Participatory culture in museums

Abstract: In 2012 library and museum professionals from 24 different countries met in Salzburg, Austria for the Salzburg Global Seminar. The seminar was entitled Libraries and Museums in an Era of Participatory Culture. Shortly summarised their views of participatory culture includes low barriers for engagement, strong support for creating, sharing and feeling a social connection with each other. During the seminar it was mentioned that participatory culture usually exists online and that their challenge was in creating experiences that work both online and offline and allow for meaningful participation.Contemporary examples of museums working with participatory culture to engage their visitors is presented. Inspired by these examples and working with research through design as main method technology experiments and prototypes are conducted to develop a concept. Findings from this iterative process leads to a final concept that has the potential to engage museum visitors both online and offline. In one part of this concept museum visitors explores a narrative in a physical interactive exhibition. Visitors proxemic relations to objects and other people is used to trigger media and unfold the full story in a room. In the end of the prototype visitors are asked to write a physical postcard that is also published on a web page.The final concept presented can be scaled and customised to suit many different scenarios and context. When structuring the narratives clear instructions guiding visitors through the experience should be included. The people who were invited to try this prototype all created content and were curios to know what other people had written.