This week’s thought exercise is about creating genuine stakeholders, by which I mean creating conditions that allow people to feel a sense of belonging, even ownership in your museum.
Audience engagement has been a museum talking point for years, but let’s interrogate a bit what “engagement” means. For most institutions, engagement is still tied to attendance numbers, membership renewals, participation in programs — which are important metrics, to be sure, but they don’t necessarily reflect deeper, long-term connections. A visitor buys a ticket, attends an event, even donates a couple times — is that all there is? Perhaps. But we’re in the middle of a thought exercise, so let’s continue.
Some museums have started to rethink the relationship between institutions and their audiences, moving beyond the traditional “we create, you consume” dynamic in an effort to cultivate a deeper sort of stakeholder.
What does that look like?
Interesting shifts are happening in museums that have restructured their engagement models to allow for more collaboration. We’ve talked about community curation before, changing a museum’s role from authoritative storyteller to facilitator. Earlier this month on Luci Creative, Isabel Singer shared some of the common questions museum professionals ask, along with her favorite resources for this type of community engagement.
The Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History has brought in community members, via the Creative Community Committee, to help shape programming decisions and ensure that the museum’s priorities reflect the needs and interests of the people it serves. This kind of program poses an interesting question: What happens when we stop assuming we know what our audiences want and start asking them to help define it?
Other museums are inviting visitors to contribute in smaller but still meaningful ways. After journeying through the Museum of Mississippi History, visitors are invited to share their own history: “What story will you contribute? Step into our video reflections booth to tell us about your memories of Mississippi. Your comments could be integrated into Reflections areas throughout the museum.”
You might think about your membership program. Is it purely transactional — pay a fee, get a few perks? Think about whether membership at your museum works to create a sense of connection, or if it just rewards people who were already inclined to come back.
And, of course, we have to consider the internet of it all. Not every visitor is going to walk through your doors on a regular basis, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be engaged. You want to engage beyond the building. Treat your digital spaces as extensions of your mission (not just a marketing tool). Think about behind-the-scenes conservation updates, online discussions, interactive storytelling. Try to make people feel like they’re part of something, even when they’re not physically there.
What’s at stake?
There’s an argument to be made that traditional models of audience engagement still work just fine. But as public expectations shift and audiences expect more — more representation, more interactivity — museums that continue to operate exclusively as top-down institutions might risk losing traction.
It’s worth thinking about where visitors currently fit into your structure. Do you ever invite them in, so to speak, or are they all just passing through? And if it’s the latter, what might change if they were given a greater role in shaping what your museum does and how it operates?
The idea of shared authority can feel uncomfortable, and to be fair, in some cases may not make sense at all. But for those willing to embrace it, there’s potential to build something deeper. It goes hand in hand with larger conversations about community partnerships, accessibility, and inclusivity.
You might frame it like this: Institutions with the strongest long-term support will likely be those that can make people feel invested in their very existence. We’ll continue to think about how to capture that investment (in every sense).
