Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center

The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center Museum  at Colorado College (CC) provided the spaces for elementary students to showcase their personal narratives and for CC students to

learn with our community.

All of these interactions transformed the commonly held image of a museum being a space for collection into one of collaborative learning.

I used two approaches to disrupt the common narrative of museum education from a passive transfer of knowledge to an active co-creation of narratives in which many voices are invited to the conversation.  One approach was to capture the students reading their narratives and then posting these to the augmented reality software, Aurasma.  Another approach was to create a series of visitor-centered touring lessons for the elementary students to go on when they were not being video-taped. I believe that these two approaches lead to students feeling that the museum is a welcoming and accessible place that leads to meaningful learning.

Augmented Reality Tools

Student responses to art, in the form of personal narratives were shared and collected by the museum, ascribing value to what they (the viewers) bring. Seeing the original art engages students’ prior- and self-knowledge, motivating them to look closely and learn more about the artwork. During the field trip, elementary students video taped their written narratives, and the CC technology experts uploaded them to Aurasma.  All artwork that has narratives attached are marked by an “A” sticker, so that other patrons can view student narratives when they come to the museum.  Elementary students, knowing that their stories continue to be attached to the artwork, feel that their narratives must be important.  The museum must value them as individuals.

Visitor Centered Tours

Students also rotated through a series of mini-lessons, exploring more ways to connect to works of art and discovering how each viewer can contribute to a deeper understanding of the art and others. As Nina Simon notes in The Participatory Museum (2010):

There are five commonly-expressed forms of public dissatisfaction that participatory techniques address:

  1. Cultural institutions are irrelevant to my life. By actively soliciting and responding to visitors’ ideas, stories, and creative work, cultural institutions can help audiences become personally invested in both the content and the health of the organization.
  2. The institution never changes – I’ve visited once and I have no reason to return. By developing platforms in which visitors can share ideas and connect with each other in real-time, cultural institutions can offer changing experiences without incurring heavy ongoing content production costs.
  3. The authoritative voice of the institution doesn’t include my view or give me context for understanding what’s presented. By presenting multiple stories and voices, cultural institutions can help audiences prioritize and understand their own view in the context of diverse perspectives.
  4. The institution is not a creative place where I can express myself and contribute to history, science, and art. By inviting visitors to participate, institutions can support the interests of those who prefer to make and do rather than just watch.
  5. The institution is not a comfortable social place for me to talk about ideas with friends and strangers. By designing explicit opportunities for interpersonal dialogue, cultural institutions can distinguish themselves as desirable real-world venues for discussion about important issues related to the content presented.

These five challenges are all reasons to pursue participation, whether on the scale of a single educational program or the entire visitor experience.

Excerpt from  The Participatory Museum (Simon, 2010)

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