April+20-21+Notes

=** Notes and Recommendations for Mystic Seaport Regarding the Charles Morgan Voyage **=

Summary
On 19-21 April 2011, Nina Simon guided a workshop for Mystic Seaport staff members focused on participatory visitor engagement. The first day was a general introduction to participatory engagement, and the slides and notes from that workshop are available here.

This page provides notes and recommendations based on the second and third days of the workshop, which focused explicitly on developing strategies for community engagement around the forthcoming voyage of the Morgan and the various events, curricula, and activities surrounding the voyage.

We focused on two broad topics during our workshop: 1. community partnerships with various constituencies in the ports and beyond 2. engaging people with the voyage across multiple platforms before, during, and after the voyage

The goal of the workshop was to build staff capacity and comfort working with participatory techniques and to begin applying those techniques to brainstorming and prioritizing potential paths forward. In general, I found the Mystic Seaport staff members who participated to be committed, creative, and extremely team-oriented. People were able to deal with the ambiguity of this messy front-end of the project and appear eager to get moving. The challenges lie in defining the scope and priorities for the project and not getting stuck in loops of dependencies that make it hard to move forward on any of the many parallel tracks that this project will require. While there’s a lot of work ahead, I feel confident that you will be able to develop and execute this complex project thoughtfully and successfully.

Day 1 Notes
On 20 April, we focused on frameworks for engaging with community members—both organizations and visitors—as partners. I [|shared a slideshow] encapsulating some of my experiences, and we discussed the chart of four models for participation (contribution, collaboration, co-creation, host) presented on pages 190-191 of //The Participatory Museum//. We then split into five groups to conceptualize potential models for engagement with five constituencies of interest: 1. an artist on the voyage 2. visitors who come onboard at one port for one day 3. students participating in the online community 4. museums or historical organization partners 5. anti-whaling activists

These constituencies were chosen illustratively, not exhaustively. Each staff team developed concepts for engaging with their constituency of interest across the four models and made recommendations to the whole group about viable paths forward. Here are a few highlights from the conversation: · It would be exciting to work with non-professional artists (perhaps including schoolchildren or casual visitors) on a contributory art project in which people could contribute postcards, handprints, flags, or other work to be carried on the voyage. · When working with specific artists who would go on specific legs of the voyage, a collaborative or co-creative model is preferred. The goal is to be able to designate some structure with regard to what the artist does while onboard, without prescribing what he/she creates. · When it comes to working with visitors who experience the voyage casually, a contributor model seems most practical. There were many great ideas for contributory projects, notably including a “wish for the whales” that could be carried in a ritual way to Stellwagen Bank and a collaborative creative writing project in which visitors build a narrative en masse as the voyage evolves. · There is strong interest in engaging some organizations in the port cities—mostly performing arts groups—to engage with the voyage in a hosted model. These vetted organizations might perform a play or dance performance dockside or even onboard. While this is considered desirable when it comes to arts organizations, it is not desirable when it comes to cultural or political organizations—no one wants an outside historical or activist group leading their own tours onboard, for example. · While staff want to control most of the onboard experience, partnering with port historical organizations, museums, and civic organizations in collaborative or co-creative ways is seen as a must to ensure buy-in and to create successful, multi-faceted events that draw large crowds. There is no “one size fits all” model for engaging with the port cities and organizations. It probably makes the most sense for all parties to engage in co-creative relationships in the larger ports (New Bedford, New London) and collaborative relationships in the ports with shorter stops. That said, in any given port there are likely going to be a patchwork of collaborative, co-creative, and Mystic Seaport-directed programmatic components. · The online community for students is being built for collaboration and co-creation, so it makes sense to focus most efforts in this venue in those directions. There was a particularly exciting concept for a “90 ports, 90 classrooms” project in which classes would “adopt” a port that the Morgan visited around the world and create some kind of multi-media project about that port, perhaps comparing then and now. This is the kind of project that could be fabulous but requires careful thought about a reasonable number of classrooms and what kind of activity around the international ports is most compelling (a question that could be explored with the online learning community co-creation teams). · The activist community was in many ways the most tricky, and we all agreed that this is a necessary conversation that will require management and board to weigh in. In general, there was interest in pursuing some kind of collaborative programming in which activists would be invited to contribute content to dockside exhibits or programs. There was also some support for the idea of inviting Greenpeace or others to take part in the flotilla accompanying the Morgan and provide their own programming (perhaps whale-watching). There was strong support for focusing this relationship not on adversarial stories about the past but on a shared dialogue about the future, energy consumption, and the reasons behind our changed attitude toward whales.

Based on this activity, we again split into small groups to dive deeper into a few attractive ideas from the morning. Some highlights and recommendations for future development: · The “wish for the whales” concept invites a cathartic way for people to turn from the past to the future. I strongly recommend engaging an artist who works with community rituals in developing this project. The Japanese American Museum in LA has done several of these kinds of projects and it might be worth talking to staff there about their experiences. There are other artists I’d recommend (Jessica Tully and Brian Singer come to mind) but I suspect there are some specifically in the environmental sphere and more local to your area who might be more appropriate. · One group that focused on the idea of creating art that stays on in the port cities after the voyage has come and gone. They very smartly noted that working with city government and fundraisers to do a major project (sculptures, permanent installations) was probably impractical, and instead, they suggested a project that would create products like t-shirts that live on in the citizens but not necessarily the streets. I think this is a really important point; you could eat up a lot of time and money working with Public Works and Arts Commissions in each of these cities. It’s clear that there’s a whole separate conversation to be had about merchandising, especially programmatic and potentially participatory projects in which people design their own t-shirts or collect memorabilia that progresses from port to port. · There was discussion throughout this and other sessions about the various ways to extend programmatic experiences throughout the port cities to create a pervasive experience during the voyage. In particular, I strongly agree with the focus on working with people in hospitality, transportation, and food and beverage to find ways to offer partner deals and infuse the whole city with the spirit of the Morgan. I also think the viral marketing concepts incorporating troupes of role players, sea shanty singers, and shanghai enactments are very strong and could add a real zest and buzz to the experience, especially in urban areas.

Day 2 Notes
On 21 April, we explored ways to engage visitors of all kinds around the Morgan voyage, specifically focusing on the metaphor of creating a “string of pearls” of connected experiences and events (the slides presented are part of this [|longer presentation]). We focused on six audiences of interest (again, illustrative, not exhaustive): 1. casual visitors who come onboard for one day and have little to no prior knowledge about the Morgan 2. families with a child who engages with in-school experiences around the Morgan 3. adult groups 4. groups of children (camps) 5. maritime geeks 6. people with limited sensory access

For each audience, we developed a constellation of experiences—before, during, and after coming onboard—to build a rich “string” of an overall narrative that people hopefully will stay engaged with for days or months around their onboard experience.

Some of our best ideas included: · A “quest”-style experience in which visitors can assume a character/role before visiting the Morgan and complete tasks related to that role in class, online, and onboard. This quest could be appealing to many different audiences—adults, school groups, families. Because it requires people to stay engaged with the content across different platforms, a successful quest game needs lots of built-in redundancy, so visitors can start it from many locations. While I think this is a fabulous idea, it could easily become a $200,000 game design project. It’s very important to design this with some clear goals for as broad appeal as possible, and to keep it simple. I’ve shared some sample game development briefs and RFPs with Krystal that may be useful in developing this idea. While I agree that the idea of a gamer advisory group makes sense, you have to make sure you are designing for the broad casual gamer audience, not just hardcore gamers. Ideas like “unlocks” on the website are fun, but they should be used sparingly so the maximum number of people can participate. I recommend reading this paper about the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s experience developing an online/onsite game to learn more about the pitfalls of focusing too much on hardcore gamers (and the benefits of being able to package games for different audiences and group sizes). · Scavenger hunts and simple participatory activities that can engage people not only with the Morgan but with the port as well. For example, visitors might be challenged to photograph five things in a port city related to whaling, or to send in a description of contemporary life in a port city to “update” the Morgan on what’s changed since she left. · While it was only touched on briefly, I strongly feel that the photo opp component of the Morgan experience is going to be a primary touchpoint for the majority of visitors—both groups and individuals. It’s worth thinking about incorporating photo-taking not only into games and quests but also into the core way that people memorialize the experience and how Mystic Seaport documents and presents the breadth of community participation. · Some kind of passport that can get stamped at each port. This could be connected to a quest game or not. In general, if the quest concept is pursued, I recommend developing a lot of collateral like the passport that can be enjoyed as a one-off but also serves as an invitation to play the deeper game. You need as much redundancy as possible to drive people to the quest, and if you put a lot of resources into it, you want to make sure people know it exists. · A dockside exhibit that explicitly connects people who don’t go onboard to those who do. While this concept came from the “limited access” team, I think it could be appealing to many families or groups in which some want to go onboard and others don’t (or if the onboard experience is sold out or unavailable). The core idea presented invites visitors dockside to control cameras onboard and or communicate with people onboard to direct their experience in some way. While I think that games that involve people dockside working together with people onboard could work well, I would recommend that these be designed as short interactions that can happen among strangers, not just intact groups. By 2014, we should assume that the smartphone penetration will be sufficiently high that this kind of interactive should be designed with a programmatic value-added above what you can get through a videophone experience. · A dockside exhibit that immerses people (in a tactile way) with the onboard and specifically the below-deck experience. Again, while this was conceived for visitors with limited physical access, it could also be very useful in prepping groups for the onboard experience or conducting educational programs that you are too physically constrained to provide onboard. · A special membership and or Mystic Seaport membership level specifically related to the voyage. I think this makes a lot of sense, and I would recommend splitting this into two separate initiatives: an add-on for current Mystic Seaport members, and an independent product for non-local non-members. The limited-edition burgee is also a great idea.

After lunch, I [|shared several examples] of museums inviting visitor contributions, focusing on the various ways the institution processes, showcases, and disposes of visitor-generated material. Finally, we spent the last part of the workshop coming up with concrete next steps for the project and various subprojects. In the big picture, we discussed a progressive series of matrices that can be used to filter ideas and focus the work. At the most conceptual level, ideas will be evaluated by mission relevance, community impact, reasonableness of the budget, broad marketing appeal, financial feasibility, and staffing capacity to execute the idea. It’s also important to stay focused on the scholarship themes of the NEH grant and the extent to which this project can usher in a tide of change for Mystic Seaport overall.