you have any objects, have you got any that you feel particularly close to?

Brenda: So I’ve been doing this really, really, really in-depth object research for I think it’s going on six or seven years now. And I have, I have a lot of beautiful things that are, you know, special in one way or another. I have one object that is utterly, utterly important to me in this way. Do you want to know what it is?

Abby: I am desperate. I think our listeners are desperate.

Brenda: Yes, everybody is just, yes, with white knuckles waiting to hear – it’s a horse skull. 

Abby: Oh, wow. 

Brenda: Yeah, and it’s a fascinating – it’s got a story. I was a teenager, I, the horse had died. I came upon it in the mountains. It’s a very unusual story. I spent two months while her, this is so disgusting. Her carcass decomposed, and I saved her bones.

I was going through a major, major Georgia O’Keeffe period in my life, and I saved her bones, and I saved her skull and used it for, you know, making art. And once I started becoming a teacher, I started using her as a teaching tool and about how to look at objects. And so this whole sort of way of thinking for me began actually when I was in my early twenties and first training to become a teacher.

And the thing about the horse skull at this point is that it’s getting, she, I should say, is getting very, very fragile, and she’s broken a number of times. There was at one point, you know, many years ago, she fell, and her jaw broke, and I can’t even begin to tell you the devastation that I felt. And I had, you know, good friends at the Museum of Natural History, and I rushed her as if I was taking her to a hospital, to the dinosaur experts at the Museum of Natural History, and they repaired her for me. But it’s interesting. The relationship is so evocative, and it’s a caretaking thing for me, and especially as I get older and especially as this object gets older.   

Abby: Do you think that this object was the reason why you went towards the study of objects, the relationship you had with her, or do you feel like it was destiny you were going to end up here, and so she came along?

Brenda: I don’t know about that necessarily. All of the work that I do pertaining to objects really explicitly began when I was starting to teach grad school, and I was teaching about objects and evocative objects and the role that objects play in exhibitions and how powerful they are and how important it is that we think about objects when we are thinking about design and when we’re thinking about experience.

And I was endlessly dissatisfied because I could teach about objects being evocative. I could teach about how to use objects to craft experiences and to get people to have these meaningful connections with content and stuff like that. And yet I was so unsatisfied because I could never explain why. Why? And I found myself in an adolescent therapeutic wilderness facility and was able to do some field research and was witnessing how it is that therapists use objects, objects from the woods and from the mountains like sticks and stones, and twigs.

How therapists were using these kinds of objects as a part of healing therapies. And these were adolescents who were experiencing profound trauma, and they were healing by using these little inconsequential things. And I witnessed this and learned a lot about how the therapies work. I learned a lot about the dynamic activity with which these objects were used. And I started thinking, you know, it’s so weird. People do this same kind of stuff with objects in their everyday lives. 

Then I started to realize, wait a minute, people do some of these same kinds of things with objects in museums. And I began to really think about and construct the theory really, that I’ve been working with, which is that we make these meaningful connections with objects in our everyday lives and even in museum environments, because it is a way in which we maintain our well-being and they are ways in which people self-heal.

Abby: What’s really interesting is it’s something that I hadn’t considered before, but when I go and visit a museum, I feel nourished, I feel more whole, I feel more centered. And a lot of that I thought, was because my mind had been, something had happened. I’ve been educated and enlightened. But now you bring up the power of the object, and I’m reconsidering what’s nourishing me.

So, I talked about objects that are very special to me. You’ve spoken about your dead horse’s head, the bones of your, of the horse… 

Brenda: So lovely.

Abby: …that were very important and still are to you and your journey. How can an object resonate with more than just a single person or more than just the person who found it was given it, etc.?

Brenda: It’s, it’s all subjective. It’s all about where people are coming from, and, you know, there’s a really well-known story about a traveling exhibition that featured Abraham Lincoln’s stovepipe hat, and on display, people would see it, they would gather around it, and they would weep. Whatever those associations were, that hat was doing something for them. They were connecting with it.

I’m thinking of another example as well, Syrian oil lamps that are on display at a museum that I did a study at. So many people I interviewed at this one museum, and this was like volunteers as well as staff as well as visitors, all talked about how these little handmade clay oil lamps transported them back in time or made them feel like they were a part of other people’s homes.

And these oil lamps were like thousands of years old. And part of it as well that was really interesting was that people talked about the fact that they were clearly handmade, hand sculpted, and they could still see impressions of thumbs, and they resonated for a lot of people. And if you dive into this, there are certain cultural connections that people were making. A lot of it, though, was because they were domestic objects. These are very resonant with people.

Abby: Do you think some narratives or some topics are easier from an object perspective to elicit responses? I’m thinking about the National September 11th Memorial Museum. You know, I was here when all of that happened, so when I go into that museum, it seems like a lot easier, low-hanging fruit when you see those huge artifacts, those huge, you know, what once was a fire truck, you see those familiar objects all mangled, that you immediately know what that represents and it elicits a response. Whereas when you’re going somewhere, maybe it’s a clothing exhibition, something else, that it’s harder to get those emotional responses.

Brenda: Oh, on the contrary. There’s another example that I really love. This was a study that I did with the museum at FIT, which is a fashion museum, and you know, we’re looking at, you know, pieces of haute couture, and really just very rarified items of clothing. And the study I did there also featured so many people talking about how looking at these items of clothing brought them back to their childhoods. 

When you start interviewing people, and I’ve done work now across four countries, five different, you know, institutions, really looking very in-depth, 1 and 2 hour long interviews, per person, and you will hear the same things over and over, people having these connections and these resonant experiences. 

Abby: Do you feel like the more, the merrier? More objects, more artifacts, the better? Or is it in your experience that there’s sometimes too many things to look at, and then you become numb?

Brenda: That’s a great question. I think that, you know, less is more is, this whole conversation is a great design question, and it really depends on the, the particular museum, the nature of the display, and yeah, absolutely there’s too much can be too much, and the way the 911 Memorial Museum does it is there are many exits that you can take if you’ve been triggered or activated or if you just if you’re just done. And they have areas where you can just sit and sort of, you know, collect yourself or recharge or reflect or whatever it is that you need to do, take a pause. That kind of thing is absolutely essential. 

Another institution that I worked with that is so remarkable, this is the War Childhood Museum in Sarajevo. These are also personal objects that are childhood things, and they are things that adults who had been children during the war years. So we’re talking over 20 years ago. These are objects that people had saved and in many cases had been waiting to unburden themselves of so that they can move on from the trauma of the war years. The War Childhood Museum displays things with a lot of space around them and does so very intentionally because they’re very aware of the power of their objects and of how evocative they are and how they can really be very, you know, again, emotionally activating.

Abby: Are they using the objects in a therapeutic way? Are there objects there that are therapeutic?

Brenda: Sure. So in any participatory museum where people get to engage in one way or another with objects, if they can touch objects, if they can make objects, if they can donate objects or share personal objects. Right there, those are actually healing therapies. People being able to share a personal object as a part of a larger collection is this act of synergy, and people respond to this. 

Here’s how complex this dynamic can get. Two different museums. One, the Stories from Syria exhibition, the other, back to the War Childhood Museum. In each exhibition are childhood toys. So in the Stories from Syria exhibition, there’s a collection of Barbies, and visitors and staff would talk about the Barbies, and the whole Barbie display, which was bright and pink and colorful and so dynamic, and the story behind it is tragic. You know, this is, this is an adult woman who had saved these from her childhood, and they were essential, essential to her. And she went to great lengths to bring them with her when she was forced from her home. 

And yet when she talks about her Barbies, she lights up, and she is so filled with happiness. And when visitors see the Barbies, they get so excited, and they automatically go to, you know, which ones they had or which ones, you know, their sibling had or whatever the case might be. And there was a lot of joy. And the same thing at War Childhood Museum, which has a lot of objects on display that are toys or, you know, little Kinder egg, or a bicycle or a little, you know, magic wand, you know, childhood toy.

And people get so excited. People would, when I would interview them, they would say, oh, my God, this was the best object because I had the same one. I had the same one, or, oh, I loved Kinder Egg. Kinder Egg was so special, and, you know, I loved Kinder Egg, and they’re tragic.

Abby: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that’s very interesting. So it’s like. It’s like the assoc – so we always bring ourselves, right? 

Brenda: Yeah.

Abby: We spotlight, we’re there, and we’re like, we can associate with this so that it feels like we’re bridging the gap between the donor, what happened to them. 

Brenda: Yep. 

Abby: And sort of like our lives as a connection. And there’s also, potentially, going back to the, the love that a child feels for an object, right? Because that’s what it also represents, the instance of the lady with the Barbies is she loved these dolls, right? 

Brenda: Sure. 

Abby: And there’s so much love when there’s so much awfulness going on, but so much love from a single child, in this case towards its object. And I think that we can all relate to that love and care, that transcends the story, time, place and provides hope.

Brenda: Here’s – and hope is one of the big resounding themes to all of this work. Hope comes up again and again and again. And hope, of course, is another essential part of our mental health and our well-being. Hope and a belief in a future. You’re making me think of, back to Stories from Syria, a woman had loaned her house key, and it was a house key for a house that had been blown up. And when I was interviewing her about it, she talked about its irony, and she said that she will never, ever, ever get rid of this key. And she says, But there’s no house for this key. There will never be a house for this key. And then she stopped herself, and she said, there will be a house for this key. And she said, My house is the museum. The museum is my house because my key fits there and it belongs there.

Abby: It sounds almost Brenda, like every museum instead of having whatever their collection was, whoever it was given to, single person or curator needs to have this as part of their offering. There needs to be a moment when the community are invited in to share their thoughts or their feelings on a given exhibition and contribute.

Brenda: No, without question. And I should also say, you know, part of what I love about this work is that sometimes it’s so hidden. Sometimes people don’t even realize how meaningful objects are until you sit down and you just say, “Tell me about your object.” But people form these intense connections with museums, and I just keep thinking, what museum would not want that?

Abby: Completely.

Brenda: Talk about, talk about success. It’s part of why the work I think has been so well received. It basically enables an institution to see itself as a place of well-being.

Abby: What happens if you don’t have an exhibit that actually has artifacts? So, you know, could you tell us some of your experiences with object-less exhibitions?

Brenda: Object-less. I haven’t done research with object-less exhibitions. I think the closest that I can come – and this, this is really fun – is, I have begun to collect data on digital objects. When people are looking at objects in digital form, the exact same dynamics play out.

. 

Abby: Interesting.

Brenda: It’s fascinating. At the Derby Museum and Art Gallery, people were asked to contribute a photograph of an object of love, and interviewing dozens of object donors, people were moved to tears about being able to submit an object, and there is this feeling of giving and then being received which is, I mean, that’s an enormous helpful, well-being and healing dynamic. But the digital experience and the digital life, absolutely was the same experience as what people would describe and experience with objects in the flesh, if you will.

Abby: That’s very interesting. 

Brenda: Yeah.

Abby: So what do you do then? If you’re a designer? How do we design for objects that move us?

Brenda: Sure. I think that giving people breathing room to be able to connect with objects is one thing. Thinking about certain kinds of objects, like domestic items, like I was mentioning or items of clothing, you can see that there are certain types and categories of objects that are going to be more meaningful. So designing with those kinds of things and taking objects that are stimulating, if you will, this is the work of Stephen Bitgood – can I just like shout out to every awesome scholar in the world because I just endlessly want to talk about you and your work. So Stephen Bitgood talks to us about stimulating objects and how it’s an object that people know is going to be particularly evocative and really using the qualities of light, the qualities of display of accessibility, of inclusivity, so that people can really see the object and engage with it.

But then there’s another thing that, you know, someday I hope to be able to really do this, to design an exhibition with helpful and healing outcomes. And specifically, these seven different dynamic actions, for example, could be thematic areas or thematic experiences that you could design with and design for people to experience in one way or another. And that would be programmatic as well as elements of display and as well as really a whole strategic plan for an exhibition. And that, you know, someday.

Abby: Sounds wonderful.

Brenda: Doesn’t that sound wonderful?

Abby: It sounds like somebody needs to make it.

Brenda: Let’s do it. Somebody does need to make that. Give me a call, folks.

Abby: Oh, my goodness. Well, Brenda, this has been a fascinating conversation about objects. I had no idea where we were going to go. Do just want to ask you, what’s your book called? Because you have a book all about this. 

Brenda: Museum Objects, Health, and Healing.

Abby: So if anybody would like to check that book out, I heard it’s a good read.

Brenda: Oh, it’s fabulous.

Abby: So thank you, Brenda. Today, it was phenomenal. Thanks for sharing all your expertise.

Brenda: Totally. Thank you, Abby.

Abby: It was a lot of fun. 

Brenda: All right.

Abby: Bye.

[Music] 

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp. and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.
 

Show Notes

Museums Health and Healing Projects | Objectdynamics

Psychotherapeutic Object Dynamics

Museum Objects, Health and Healing Book

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience. My name is Abigail Honor.

Brenda: And I’m Brenda Cowan.

Abby: Today, we’re discussing an often bandied around, and I think misinterpreted word in our industry: story, Brenda. It’s used a lot and can be many things, so on the show today, we’re going to dissect what a story is and isn’t and how to tell a story in a museum. Our guest on this journey is Yan Vizinberg, my co-founder at Lorem Ipsum. He studied story at film school, which is where we met, and he’s produced and directed films as well as curated large-scale museum and experience design projects around the world.

Brenda: Yan, welcome so much to the show.

Yan: Thanks for having me.

Brenda: So tell us a little bit about your background, and within that, give us a sense of how you and story began.

Yan: Well, I went to film school in Boston, and at first, I wasn’t thinking of films as stories, actually. I thought of them as visual mediums. And so when people said, Oh, I’m a storyteller, I always thought, Well, why are you saying this? Because not all films are stories. And then, slowly, the more you watch films, the more you study films, the more you understand that all dramatic mediums sort of gravitate to storytelling.

And, you know, we made films, and we made commercials, we started a production company. And at some point, Ralph Applebaum and Associates approached us to create media for the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center. And we ended up being the media partner, creating everything that moves, everything that’s on the screen. And this way, we sort of watched them work, and we thought, Well, we can do this too, and maybe we can bring our filmmaking and storytelling backgrounds to experience design. And so this is how we ended up sort of doing that line of work, too.

Abby: We’ve been in business together; you’ve been in business for over 20 years now. Has the business changed from a storytelling perspective in the work that you’ve been doing?

Yan: I think technology has been merging for the past 20 years, right? So it’s all becoming one thing, but I don’t think storytelling has changed and I think we need to talk about what we actually mean when we say story and storytelling. I think we have to define the terms because everything is now called the story. Everything is storytelling. Every PowerPoint presentation, every museum exhibit is now a story.

Abby: So what makes a story, then? Let’s think about, you know, obviously, I completely agree. I think a lot of people are bandying around this word story and potentially are thinking about it in a different way, so from your perspective, what makes a story?

Yan: Well, a story’s very simple. For something to be a story, it has to have a willing protagonist who has a desire to achieve something, and that protagonist has obstacles that he has to or she has to overcome. And then, he learns something about himself or about the world at the end of that story. Now we can talk about how this could be applied to things other than books about people and films about people. Because when we’re talking about a person, it’s very simple. And when we’re talking about other things, it’s maybe not as simple.

Abby: So are you saying then that story isn’t, “Hey, I went to A, and then I did B, I got the groceries, I cooked a meal.”

Yan: So there’s a lot of types of information in the world, right? There’s a lot of structured information. There are essays, and there are recipes, and there are all kinds of narratives, and even a lot of museum exhibits that are not stories. You know, there’s just a lot of information, there’s a sequence of events, and none of this is storytelling. Storytelling implies a built-in mechanism that works a certain way, that makes us want to turn the page and find out what happens next.

Brenda: Yeah, and I have to interject as well. I don’t know if you can have like an expertise in storytelling. I imagine that you quite do. I certainly, from my walk of, you know, life, there’s a lot of folks who have done so much scholarly research in story and in storytelling and people who are, what I would call raconteurs, right, people who really genuinely are not just professional storytellers, but also quite gifted. What do you think about that? Do you think that there really is a learned and a trained and a gifted storyteller that differentiates them from, you know, story being used all over the place, like ubiquitously?

Yan: Well, I think some people are naturally gifted at that without being able to reflect on their skill, and some people can reflect on that but are not gifted at actually the storytelling itself. And some people can do both. Some people are good at storytelling, and they understand the mechanics of it. And I think we’ve been telling stories for many thousands of years, and certainly I think it’s one of the most effective mechanism to engage people, to make people follow and pay attention.

And I think movies are the best example because if you look at the way movies are structured, there is a certain contract between the author and the audience. We enter a dark room, we sit down, and so we’re saying for the next 2 hours, I give all of my attention to the screen and I will not make any decisions.

The author will make all of the decisions, what’s on the screen, who is saying what, what am I looking at? And that’s how you tell a story. Now we’re talking about museums, it’s a whole different beast because museums and spaces, in general, are interactive by their nature. You decide where to go, where to look, to skip a certain text panel, or to read it. And that sort of goes against all the principles of storytelling. And so our goal in museums is to find a way to control the attention of the visitor.

Brenda: I wanted to just for, for a second, pivot back to the idea of what some of the fundamental things are about humans and storytelling and one of the things that I think about so much and that I absolutely love, in part from raising my own child and, but in part from when I teach and teaching about story and in my own courses, I think about how children begin to speak and to socialize at that time in our life when we are quite little, three, four or five years old, stories are a part of how we make meaning of the world around us. And much of this takes the form of asking questions, following impulses of wonder, of curiosity, and about the most mundane things. And I find this endlessly optimistic and filled with hope, and I wish that more was done in exhibitions to inspire this natural tendency of asking questions and of wondering and how that is really fundamental. I’m wondering if you have come across any or if you yourself employ any strategies in sparking curiosity, sparking story by using question strategies.

Yan: Well, so, I think the imagine if, imagine a situation type of question leads directly to identification with characters, right? So you begin, imagine if you were this. Imagine yourself in this situation, right, and identification with the protagonist is sort of the main element of storytelling. Because if you imagine yourself watching a film, you’re identifying with the character to a point where you are not scared for him. You are scared as if he were you, right?

When DiCaprio is drowning, you don’t think, Oh, I’m sad for Kate Winslet because he is drowning. You are drowning with him, right? So you completely, you abandon your reality, and you become them for a second. That is what makes us want to continue flipping the page, right, and finding out what’s what’s happening next, because it’s happening to me.

And I think one of the main questions we need to ask is how do we make visitors identifying with our story, identifying with whatever, whoever, or whatever the protagonist is so that they can be as involved.

Abby: And why we sort of do that because as a film director, for example, or a writer, you’re doing that because you want to connect with your audience, you want to move them. So I think it’s also about that objective for a museum, actually wanting to touch and move emotionally the visitors that come rather than maybe just educate.

Brenda: How does that play out in the design that you do? How do you lead, lead an audience through emotional arc? What was that, what does that look like?

Yan: Well, sometimes, again, when there’s a strong human protagonist, it’s a little easier because it’s very similar. So, for example, in the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library, Boris Yeltsin was the main protagonist, and we could follow his plight and understand his decisions, and sort of craft the story out of his presidency. So that’s very similar to films and books. And sometimes, you know, people often say that in a good drama, there are three levels of conflict. So there’s a conflict between the main protagonist and a personified enemy. There’s the protagonist against the system, sort of against the empire or whatever.

Abby: Star Wars springs to mind.

Yan: Star Wars, for example. And then there’s also…

Brenda: Okay, I was going to sing, but I’m going to spare everybody.

Abby: You big tease, Brenda.

Brenda: It’s not that kind of a podcast.

Yan: And so the third level is, is your internal conflict, when you’re battling yourself, you are battling your fears, or you’re trying to change, right, and so in a good drama and in the Boris Yeltsin case, it was easy to identify. Now, when you’re talking about a science museum for a second, suddenly there is not one human, and there is no protagonist, and you’re like, okay, well then we can’t tell the story because it’s just basically a bunch of artifacts or little mini stories about different things. But I think what we’re trying to do is to say, no, well, let’s hold on, let’s think. Is there a story? For example, the story of science is the story of humanity’s fight for knowledge against the obstacles that nature is presenting us with.

And so maybe this is one way to go because now we have the protagonist and now we have the obstacles. Now we’re overcoming; we’re trying to learn. Maybe there’s some other path, but basically look for that path before just deciding, Oh, well, let’s just structure chronologically or let’s, you know, divide it, this is mathematical, and this is physics, and this is chemistry.

Abby: Or, thematically, yeah.

Brenda: I’m wondering if we can pivot for a second and talk about a favorite subject of mine, which is objects. So props are essential elements, as I understand it, in film. Yan, how do objects play out in terms of storytelling devices and exhibitions, and is there a similarity?

Yan: I personally love immersive exhibits, and when I say immersive, I really mean immersive in the sense that there are a lot of film-style decorations, and if they’re done well, they do immerse me in a certain atmosphere and help me feel things, help me place myself in a certain place or a certain time, and so I think props can be used very efficient, very effectively.

I think we need to think of this as a new art form, new art discipline, because you can tell a story by listening to a radio play, you can read this in the book, you can watch a theater show, you can watch a movie, or you can go do that, you know – that experience. And I think it’s using all the same elements. But in addition, there is like one more important thing, which is space and your body.

Abby: I like the idea that it’s, it’s a new art form because I do, I think about immersive theater as well, and I think about a lot of these experiences that are popping up now, like, like the Van Gogh, like the National Geographic’s King Tut, and, you know, I think about the fact that I think they’re getting a lot of visitors, a lot of families, because they’re enjoying that style of immersion.

And I think it’s imperative when we look at museums and institutions that they start to make this pivot, so they don’t lose market share. So they don’t just become a historical place that only maybe a few people go, researchers, analysts, historians. They need to be a place of entertainment as well as education. And so Yan, what do you think the problem is with storytelling in museums right now? How are museums dealing with this, with storytelling? Are they or are they not?

Yan: Well, first of all, it’s a, it’s a fight for people who have been working in museums for years and years because they thought of themselves as historians that preserve culture and history and objects. And now we’re coming in with our decorations, and it was like, this is just hokey stuff. Like, this is not a museum. And I think now they’re learning to understand that they’re competing not with other museums, they’re competing with cinema, they’re competing with zoos, and they have to participate.

You have to engage me. I don’t care unless I’m specifically interested in the topic. I don’t care. Now, how do they do that? I think that one of the problems that we just discussed is in the museum everything is distracting me from the story. The coffee shop is right here, so the smells are coming from over there. My kids are running around, people are talking.

So there are a lot of things that are happening. And I can look left. I can look right. I can make my own decisions so suddenly, like I’m interacting with the space rather than following the author. So one sort of tendency that we see as museums build, build paths so that I cannot deviate from the path I have to see this, then I have to see that. And so I go from station to station so that a story could be told, because if I skip stations, the story’s broken.

Brenda: So, can story be told in a non-linear fashion?

Yan: I think a story can be told in a non-linear fashion, but the author has to define the non-linearity of it. And also we have to say that, look, not everything has to be a story. Sometimes there can be beautiful things that work, and they’re not stories. So we have to admit that we’re just trying to say stories are one of the most efficient way to engage people, but we can’t force that structure onto everything.

Abby: I think when we look at museums and institutions right now, one of the problems is, or issues that they need to overcome, is it feels to me like they’ve taken a book and they’ve put it on the wall. So they’ve taken text out of a book, up it goes, they’ve taken images, there’s images, now it’s just a 16 by 9 screen.

It doesn’t feel like it’s using the space. And I think there needs to be a shift, a change, looking through a different lens when we’re now moving forward, creating these stories, these museums, these narratives where you don’t start with the information. When we look at an interpretive plan, we look at the story points first and what we’re going to tell, and then what’s the best way to tell them.

Every space we design from scratch with no limits. Is there going to be any text in here at all, does there need to be any text. Is it going to be an audio piece to tell this part of the story?

Yan: Right. Because if you think about it, a story is an attempt to build some harmony out of this chaos. It’s organizing things for us and out of this organization, out of this harmony, meaning is sort of etched out of that, and meaning that we’re sort of lacking in life because the life is just so chaotic and so random and so unfair or and so just, there is no meaning that we can kind of grab on to without telling ourselves these stories.

Brenda: And ultimately, isn’t the intention of an exhibition, and I’ll be very specific here to exhibitions. Isn’t ultimately the intention, if not the responsibility, to convey content and to see to it that content is conveyed in as meaningful and as in dialogic a way as humanly possible. And I don’t know how you do that without having some kind of a narrative experience.

I still think that at the root of this because human beings are storytelling animals, shout out by the way, if y’all don’t know Jonathan Gottschall, he is somebody to know about who talks about the storytelling animal. But I think that there’s a responsibility for museums anyway and for exhibitions to be story-based environments.

Yan: Right, and I think we see all artforms gravitate to storytelling, to a dramatic storytelling. Most films, most novels, most writing, because that’s how we consume, that’s how we can sort of learn about our world is through dramatic stories. And I think museums will gravitate to it too. And we will see in, you know, 20 years that museums tell stories, spaces, I guess, not museums, spaces tell stories first, and then there’ll be experimental spaces where a story is not at the center of it.

Abby: And I think there’s always, I mean, Yan and I have this back and forth because I have a painting background, and he’s very much the writing background. So I’m always like, yeah, not everything has to have a story Yan, and I can be incredibly moved, as a lot of people know, by the Seagram murals and Mark Rothko’s work. And so I sort of feel like there’s, as Yan’s sort of intimating, room for everything.

I’m excited to do what we do because we get to use all, it’s multidisciplinary. We get to use all these tools creatively to be able to move someone, reach someone, and the idea of telling stories is about almost making you feel like you’re not alone in the world, right? That’s how I feel when I’ve watched the best story. It’s moved me, it’s touched me, and something’s sort of given my heart a warm hug. But Yan, how do you decide whose story to tell?

Yan: Well, so first of all, to continue what you were talking about, about the different tools, I think we’re all still learning to use these tools because some of the, you know, again, talking about film, there’s a very specific way to make films. Everybody who makes films knows how films are made. There are no conversations about what the structure of the team will be, how we’ll do this, how we’ll do that.

You just go and do that because there are 100 years of filmmaking sort of taught the humans how to make films. With what we’re trying to do here, everything is new, so we’re trying to learn the tools, we’re trying to understand how to approach it, and finding a point of view is one of those things that we have to learn how to do because we’re not always telling stories of humans, right?

So you have to sit down, and the very first question is, okay, whose story is it? Who is the protagonist here? And I think it’s very often, most often, it’s not obvious. You have to search for it. You have to attack it from different perspectives and finally say, oh, maybe it’s a story of this. It could be a collective brain, it could be society.

Sometimes you have to invent, maybe, a protagonist. So I think it’s always a fight. But I think this is the most important fight. You have to sit down and you have to figure out who the character is, what the story is, and not move to structuring content before you actually decided what the story is.

Abby: I love Yan’s use of the word fight. Could you imagine us fighting, no, it’s more like a creative discussion. Passionate discussion.

Brenda: Well, but, I mean, I think, and depending on how you, you know, how you’re getting at, but one of the things that I think I’m interpreting or hearing when you use the word fight a lot is that this is, it’s a mission. It is done with intention, and it’s hard to do. You’re dealing with a lot of players who are not even familiar with the idea of narrative experience or the nature of human experience in spaces.

I keep thinking too, and you know, if it’s not necessarily about a fight, or, you know, even a conflict with the other people who are involved in the creative process, I keep thinking that there’s almost sort of like a creative fight that can happen internally about needing to find the thread. You know, this, again, this intention and this desire, this quest and this determination, really, to find the story, to tell the story, to do it well, to connect with other humans, and to open things up for other humans to experience. That is, I think, an innate fight.

Abby: Once you understand what that story is, once you’ve worked it out, it’s like the hanger that you can put all the clothes on. And once you have that lens, it makes curation a lot easier because once you’re clear on what it is, what it says, you then become clear on what it isn’t. And so suddenly, you can really move forward.

And that’s another way that everybody can get on board. Because the other thing is when a few of you understand conceptually what the story is going to be, you still have to make sure that everybody’s on board and all the stakeholders and that it makes sense. And sometimes, when you’re creating things, there isn’t something that’s gone before.

We’re often asked, Oh, could we see other examples of people who’ve done this before? And we’re like, Oh my gosh, we’re going to have to draw it all from scratch. We’re going to have to model it from scratch, because it hasn’t been done before. And so a lot of the work that we do is for the first time, it is in some ways hopeful and optimistic, but still trial and error.

And we have to be able to pivot at failure because if you’re going to aspire to do something well, different, creative, new, there’s going to be failure. And we call it failing forward because you learn, and then you pivot. And obviously we have over 20 years of experience of doing this, but it’s hard. It’s not just; here’s the blueprint at the beginning, and let’s just go to build.

Brenda: From your perspective, is there a specific job with a specific job description where it falls to a person to see to it that the story has been crafted? Do tell us, Yan. Is it you?

Yan: I think, like, within our company, we think of the pyramid as very similar to the film pyramid. So there’s a director at the helm of the film, same as we in this, the storytelling, space storytelling, we call that person the creative director, but is basically a director, but that person is assisted by all the people around, right?

So there’s the cinematographer on the visual side, then there’s the scriptwriter on the content side, and the same happens in in museum exhibit design, except for there may be even more because you have the technologists and you have the architects, and you have the 3D designers, and you have the, the scriptwriters who are writing scripts and copy. But basically, it’s still, there’s, there’s a vision that needs to be realized, and there’s a person at the top of it.

Abby: It’s very interesting because you have to have everybody involved from the beginning. With that spark of the idea and the concept and the story, it’s often made richer by workshopping with this team because they bring ideas and thoughts and perspectives, which is why it’s really important to have a diverse team and one of the things that we’ve always focused on, because it’s not like the creative director goes, “This is it. This is what I’ve decided we’re going to do.” 

It’s a group thing. So there’s the stakeholders of the museum, the institution, the curators, the stakeholders within the community, and making sure that we’re listening. As Yan said, this is all a new discipline. You need everybody involved, and you need to have major listening skills.

Brenda: Well, a billion years ago, when I was entering into practice and coming out of the children’s museum world, there, there was the role of developer and who in many ways was the keeper of the flame. And I know that’s still a very distinct role and profession that people go into exhibition development, but I keep thinking about how essential it is to have that person, whatever the title is, that you might be using it in your given firm or your given institution, how essential it is to have that person who’s the keeper of the flame, that person who’s ultimate responsibility it is not just to keep the story, to frame it out and to see to the mechanics, but to love the story, to fall in love with the story, to believe in the story, to keep the dream alive of the story, despite all of the challenges and the frustrations and the obstacles, and despite this struggle of the technical aspects at time, there is something that can be trained, and that is a gift. And it is something that hopefully we instruct well in our program with our grad students, the ability to stay in love from beginning to end and, you know, I think, listeners, as many of you know, a museum project can be four years, five years, six years. That’s a lot of love. And being married to a story and sticking with it and being able to go through all of the pitfalls and the highs and the lows. What a, what a gift it is to be able to do that. And also, I think what a privilege.

Abby: It’s interesting to bring up the longevity of these projects. And you’re right, the curiosity, the passion, because we often joke that we feel like we tell a story three times. There’s three, three moments. The moment at the concept stage, then the moment when you actually realize it and design it, and you’re like, oop, need to change this, need to address this story point in a new manner, or we need to augment here, or this isn’t coming through. And then the fabrication, the build, you know, you try to build as closely as you can to design, but inevitably, again, during prototyping, etc., things get tweaked and changed. So it’s almost like sort of three versions of the same story. And so that can often be frustrating.

Yan: It’s a fight.

Abby: It’s another fight. So it’s like being adaptable also as a creative lead and able to take sort of these, these challenges on and be able to come up with solutions that still adhere to the overall concept and the overall story you’re trying to tell.

Yan: It’s also a fight, going back to the fight, it’s a fight on cliches as well because it’s very easy to fall into things that have been tried before, and they tend to crawl into our brain and sort of create the little worlds inside our brains so that whenever we think of something, they just come out, right and there’s, we need a very strong filter to make sure they’re not falling into sort of repeating the same things because cliches are cliches for a reason. They were very, very effective at some point, and so there were repeated and repeated and repeated to the point where they’ve sort of lost the impact. So I think it’s another aspect of sort of developing stories and trying to make sure that we’re looking for fresh ways to do this.

Brenda: Well, and maybe fresh ways to tell great archetypal stories. The great universal stories. And I really appreciate how even in our brief dialog today, you’ve really given us some cues into how it is that the small worlds inside of our head can actually be opened up to being the large world that we all share and how that plays out in exhibitions. Yan, what a pleasure it is talking with you.

Yan: Thank you for having me.

Abby: Yeah, thanks, Yan.

Yan: It was fun.

[Music]

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Show Notes

Immersive Van Gogh NYC

Beyond King Tut

Jonathan Gottschall

Transcript

[Music]

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience. My name is Abigail Honor.

Brenda: And I’m Brenda Cowan.

Abby: Today, we’re going to talk about empathy in design, how we create experiences that help the visitor feel the feelings of the people in the story because that is a very powerful way to promote understanding of each other and help us realize that we have more in common than differentiates us. We all need to be reminded we’re all humans with similar wants, needs, and challenges.

So I’m very excited to welcome today’s guest, Elif Gokcigdem, an author, professor, and founding president of ONE: Organization of Networks for Empathy. Elif curated and co-chaired the world’s first Summit on Fostering Universal Ethics and Compassion through Museums with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and she leads major strategic international partnerships in arts, culture, museums, and biodiversity conservation around the world. Welcome to the show, Elif.

Brenda: Hello, Elif, I’d love it for you to be able to share with our listeners how did you come to become a professor and leader of this international organization focused on building empathy?

Elif: First of all, thank you so much for having me for this conversation. My path to empathy has, I guess, began with my interest in history of art. I studied history of art with a focus on Islamic arts. I grew up in Turkey, and I finished my Ph.D. on this topic, mostly focusing on Islamic arts and mysticism, Islamic mysticism, and also the geometric patterns, you know, the symbols of light in Islamic mysticism, which connected me to empathy.

So I guess the destiny brought me back to this, you know, arts culture in museums. I’m just trying to do the best that I can in a way, that, how I can contribute to this cause of empathy-building in our world.

Abby: So empathy, I really want to define what empathy is, because empathy and understanding like, can you explain to me the difference? And better yet, is there one way to define empathy?

Elif: The short answer is there are many ways to define empathy. There’s, you know, there are several scientific definitions of empathy. There’s a Webster Dictionary definition of empathy. And there’s you know, there are many understandings of empathy depending on the discipline and the work you are involved in.

Abby: But just jumping in here, empathy is actually, you know, when I just pulled it up, now it says the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

Elif: Yes. And also, I mean, feel, this is a very human-centric definition that leaves, you know, our ability to empathize with nature and animals and other beings. You know, that, I mean, there are so many cultures, especially indigenous cultures that talk about empathizing with a mountain or a river. So that definition, I think, leaves all these possibilities out.

And before actually, you know, we talk about the definition of empathy. I think we also need to talk about why empathy, you know, why is it important? Why are we even having this discussion? And that actually brings me back to your question of human-centric versus more expanded understanding of empathy. When you turn on the news, you’ll see these, you know, sort of cries from all different kinds of organizations and institutions.

For example, the United Nations. Just to give you an example, the United Nations keeps telling us, you know, to achieve a sustainable future for all, we need to act urgently to protect biodiversity, the web of life that connects and supports us all. So if we go back and look at the statement and similar statements like this, there’s this urgency to care for all and to act and to protect, and there’s this like this oneness and the whole that we need to care for, we need to learn to care for. And I believe that’s where empathy is important; empathy comes in. And that’s why we need to work on the definition of empathy and not get stuck on one definition or one understanding. The platform that I’m creating is actually because of this, so that we can include, you know, cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary, cross-sectoral understanding of empathy so that we can better define empathy for our collective future so that we can better develop the tools that we need to foster empathy in our world.

In my view, empathy is critical for us to go from a fragmented worldview to a worldview where everything is interdependent and interconnected. And I call this the oneness mindset. And all the work that I have done so far brought me to this sort of working definition of empathy. Empathy is a form of perception that enables us to connect with ourselves and with others while awakening us into our oneness. So, in this case, empathy leads us to develop a recognition of the intrinsic value of each unique element that makes up the whole and encourages us to calibrate and harmonize our attitudes, actions, and behavior accordingly.

Brenda: So you see a lack of empathy as being a public health issue on a global scale. And you talk about how museums are natural platforms for health and empathy practice. Elif, I’d love for you to talk more about what you see as being particularly instrumental about museum environments and experiences when talking about empathy and the practice of empathy.

Elif: Well, you know, empathy is often discussed as something that can help us help others. You know, it’s, it is often confused with sympathy, just like feeling bad for somebody’s, you know, misfortune. I believe empathy is a portal for human flourishing, not just, you know, physical well-being, but spiritual well-being as well, because empathy through self-knowledge enables us to connect with our own internal world and allows us to recognize those, you know, biases and filters through which we perceive the other.

This, this is where museums come into play because empathy is not a linear process. It is not an intellectual process. It is a lived experience, and museums are the perfect platforms where anyone can experience empathy building to get a knowledge of their own selves within a collective experience. Many of those around also are going through similar experiences. Even if you’re in the same room looking at the same thing, there’s a multitude of expressions, reactions around the reality, what we call reality, and that’s the reality of the world we live in, of our existence. So an understanding of this expands our library of narratives into, oh, you know, actually there are many other ways of being, there are many other ways of perceiving, and mine is not the only way.

Brenda: I really, I love the idea of museums as being a place of equal footing for people in empathy building, and I know you were recently speaking with one of my students, actually, and I know that you had spoken to her about what sparks empathy in museums and that you used an analogy of nature walks as a means through which visitors can experience and develop empathy in their own way.

Can you tell us a little bit more about this? Like, do you, are we literally talking about walks in nature or is this also an analogy for other kinds of ways in which people can practice empathy in their everyday lives?

Elif: Exactly, so the framework that I’m working on equips individuals to come prepared and be intentional about empathy building and have some maybe questions and ways of looking and articulating and noticing how we look at things. And museums are particularly useful for this. My first book, called Fostering Empathy Through Museums, collected case studies from different kinds of museums, not just arts museums, but from animal sanctuaries, science centers, civil rights centers.

And at the end of the day, the sort of the executive summary of that book is that museums can be platforms for empathy building in five evidence based, science based ways which are: you know museums, first of all, hold a mirror to society. They can be a safe place for encountering the other. The other way that museums can be useful in empathy building is through storytelling and creating new narratives, new ways of being, new futures, getting us to imagine other ways of being and other ways of existing in the future, and also museums are places for experiential learning.

This is essential, but not just being in a museum and doing a hands on experience on some science experiments. You have to be intentional and you have to sort of articulate the steps and what is going on and the outcome. To make your point that, you know, what you, what you just went through is related to empathy and empathy building.

Brenda: When you said that museums are like mirrors to society, I find that really, really provocative and in a variety of ways, and I’m really curious, what is it like when that mirror shows us things that we aren’t very comfortable with?

Elif: Yes, and that’s exactly the point, you know, creating discomfort. I don’t say it in a way that we are just beautiful and we’re looking at ourselves and admiring ourselves in the mirror of museums. That’s not what I meant at all.

Brenda: Right.

Elif: This is basically, museums are mirrors with their colonialistic past and their racism and all kinds of baggage that they bring to the, you know, today, you know, like the institutions that they are.

We can take a look and learn from that and imagine new ways of being, new ways of creating museums, or museums behaving differently in our new reality. How can they be helpful for a, for a collective vision of being inclusive and equitable and accessible, and respectful? I mean, there’s, there’s a story of, like a fable, right. This ancient story where the lion and the rabbit, you know, this lion terrorizes this forest and all the animals, and one day this, you know, smart rabbit decides to take the lion to this well, deep well, where there’s just a little water left in the bottom, which creates this mirroring effect.

And the lion thinking that, you know, there’s this other king that is claiming his territory, he just keeps roaring into the well, and all he hears is his own roar coming back at him. And eventually, he jumps into the well to kill that other lion. But in, of course, there’s no other. It was just him all along. And I think our world right now, the news and our institutions and what we are going through is that moment of lion, us, roaring, you know, and thinking that, oh, you know, like we are all-powerful, we are at the center and everything has to be around us.

But this is the moment. This is a critical moment to face the mirror in that way so that we don’t choose to die, but we choose to imagine a new future and better ways of being in this world.

Brenda: Well, I like the idea that there’s an awful lot of clever rabbits out there, sort of pointing out the, the way and leading us to the well.

Abby: Let’s talk practically. It’s very hard to have empathy for others if you’re sort of not used to looking at things from other people’s perspectives or you have really strong beliefs when you’re walking into a museum or a situation. When we think about politics right now, our world is incredibly divisive, and it’s easy to put that stake in the ground and not to actually listen, hear, or debate the gray areas, right?

For some of our work, a visitor’s already coming in with what I call this loaded gun when it comes to their perspective and how they believe they perceive the truth, what’s true, what’s untrue. And they filter a lot of that based on their biases as we all do, so our challenge isn’t always to provoke because sometimes provoking somebody shuts them right down immediately.

So we tell a story in a sort of a slow and subtle way to gradually win people over or start to have people think at least a little bit differently. You know, we think about how is our protagonist relatable? Why do I care about this person? Why are they interesting? What’s their inner and outer conflict rather than actually focus a story on, on the visitor’s beliefs and try and challenge them that way.

What’s your experience Elif, when it comes to people really being open to empathy in museums or being ready to receive the information from a design perspective in a museum experience?

Elif: Yes, that reminded me of the study that was done by Smithsonian Visitor Services, I guess, that looked at visitor experience with the goal of defining what is a transformative experience, and they came up with this IPOP. So we each come to the museum experience with our own identities, right? And they identified ideas people, people people, objects people and physical or tactile sort of oriented visitors.

But what, how they define transformative experience is being able to shift people from you know, I just go to this, let’s say the Asian Art Museum to admire objects just for their beauty. But what about I could also add to that a tactile experience and changing or extending my perspective or perception of that art form. But in designing for empathy, what I am suggesting is utilizing museums as spaces.

And if you can create those safe spaces where people just can come in and be open to an experience in an intentional way, we can create moments of empathy building. It is really not through design, but I’m mostly focusing on, you know, bringing people in front of an object or into a space and having them experience how they can shift their own perspective while around other people going through similar situations or challenges or experiences.

So it ends up with self-knowledge that, the knowledge that, oh, you know, I was able to expand my perspective. Empathy does not mean that you need to agree completely, agree with another. Doesn’t mean that you have to let go of your boundaries or your identities. Empathy is a way, the way I see it, is an expansion of our, you know, abilities of perception, perspective, and narratives and worldviews, where the more we expand that pool that we have, the more we are open to other ways of being.

Abby: Are there any practical things or examples of museums that you think are doing this well so that I can sort of wrestle with how to bring it into my practice?

Elif: So the first part is that you know, an empathy-building experience is where the visitor is the subject and the object of the experience. This can happen when you face the visitor with a real-life, real-time dilemma, where the visitor is expected to make an immediate real-time choice and act in a certain way. Through that action, when that action is experienced, that is a lived experience on the individual’s part. At this point, once that experience happens, this immediate choice is acted upon. You can actually invite individuals to have what I call the triple focus, an intentional observation of the self – as I said, the empathy is an internal job, an inside job – and let us focus at what just took place and take a moment to articulate and notice if there are any biases that are arising and where they might be coming from at the point of their emerging.

And then at the same time, because this isn’t a museum, it’s a collective experience, although you are experiencing the previous part in a very subtle way, in your privacy of your own body or your emotions or your mind, you’re also at the same time observing the others around you, and you are noticing, consciously or unconsciously, that, you know, simultaneously there are many ways of being and many ways of reacting to the same thing that’s happening to all of us.

The third part is also essential that this kind of experience observing the self and the other can invite us to also experience the whole, which is the realization that this whole that we are living this moment, this conflict of a shared moment is comprised with different viewpoints, life experiences, and qualities. And that’s what’s making it one.

Abby: So I was just in Las Vegas at a conference and I happened to go to the Mob Museum, I thoroughly recommend it to anybody. Incredible Museum. Gallagher designed it, Jonathan heads it up. Amazing place. Within the Mob Museum, they have an incredible experience where you go, and you learn all about de-escalating a situation, and you know, the police and how they handle things is a very divisive conversation right now in America.

And so when you go into this experience, you are taught how to de-escalate a situation. And you go into a situation, and you don’t know if it’s an innocent person with a problem or if it’s a perpetrator and a lot of the time, people are scared. They’re nervous. They don’t know who this person is. And I know that after that experience and seeing the way you react in that situation, you sit for 2 hours after you’ve done it, analyzing why you did what you did, and so it’s exactly what you’re describing. It’s having empathy and understanding for people in a situation that you’ve never been in before, and so it’s an unbelievably immersive, phenomenal experience. I recommend anybody to go and try it out. That’s at the Mob Museum.

Brenda: I wish we had another hour…

Abby: Me too, yeah.

Brenda: …to talk with you. Elif, you’re just making me think, though, when you were giving us your sort of your three, outlining these, these three crucial interrelated steps. First of all, just good design, period, being very inclusive. That good design, period, should always, and just by nature, intentionally include all people of all abilities.

And it seems that maybe empathy and designing for empathy is quite the similar thing. It’s not like, it’s something that you do with intention, if I hear you correctly, but it’s something that always is going to involve the physical, the emotional, the intellectual person and the social person. Is that a manner of thinking that would enable us to begin to really build towards empathy practice?

Elif: I think, you know, museums really should pay attention to create heart connections, heart to heart and opening people’s hearts. This is not an intellectual activity. This is not about knowing about numbers or facts. This is, as you said, emotional, but it is deeper than emotional. This is about our humanness and our ability to choose to see the world in a certain way and choose to be in a certain way in this greater whole that we are all a part and creating in a safe environment for everyone begins with all, you know, self-work. You know, each designer should start with the self. We cannot give something that we don’t have. And this begins at the individual level, in our own personal lives, in our own relationships, in our, you know, what we call private lives, you know, other social lives, and, and then at work, you know, this can only be a reflection of what we have. And so this requires lifelong learning and experiencing and intention.

Brenda: What a wonderful place to wrap up on. That was really heartening, and I think will be really helpful for our listeners as they go on about the practical work that they do.

Abby: Thank you so much for sharing this completely new perspective with us today. It’s been phenomenal. Thank you, Elif.

Elif: It’s been my pleasure. Thank you.

[Music]

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Show Notes

Designing for Empathy Summit

Fostering Empathy Through Museums – Elif Gokcigdem

What is IPOP?

The Mob Museum

Transcript

[Music]

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience. My name is Abigail Honor.

Brenda: And I’m Brenda Cowan.

Abby: Today we’re discussing the spectacular with the former circus ringmaster and tsar of Special Events for the City of New York, Chris Wangro. Chris has spent the past four decades as a creative strategist for the design of better public spaces. He’s brought to life celebrated festivals and cultural programs as well as presidential summits and papal visits seen around the world. Known as a master of community building and spectacle, he’s worked with legends as diverse as the Dalai Lama and Dolly Parton. Welcome to the show, Chris.

Brenda: Chris, we are so excited to have you here. I want to get the ball rolling by asking you about your work as a social activist. You’ve produced events for environmental and humanitarian, and social justice organizations all around the world. You’ve generated over $100 million for those in need. How do you approach an event like these?

Chris: Oh, a part of my upbringing, part of the time I grew up in, was, you know, infused with social consciousness. And some point in my life, I sort of realized that for me there were two things really worth doing and one was contributing to the greater good. And the other was to create something really beautiful. And I think those are the two things that artists can do.

Artists can do other things, but those are the two things that I focus on artists doing and trying to do with whatever my art is at the moment. And in terms of the art of creating events, for lack of better terms, there’s an inherent beauty of bringing people together and bringing people together, whether it’s a birthday party or a concert for a few hundred thousand people, has a certain kind of power and lasting afterglow of being part of that community that has come together for the event. You know, that’s really the starting place for me. And I think that then if you can at the same time be bringing people together for a purpose, if you can do both of those things well. The beauty part, the community part, or the social action part, then I guess that’s sort of what I’ve been after. 

What I realize now, having done it for a lifetime, the thing that’s unique about my path, if you will, my my story is I’ve done a lot of different things. It’s very diverse. There are common threads. But, you know, at one point, I might be putting together an environmental summit in Abu Dhabi. At another point, I might be doing, you know, a massive bit of street theater down Broadway in New York City. Each thing is very different.

Brenda: What’s important to you personally? What is it that really keeps you going and keeps you feeling the love of this work?

Chris: A part of it, I believe, for me, what keeps me going are new challenges. Part of it is a belief that that project can reach a lot of people or reach a small amount of people in a big way, but they can really begin to effect some kind of change. And that can be many different things. 

You know, I’m working currently on a project with a bunch of folks from overseas called The Walk, which involves a Syrian refugee girl, and she has been separated from her parents and her mother on her way from Syria to Turkey. And then she lost her way and ended up walking from Turkey to London. And that walk was an actual walk made by this actual Syrian refugee girl. But the Syrian refugee girl was a 12-foot puppet. So it was a massive piece of spectacle theater that took place over the course of 5000 miles. We’re doing that again in the States and sort of reframing it in a different manner, but pretty much the same project. That project will reach and has reached literally over 100 million eyeballs.

The puppet, whose name is Little Amal, has a TikTok following of over 35 million. So this project is reaching tremendous amount of people, both online and in a really heartfelt way on the street. But I’m also working on projects that are small public art interventions in places like Sarasota and Raleigh that will reach far fewer people and have probably almost no online presence, but they transform people’s experience of a place, and so transform their life.

The other thing I should say is that a big part of what will motivate me to be on a project is who I’m working with. It’s really all about who I get to work and play with. I just want to work with interesting, creative, thoughtful people. And when I find them, you know, it’s hard for me to say no.

Abby: So in England, we have a unique event every year at Christmas, it’s called a pantomime, and it’s essentially a play where men dress up as the female character, and the male leads played by a woman, already very progressive when you think it’s hundreds of years old. What’s interesting about it is there’s a lot of audience participation, you know, when the bad person comes out on stage and is hiding behind the lead, the goody, the audience yells, “He’s behind you.” And there’s similar statements throughout the play, like lots of boos and look over there. But what I think is innovative is that it brings the audience into the play. They become an active participant, which is what we try to do with our work at Lorem Ipsum when we’re creating these meaningful, impactful stories, is really try to make them resonate with the visitor and include them as much as possible in that story. How do you fold the audience into your work?

Chris: I mean, I think part of it is, you know, I do sometimes and I don’t sometimes. I think, you know, if I go to a concert and I’m sitting in an audience and again, it could be 50 people or 50,000 people, I’m immersed. I’m with the people, I’m in a theater, there’s, you know, there’s music and there’s lights. It’s immersive. And I think there’s a lot of push to make things immersive in some interactive way, but it’s not really all that important. 

Case in point, going back to my own bag of tricks, a few years ago, I was working on the development and creation of a new park up in Boston, the park’s called the Lawn on D. And when we built it, it was built to be temporary. It’s still there. It was, it was a big hit. Part of the reason it was a big hit was that we commissioned a piece called Swing Time, which I created with the great design team Höweler + Yoon up in Boston, and Swing Time was a large 70-foot-long set of swings. 

The swings were made of plastic, a sort of milky plastic with lights inside. They’re hoop shape. And as you swing around in them, the motion will trigger the light. A tremendously successful piece and very much a, a case study and actually oft imitated. I would say that the interactivity layer, which is the lights changing when you swing is virtually useless, adds very little to the program.

But what works well, the swings, like you get to be on a swing set, you know, being on the swing set is enough, right? The extra layer of interactivity, which was sort of a mandate because of this moment in time, seemed somewhat frivolous. But, you know, I do think at times about interactivity within projects, but only if it feels intrinsic and essential, because otherwise I think it’s, could just be sort of superfluous and distracting.

Abby: I think we’re using the word interactivity differently, maybe as well, because when I think about sitting on a swing and moving my body to move, move a swing, that to me is a form of interactivity. And I remember Chris being at one of your presentations when you made us all gets up and around. We all went in the room, and it was highly interactive. So I think potentially this word interactivity, as well as the word immersion, again bandied around, thrown, thrown around and mean different things to different people, especially in our business. So I think for our clients, often it can get very confusing.

Chris: All of that I totally agree with. And it’s funny you bring up the reference you did, which was really there to break what I imagined was going to be a very formal setting of people sitting in their chairs and listening to a speech which is just not my way. And I wanted to do an actual demonstration of what it’s like to get people up and out of their chairs and a little creative mayhem if you will.

Brenda: I love that you use the term creative mayhem, and as another person who has likewise been sprinkled with your pixie dust and coated in streamers and danced along with an impromptu marching band at one of your, quote, lectures, I’m really curious to know what happens when the mayhem goes sideways or when the mayhem as hoped and dreamed for doesn’t quite happen in the way that you were hoping it would go. You’ve kind of got one shot to get things right.

Chris: I love that. You spend, it can be six months, six weeks, whatever it is, preparing for something that may last all of 5 minutes. And I love that you have one shot to get it right. And, you know, to some extent, I’m probably experienced enough that I’m generally confident that things will go somewhat according to plan. You know some are going to be better than others on average over a lifetime of doing them. You know, you can’t win them all. But in general, I don’t worry too much about it not working. I just, I just try and make it work. I think experiences is everything. And my words of advice to folks in, in FIT and others that I’ve taught has always been just do it. Just get out there and do it.

You know, I think a lot of the book learning and school learning is just secondary to going out there and figuring out how to create an event, just, you know, oh, you don’t know what to do. You know, create, create an exhibit and slam it on the street and see what happens.

Brenda: Well, experience and faith are fellows. There’s no question about that.

Abby: So, Chris, I’m glad you mentioned sort of the idea of bringing something to life because before that even can happen, you need a client who really wants something different and innovative. It’s often easy for us to dream up these innovative concepts but very difficult to get the buy-in and really bring them to life. especially when you’re pushing the envelope like your work does. So when we look at your work in the public realm and how truly fresh and different your original programming and community-building strategies are, how were you working within the confines of budget and timeframes?

Chris: I come from a world of really not-for-profit. I come from a, I come from a world where we used to dig through the dump to get materials to build our shows. But I am really all about like, on time, on budget. I’m very realistic. To your other point, I think it’s interesting, like, how do you get clients to go along with doing things that are creative?

They’re doing it, and of course, it’s frustrating for all of us because we see what the client wants to achieve. We can come up with creative ways for the client to do it, and you know, you can’t get them out of their own way.

Abby: No. And often, they want to see what you’re dreaming up, but nobody else has done it. So it’s like, can we see something similar? No, it doesn’t exist.

Chris: You want something bespoke, and you want it, especially if you know, you want something new and different, and you’ve got to get a pay for a little R&D to get it off the ground. You know, I went through a long period of my life. I worked as an independent most all of my life. And so of course I did, you know, anything and everything for a long time.

But ultimately, because I did things that were unusual, because my sensibility is a little askew, that’s what people started coming to me for. So, perhaps easier said than done, but perhaps don’t do the boring stuff because you will then be in the rut of doing the boring stuff.

Brenda: Chris, you work with so many creative people, with so many artists and unusual suspects, if there is such a thing. In addition to working with clients and clients who have their own specific vision or lack of vision, their own needs, I’m really curious about how it is that you integrate work with other artists and other cultural communities, how that has sort of impassioned you to do more.

Chris: Well, the first thing that came to mind is something I’ve said a lot over the years, which is what I do is a team sport. You can’t do this stuff alone. If you’re putting together a major public event, you need all kinds of folks. And frankly, I’m pretty, as I say, horizontal about all this stuff. I don’t mind leading the charge, but I think I sincerely feel that, you know, the guys running the power lines are as important to me as the creatives designing the stage.

It’s just the way I am. Not everyone I work with is like that. But, you know, if you if you sort of have that mindset, then everybody you work with has something to bring to the table. And the more stuff you lay on that table and the more you can bat ideas around with creative people or interesting people, the more interesting stuff will emerge.

Brenda: So who has really opened your eyes, Chris, in the course of your career?

Chris: Well, when I was in college, I learned about a whole sort of school of whacko, social, well, political arts folks in England, and I quit school and went to find them. And I spent pretty much, I mean, I spent a year on the road, and I spent probably, you know, whatever, six months or more working with those folks in various capacities. And they were all a bit older than I, right, they’re all like, you know, ten years older than I am or so. And, you know, I learned a tremendous amount about the world from them and about, you know, about having a work ethos. 

When I was here in the States, I felt like people were all sort of rehearsing to do something. And the folks I worked with in Europe, many of whom were my age as well, were not rehearsing, they were doing it. They were just doing it. So, you know, as you know, I came, I started a circus when I was whatever, 19 years old. And I had learned from them in Europe, don’t keep rehearsing. Just do it. Do the damn thing. And so I just said, yeah, I’m going to do this. That was probably a pretty watershed moment. 

And the other thing I would say is in a more professional life in the last, you know, whatever, 10 to 20 years, I was very busy. I was always handling many jobs and many projects at once. And there was a cadre of folks that I worked with that were producers and designers and of all kinds that I would call on, and we would work together.

I always sort of think of it like Orson Welles, who had his cadre of folks that he made different films with. For me, it was not so much as a company, but a bunch of independents that I could call on for different projects that their skills applied to. But we all learned to work together, and I think elevate each other’s abilities through those collaborations.

Abby: Building on that idea of your mentor or being mentored throughout life, I know I’ve had mentors at certain phases and mentored me for different things from a business perspective. Is mentoring an important part of what you do, Chris, and what advice do you have for the younger generations who want to make meaningful work?

Chris: I very happily try to mentor people, and I think try to just help people out because I think it’s it’s important, you know, it’s hard. What we do is unusual, and it’s hard, and there’s no real organization for it. And we all sort of have to watch each other’s backs. 

The other thing I’d say, which is more akin to what I did when I was traveling, was go find people who are doing it. Find the people who are doing the work that you think is really great and go work with them. It’s interesting for me. I’ve been reading developmental psychology books because of my five-year-old daughter, and one of the things that an author I like a lot has said that really stuck with me is that we don’t teach by doing here.

And what she says in her book is that previously, through most cultures and most epochs in time, there was essentially an apprenticeship, right? She said, Well, you know, imagine if we taught baseball by teaching kids about balls and why they’re round and how you make a round ball and how you sew them, and then you teach them about velocity, and you teach them about pitching. You teach them about catching, the velocity of a ball, the arc of the curve. And then you start talking about bats in seventh grade, but you never let the kid play ball. Right. If you taught that way, kids would never know how to play ball.

Brenda: You’re making me think of something that Lois Silverman said to me once. She said, Brenda, do the work that’s meaningful to you, and the world will be better for it. And I can’t tell you how often I’ve clung to that.

Chris: I thought of something else a minute ago and I want to, I want to interject it. In the world of advice, I would say for me over the years, again, working as an independent, I always felt that maybe if I was doing two jobs out of five, two projects out of five that I could believe in, I was doing okay.

So yeah, I would do projects like the launch of Verizon in New York or some, you know, commercial project like that. But those projects allowed me not only the money, not only the money I needed to live, but they they kept informing me, kept honing my skills, you know, and allowed me to do projects for organizations like the United Nations who, you might think would pay real money, but they don’t. And a host of other not-for-profit where I could just say, I’ll do it, I’ll just do it, you know. But it was finding a balance like that so that I would do the interesting projects and the meaningful projects. But I had to do the other stuff just to keep going. 

The other thing I’d say about the work I did is because it was an endless train of one-offs, as it were, going back to the one shot deal nature of my profession never got under my skin that much. Whatever I was working on, I was going to be done with soon enough.

Abby: So, thinking about things that weren’t done soon enough, we’re going to turn our attention to COVID, and public events and experiences seem to have undergone a dramatic shift since then. So what has this meant for the world of large-scale spectaculars, from your perspective, Chris? And what do you think’s permanently changed, maybe for the better, since COVID?

Chris: I think the pall of the plague is not behind us in terms of public events. I think people are still afraid in many cases to go out and be in mass crowds or in small places, you know, a theater for 500, but sitting sandwiched between people you don’t know still makes those folks uncomfortable. And I also think it’s changed habits.

I think, you know, there are a lot of people who probably by habit went out two nights a week or something, and they stopped for two years. And so it’s no longer a habit for them. And I think that’s a real problem. I can only think, though, and maybe this is just my perspective and my, again, my age, but I can only think that we will sooner than later, pretty much return to where we were.

I think there’s something indispensable about bringing people together in, in actual proximity, and virtual proximity is fascinating, but ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby. And being together in a room full of people is irreplaceable, and I think that that’s likely to continue. Whether or not there’s, you know, more and more digital presence within the, within public gatherings or not.

I think the public gatherings will continue. And the technology is just another technology that will layer on. You know, I don’t think amplified – my father wouldn’t agree with you, but I don’t think amplified music or the advent of amplification decimated Broadway and the experience of seeing shows. I think Broadway shows just became more technologically infused. And I imagine that’s what’s going to happen in general.

Abby: Yes. So you mentioned, you know, the role of technology in large-scale productions, which has just got more and more involved, bigger and bigger. When you just look at lighting, moving stages, pyrotechnics alone. Now we’re starting to see AR in particular at live shows and, over the past years, performances in the metaverse, like Justin Bieber, who went live as an avatar in his own virtual universe, Travis Scott in Fortnite, which actually had over 12 million players watching, and Ariana Grande whose concert played over a number of days.

So looking at time frames that actually extended beyond what she could actually perform. This is a completely new realm for concerts and events. How do you think these technologies, the metaverse, and advances, will change the playing field?

Chris: Well, let me see. I think they’re good because it’s interesting for a whole new wave of creative expression. I think they’re good because, in theory, if you’re a Justin Bieber fan and you live in Outer Mongolia, you can get down with Justin. I think it’s bad only in that I feel there’s a loss of what we would call authenticity.

And that leads into point B, which is because creating those experiences costs God-awful amounts of money. And so those mega transmissions, especially for now, until technology allows them to be simplified and cheaper, that’s the domain of big business. One of the beautiful things I think we all recognize about the web until it gets altered is that it’s so open, you know?

Yeah, great. I mean, I think the influencer phenomena is sometimes nauseating, but it’s really cool that some 17-year-old kid can start making movies and become a star around the world. And he can do it basically for $5. It’s a matter of that person’s worldview and creativity that can reach so many people. That’s incredible. But that’s a very different thing than the heavy-weight experiences that are being generated now by big stars.

Brenda: When people experience awe, when they experience things that are spectacular and that trigger wonder in them, it actually prompts pro-social behavior. I think that it’s going to be really fascinating to continue to see how it is that this pro-social behavior is going to continue to, to be activated. And the thing that just makes it so exciting to me is in all of these different forms, when people are triggered by the spectacular, when they are activated through a sense of, through a sense of wonder, the drive to do something that is helpful to others is really profound.

Chris: But Brenda, it’s also the same drive that allowed Leni Riefenstahl to make films, or it made Adolf Hitler allow to have parades that make people go out and do horrible things. It’s not the technology that creates a pro-social behavior. It’s the artist, it’s the human behind it. The technology’s but a tool.

Brenda: So then, what’s the future, Chris? When we’re thinking about how things can go sideways, they can, you know, aim high, they can aim low. And especially with advanced technologies when people of all sorts have so much at their disposal and can reach such mass audiences. What do you see as being the social future for the spectacular?

Chris: The global nature of our era is remarkable. For all the wall builders out there, I’m sorry to let you know it’s not going to work. We are really one world now, whether you like it or not. And that means that if you strike a right note, you can bring positive social behavior together in a global way to massive amounts of people. And that’s incredible. There’s an incredible potential there.

But of course, there’s also a credible potential for dark clouds and storms to gather and we’re seeing, frankly, in a way, more of that, I think, through technology than the good stuff when there are as many people creating really what you and I, because we share values would think of as positive social messages and positive social programs for our country when there are as many of those folks out there as there are people who are conspiracy theorists, etc., then we’ll be doing great.

Abby: You seem to have done it all. And so, in all earnestness, what really have you got still to achieve?

Chris: What I really want to do is exercise a bunch of my sort of creative focus that I haven’t been able to do because I was running so hard doing everything else for the last 40 years. You know, I want to make things with my hands, and I want to play music, and I want to do those things. And I want to spend a lot of time with my kid. 

What I have found that’s interesting is that as I have cut back from doing the kind of work I’ve been doing and as I’ve been spending more time working with my hands, playing music, that type of thing, I find that my rhythm has changed. And when once my rhythm begins to change, my head begins to change, and I begin to think differently and begin to think in a way that I consider is actually a little bit more thoughtful, a little bit more considered.

There is time. There’s time to actually think things over, to mull things over, and not just to keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. You know, maybe what I would what I would say is I aspire to is to live a little bit more thoughtful existence and see where it gets me. And that’s not – thoughtful may be different than mindful, you know, mindful is a certain set of things that we, it tends to mean a certain kind of things. And I have nothing against being mindful but being thoughtful and taking the time to consider life. And something I missed out on a lot because of how hard the world pushes us.

Brenda: Chris, You’ve got such an eye for poetry and an eye for beauty and perhaps a giant heart for play. I can imagine that there’s going to be something pretty powerful in your future, whatever that is, even if it’s a quiet something powerful. And I, for one, am really excited for the time when that comes.

Abby: Chris, thanks for sharing the idea of taking our time. I think that’s really wise advice and that our listeners should all take a pause today, take some time when you’re creating, don’t rush, don’t push. Chris, it’s been a delight to have you here with us today, sharing your unique view of events and our world with our listeners. I’m very excited to see what’s next for you. Thank you.

Chris: Thank you.

Brenda: Thank you so much, Chris. It’s been such a pleasure.

Chris: A real treat. Be well, talk to you soon.

Brenda: Take care.

[Music]

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Show Notes

Little Amal

The Lawn On D – Home | Signature Boston

Swing Time – Höweler + Yoon

Virtual Concert In The Metaverse: The Future of the Musical Industry

Transcript

[Music]

Abby: Hello and welcome to Matters of Experience. My name is Abigail Honor.

Brenda: Hello, I’m Brenda Cowan.

Abby: Welcome to this week’s podcast, Museums and War. We are thrilled to be speaking with  q in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the world’s only museum dedicated to children affected by armed conflict. Since the museum’s opening in 2016, Jasminko has been expanding the War Childhood Museum exhibitions, taking them around the world to places where children’s lives are being altered due to war and conflict, like Kiev in Ukraine.

Jasminko, welcome, and thank you so much for joining us today.

Jasminko: Hi, thank you for having me.

Brenda: Jasminko, I’m going to get us kickstarted with just a very fond remembrance of my own meeting you just as you were opening, and I remember so well the spirits of you and your staff being so strong and so confident. Starting from the first seed idea for the War Childhood Museum, where did the idea come from? And given that it takes tenacity, determination, and a little luck, how confident were you that you would succeed?  

Jasminko: Yes, I think you said it well. It takes some determination but also some luck. I think we had both. In the very beginning, we were very confident. However, it was not always easy and smooth journey. Just a couple of days to go, I stumbled upon an article about the museum from this period, and the first sentence in the article is Jasminko Halilovic is tired. And so it was funny to me that the journalist used this as the first sentence in the article, and I think it turned out well that we were really exhausted creating the, creating anything, but especially creating a museum which is community-centered and around such a topic which carries some gravity with it. I think it’s a really demanding process. But if you take this as your mission, if you would take it as something that has to happen, then I think regardless of challenges that will happen, and it happened in our case, and today we are very lucky with the fact that we succeeded. But even before the museum existed for us, this was not the question, of if we would get there. It was only the question of how to get there.

Abby: Why for you – you know, Jasminko, we only walk this way once – what made you, like, tell us a little bit maybe about your history or why did you decide to focus and devote your life to the War Childhood Museum?

Jasminko: Well, it’s both easy and not easy answer. The easy part is obviously that I’m also part of the generation and the generation which are who have been affected by the Bosnian war. And this is obviously the very straightforward explanation why I’m interested in the topic. However, on the other hand, I had nothing to do with museums in my life.

So the museum as a medium, as a tool is not so straightforward for me. I was involved with culture and actually, I started this project with the desire to do the book about this experience, and I did the book. But through the process for creating the book, I started communicating with people, and I understood that there is something around objects that they tend to connect their memory to objects, and that’s how the idea for the museum was born.

Brenda: I’m wondering if, for our listeners who aren’t familiar with the unusual way that the museum started, if you could just give us a description of the rather brilliant book project that you’re describing about objects and their stories from war survivors.

Jasminko: So the easiest way to imagine this book for someone who never saw it would be to imagine the collection of tweets. Because the format of the book, it was 2010 when I started the project, and I limited people’s answers to 160 characters. So very similar to tweets. And more than 1000 people responded, and I made a mosaic of these short recollections. So that’s actually the concept of the book, and that’s the reason why the community was created around the book, and out of these interactions, the idea for the museum was born.

Abby: Well, this is the first time, actually, Brenda, that I’ve ever heard of a museum coming out of a book so directly in this way and absolutely poetic and wonderful. And I love the idea of, you know, limiting the number of characters to get feedback because then you get feedback, right? The gateway to admission is a lot easier than if you want, expect people to write these long copious stories.

So I think that’s absolutely fantastic. Now, the title is very arresting: War Childhood Museum. It really makes me sort of pause and take a moment to think deeper about what it represents. Why didn’t you call it something like the Children’s War Museum or maybe Children Affected by War. You know, why did you name it War Childhood Museum?

Jasminko: Okay. It’s not a children’s museum. You know when we say children’s museum, someone would assume it’s for children only, and this is not the case. I wanted the name to be pretty straightforward. Some people told me the word has some difficult meaning with it; the brands, the corporations will not, will not be very happy to be associated with it and stuff like this.

But I wanted the name to really represent what the museum is. And it’s not only childhood in war. It’s also childhood affected by war. And just to touch upon what you mentioned, the museum created from the book, but there is one very famous example in Europe. Orhan Pamuk is a Nobel Prize-winning novelist, and his novel Museum of Innocence was turned by him into a brilliant Museum of Innocence in Istanbul.

And that was one of the most inspiring case studies I witnessed while I was taking this similar journey on a very different topic in different way. But there is one thing which I think Museum of Innocence and the War Childhood Museum share, and this is the focus on very personal stories of, let’s say, ordinary people, and this is something Orhan Pamuk mentioned in his manifesto for museums. He says it’s not a big challenge to tell the history of nations or countries, but what we need to do is to tell the stories of people. And this is also at the heart of the War Childhood Museum’s mission.

Brenda: One of the things that I particularly appreciate about the War Childhood Museum book is that it is the reality of people all around the world and in the voices of so many different people. And the stories that you wanted to tell were really the stories of the people who contributed to the book and who contributed, frankly, their own vulnerabilities, their own spirits, and their own souls to the development of the museum.

I’m wondering, can you talk to us about how it is that the museum evolved over the years since you’ve opened its doors with those initial stories?

Jasminko: The museum evolved a lot, of course, in the scope of its activities. They were born in one context in Bosnia, and then we expanded. Now we have projects in over ten countries, I guess, then also our collection grew. Now it includes objects and stories from different places, different conflicts, and then obviously, all other activities have all developed like our peace education programs, our interactions with the community.

There was a lot of change, but maybe the biggest change was within our team as well. We were a group of people with no previous experience in museums, but I think over the years, of course, being exposed to the industry and being part of the industry, getting some awards within the industry, I think that all of this helped us to understand better how powerful museums can be and how we had a huge opportunity to interact with audiences in so many different ways.

And we are really trying to use this and to connect even more with people and to connect people with our collections and also to connect people with other people through our museum.

Abby: Lorem Ipsum has worked on a number of tough subjects in museums, tackling the content of war and survivors. Now I always find it’s incredibly difficult. You have to understand the societal and the global nuances of the stories being told, and it’s often very complex, especially when you’re creating museums around the world, deciding what angles of a story to highlight and whose voices and how is really at the heart of a successful museum experience.

How did you adapt the book into a museum? How did you choose which stories to tell and how to tell them? Because obviously, a book is a very different medium to a museum. Could you take us through that process?

Jasminko: Yes, of course. During the work on the book, people already submitted some personal belongings by email. They would say, can you publish this in the book as well? This was not part of the plan because the book was meant to be only a collection of these short memories. But then, inspired by these emails, I added the third part of the book, where I already showed some of these personal belongings and the stories that that explained them and their meaning. And this transfer from the book to the museum was actually, for me, a very natural process.

There was nothing strange in it. Of course, the focus shifted more towards the objects, but we certainly remained, and we still are a platform to tell these stories. And the objects are there only to illustrate the stories, and of course, there is a special dynamics around these objects and the way that visitors interact with them, and that’s why I think museums are so powerful because you really are able to witness in front of your eyes a part of someone’s history. And this is, this can be very, very powerful.

Abby: Who was your target audience for the museum? Who were, who were you ideally targeting as a visitor?

Jasminko: It’s a, we are a small medium, but we have very broad audience. And as a small museum, we cannot have like a special exhibition for each target group, but we have to communicate all target groups at one exhibition, and of course, there are a couple of special target groups within the general public, which we especially target. It’s the survivors themselves, people who share this experience.

This is very important for us because I think museums such as ours, it doesn’t make too much sense to have these museums if they are not accepted by the community. So my biggest fear may be what will be the feedback, and immediately after the first temporary exhibition, I was there every day talking to people, and after this one, I was certain this is a good idea, and it should be a permanent museum.

And then, of course, the new generation. For our peace education programs, we work with hundreds of schools, thousands of children every year, and this is specifically important for us because, as you know, around the world, there is so much tension and so much polarization in the society, so we want to be one additional voice for peace, and I think that is a critical part of our mission as well.

Brenda: I was able to do a study with you about the impact that was happening on people and specifically when they were seeing the objects and engaging with the objects in your collection, and you are directly contributing to people’s mental health, to their well-being, and you’re enabling people to heal. And I think that that’s just an important thing to sort of add in there; the level of depth that we’re talking about here is rather extraordinary, and it’s risky, and it’s working very well.

Jasminko: I agree. I continuously and consistently get the feedback that the fact that you are able to tell your story, to donate your object, to contribute your object to the collection, to have it exhibited to a broad audience, that this can have some kind of healing effect. And we are very proud of this. There are so many beautiful stories of people deciding to come back for the first time to their home city because of our work or reconnecting with some family members, or starting some discussions that they never could start otherwise. So this is very rewarding, and this is what keeps us moving forward. And this is very central to our work.

Abby: So, for some of our listeners, can you take us through a few of the objects and the stories that move you?

Jasminko: There are many. We have now more than 5000 objects from 20 different armed conflicts. So there are many, many different stories. I don’t know which one to pick now. People are sometimes surprised because when they see the type of the name of our museum, they always expect only dark stories and only sad stories. But we also have beautiful stories about friendship, about love, about learning, about play, stories that make you laugh.

We have very diverse objects and belongings from some that highlight the creativity of children during war, for example, the ballet shoe or guitar or some other musical instruments like violin. And then we have like some very basic things you use at your home, like radio or, or even we have even a laptop. So like many, many different things in this diverse collection.

And the focus is on the story that this person tell. And the story is sometimes completely connected to the object and sometimes just mentions the object. So this diversity of voices, is something was the most beautiful about our collection, and even after 5000 objects, I still get surprised by what people choose to contribute and how they tell their story. And now we see some shifts, for example, with Ukraine and some contemporary conflicts, we see a shift in our collection towards digital objects.

For example, during the Bosnian war, no one had a smartphone and you couldn’t produce your own video or photograph or something like that. But now we get many digital objects because kids have smartphones and they are taking photos and videos. So there is, if you look at from this perspective, changes that happen with time.

Brenda: When talking about the objects that are shared and the particular stories and the fact that they aren’t all sad, that a lot of them are affiliated, like you said, with play and with moments of childhood that are uplifting and enjoyable, and I remember speaking with some visitors to the museum who were almost excited to see some of the childhood toys and even some, you know, little wrappers from candies that they were familiar with and that they had had as children.

And the response was one of familiarity and of connection. And that’s something that I think is really underscored by the work that you’re doing, is that the stories and through the objects that you’re sharing are relevant to us all, and they’re important to us all. And I think that it’s a brilliant example of the relevance of a museum on the most intimate level.

Jasminko: Another thing is also the universality of these objects because when you are familiar with something, it’s easier to understand, to get the message, to connect. If you can connect it to your own childhood, then you can better understand the narrative. So I think this is something which has helped us to communicate our collection. And I think this universality is beautiful because wherever we go in the world with our exhibition, it’s the same. People still can recognize some things, and they connect with them.

Abby: Is there a way that visitors can tell their stories, their personal stories when they’re actually inside the museum?

Jasminko: Yes. At the entrance of the museum, they are interacting with our staff, and if they mention that they also share this experience, they are invited to access our website and to share their memories as well. This happens regularly, yes.

Abby: That’s lovely.

Brenda: I’m wondering if you could talk just a little bit about the challenges that museums need to consider and that you might be experiencing when seeking to expand in new ways and into new places.

Jasminko: It’s always challenging. It’s particularly challenging, I think, if you are coming from developing markets and countries as we do because then everything is expensive, and many things are out of reach. But the biggest challenge here is actually different contexts, some cultural differences, and how to establish trust wherever you go. And this is why we rely a lot on local expertise.

Wherever we have a project, we always just support local people to implement projects for their community. And I think this is critical because it’s much easier to build the trust with the community if local people are doing it. Aside from the trust and the relationship in the community, of course, logistics are always the challenge. You need to do a lot of fundraising. You need to do human resources.

But I would say logistics, the money, resources, everything is possible to solve if you have a good foundation.

Brenda: I’m wondering if you could share a little bit about your recent speaking engagement at ICOM’s conference. This was in Prague, and it was when ICOM launched its new definition of what a museum is. And this is a hotly anticipated definition. So as the founder of a museum dedicated to social change, societal well-being, can you share your thoughts on this new museum definition? Do you think it captures what it is that the profession needs to be?

Jasminko: You know, I think that the question of the new definition of museums is not an easy discussion because obviously it’s a huge industry, and hundreds of thousands of museum professionals around the world are trying to contribute to it or to discuss it. And if you ask even five different people from the museum industry to put together a definition, you will get five different definitions.

I knew, and it’s very clear, that it’s impossible to create a definition that everyone would be happy with. With the definition which was in the end established, I think it more or less captures well some of the concepts. I think it doesn’t speak about the future. I think museums are not only places where we document past and discuss present, I think we also can imagine our futures in these places.

I think the word future is missing from the definition. I also don’t like some words which were included, like not-for-profit, this is the first, the definition starts with “a museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution.” I don’t think it should be; this should be like it. I think that beautiful initiatives can be for profit as well. I think by enabling museums also to be for profit, I think it also gives some additional fuel to the industry because then there is more motivation for entrepreneurs, founders, and others to engage with the industry and create something interesting or like new concepts, experiments, and other things. So I don’t know why it’s so critical to be a not-for-profit.

Brenda: I think it’s really interesting when the current newly revised definition includes inclusivity, equity, accessibility, transformation, and yet they’re being specific to not-for-profits. I think that that challenges their very own definition.

Jasminko: Even the concepts that you mentioned now, the sustainability, the inclusivity, accessibility, diversity, all of these standards, these are not imposed by the definition. This is something we already created in our institution. And then the definition only confirms this. And that’s why I don’t think that the definition is here to show the way. I think the definition is here to acknowledge what we already built.

Abby: Yes, overall, I completely agree. I think the definition comes on the heels of what good museums are actually already doing. I feel it’s pretty long overdue. I mean, two years, a lot of changes in two years, and ICOM, far from leading, is reacting to pressures to modernize. So I’d like to see them leading a little bit more and as you said, the not-for-profit, and there’s a few other things in there that, you know, open to discussion.

The other thing I had an idea of, well, why does it matter anyway? As you mentioned, Jasminko, it didn’t stop you creating what sounds to me, and I know what Brenda’s enjoyed an incredible experience. Brenda, from your perspective, is it irrelevant what ICOM calls a museum?

Brenda: I don’t know if it’s not, you know, whether or not it’s leading the charge per se, and I have to say I definitely agree with both you and Jasminko that this is work that museums have been doing for a long time. I think putting the language together is essential. I think that it’s important to have some kind of a handrail, especially for new institutions. But even as our existing and our sort of venerated old institutions are doing strategic work and reframing their own missions, I do think that these messages of inclusivity and equity, the call to sustainability, it’s important to have these reminders out there. 

It’s making me think about when the Smithsonian secretary, Dr. Lonnie Bunch, who really led this charge, was leading this moment to reimagine institutions and relationships with audiences, business models, the way that museums serve their countries and communities. He said that ultimately all of our job is to define reality and to give hope and to challenge our institutions to be places of inspiration, curiosity, learning, I think very importantly, to be places of listening and of course, to be the voices of their audiences. And personally, coming from the world of design, I can tell you, man, there’s a lot of work to be done just to aspire to that level of thinking.

Jasminko, with all of this in mind, I’m curious what you think museums can do to help raise greater awareness and specifically in your world, about war children. How can people participate in making a difference and, you know, what kind of responsibility do our museums need to take?

Jasminko:  Yeah, I think it’s not only about the topic we deal with, I think it’s about any important topic or cause in our society. I think there is something what I call the shared responsibility of the whole industry. I think any museum can find its own way to contribute, and I think for this century we are currently in, one of the biggest things museums will need to stand for together is equality and human rights. And this is why I think this is a shared challenge and I’m very, very happy to see museums engaging with these causes. 

Abby: Seems to me that you’re very entrepreneurial and have always sort of trodden along your own path, despite what other people may have said. For others listening who may doubt themselves as we all do, what words of encouragement would you give them for going along their own path, having the courage to continue along and have that vision while other people may say, oh, don’t do that, you shouldn’t do that, that won’t work?

Jasminko: Yeah, as someone who created a museum, people get in touch with me when they want to create museums. What they all have in common is none of them go to check the museum definition. So, they have their own idea, they have their own vision of what they want to create, and I think this is good. I think we should not be binded by what already exists or how someone imagines the industry should be, or these places should be.

When I decided to create the War Childhood Museum, I knew nothing about museums. I was just an average museum visitor. But then you learn, and you navigate. I think there has to be some kind of force of special motivation. Creating a museum is not a short journey, and there are no easy answers. It’s like any startup I want to say, even if you create ten startups, the 11th one will come with some questions you never answered. So that’s how it also is with museums because it’s a place that interacts with so many communities, so many audiences. It’s a place which carries so much gravity for people, people trust museums, they have high expectations from museums, so it’s not something that you can do as a side activity.

This is what I tried, but then it became a full-time job, but also the main occupation of life. So it’s something you really need. If you want to make it happen from scratch, you really need to devote yourself to it. You need to be ready to give everything you have. And I think with that kind of approach, I think you can create anything in life, including a museum.