Our first week
in Hanoi has been both memorable and informative as we delved into the exciting
topic of community engagement within museums. On reflection of the past week, I
wish to discuss an observation I made during the workshop component of the
field school. During the workshops, participants were asked to formulate and
present community engagement proposals within varying museum contexts. Whilst
listening to proposals and working within my own groups, I noticed many
proposals either heavily, or entirely, featured public programming as a method
of community engagement. It is here that I wish to discuss why I believe community
engagement is different to public programs.
The following is
an example of one of the community engagement proposal ideas that featured
public programming as a method of community engagement:
After identifying Vietnamese High School Students (ages 14 to 18) as
a community the Vietnamese Museum of Fine Arts may wish to engage with, ideas
flooded in about organising events that would allow or encourage students to
use their mobile phones to take ‘Selfies’ or similar activities to engage with
the art. Although I think this is a fun idea that is aimed at encouraging the
target audience to engage with the art works, I do not believe this is community engagement.
Firstly, an
important point made during our first week of seminars – and this is the big
take-home-message – is that museum staff, including public programmers, should
not assume what their audiences want but instead use methods of community
engagement to shed light on this topic and to ensure the success of their
efforts. Yes it is fair to say that ages 14 to 18 use their phones and social
media applications frequently; however, the above proposal assumes that this
age group would be interested in these activities within a museum setting. But
what if they’re not interested in participating in the popular ‘Selfie’
phenomena within the museum? Our best efforts and our resources are waisted. This
is where community engagement approaches such as focus groups, surveys and
interviews become value tools for asking questions such as “would you
participate in this activity and why/why not” or “What type of public
programming would you like to see at the museum”. These approaches minimalise some
of the much feared ‘guess work’ from marketing towards targeted audiences. I
then ask, is community engagement in this form also a form of audience
research?
Secondly, I personally
consider public programming to be a tool for engaging visitors with museum content
whereas community engagement is a tool for engaging communities with the museum
process. I also believe community engagement to be more about participation and
collaboration with the museum. Although both institutional methods are aimed at
engaging individuals or groups, I
feel their methods of engagement are different. It is from my observations and the ideas I have presented here that I feel an emphasis on defining engagement and multiple forms of engagement could greater build our understanding of community engagement and public programming.
Joss has raised an important distinction in this post - a further question is to think about how audience development and community engagement are different from marketing. The techniques used are often so similar it can all become rather blurry and this where I think the issue of social justice is crucial. Community engagement is more than attracting and diversifying audiences, it is about enabling access to the museum space, collections and authority so that important contemporary issues can be addressed.
ReplyDeleteI also think Joss has captured an very important point that will shape our future engagement with communities. What I have learnt this week is that community engagement is about bringing communities in, inventing the museum as a shared space and a shared process, discussing what is valuable to a specific group of people and working with them to document, preserve, share, conserve and showcase their tangible and intangible heritage.
ReplyDeleteI, like Joss, agree that public programming is about museums (and communities) reaching out with identified and targeted learning, sharing or experiential outcomes. Public programming can bring people into the museum, but it isn't as much about sharing their own stories as it is about providing a space for further engagement, learning and enjoyment in other stories.
Just as public programming and community engagement are different, so too are the skills and techniques required to gain a valuable outcome for each activity. These last two weeks have taught me many skills for ongoing working in both of these fields and I look forward to putting this into practice in the future :)
In my previous post, one of the questions I proposed was: is community engagement also a form of audience research? I have since been considering this question and how I would identify the differences between these museum processes.
ReplyDeleteFrom my discussions with Jo during the week, and as Jo has just mentioned, community engagement has developed from a social justice and equity framework whereas audience research has developed from a marketing framework. I also consider audience research as an active (museum) and passive (audience) relationship whereas community engagement is about partnerships and collaboration.
If the museum was to go out into a community village and ask the community what stories they would like to see exhibited in the museum, is this community engagement or is this audience research? Yesterday Jo mentioned the concept of intention as the distinction between the process of community engagement or audience research. This is an idea I wanted to share with you all here.
• If the museum enters the community and asks the above question with the intention of bringing the community into the museum as a visitor, in an active-passive format, then this is a clear audience research approach.
• If the museum enters the community with the intention of recording their stories for exhibition, this is community engagement as the museum is giving the community a role in the exhibition process that lies somewhere on the David Wilcox ladder of community engagement.
I do not believe there are only the two above options and I do not think that community engagement and audience research are neutrally exclusive museum processes. They have mutual benefits. If the museum enters the community with the intention of bringing the community into the museum as regular visitors through the engagement in a relationship building exhibition then there is a clear crossover of processes.