Museums and Makers Inspiring Each Other

Don Undeen, Make Create Innovate and Jenny Siung, Chester Beatty Library co-presented a 2-day workshop for local museums and makers and discovered how museums can inspire creative responses as well as explorations of content without feeling hindered or afraid of museum-related obstacles (e.g. no photography, no food or drink allowed in galleries, be quiet, no bags allowed, etc.).

 

We worked with a group of 17 local creatives who were introduced to a number of objects from the collection, explore how they would respond using their unique skills individually as well as in groups. Don provided a card game and encouraged the group out of their comfort zones to create fun, engaging, quirky and creative responses to their ‘newer’ museum experience; these ranged from singing a song in the gallery to whispering the name of a painting in a stranger’s ear.
Make Create Innovate provided a hands-on maker-style workshop on the second day with specific focus on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and maths) as well as develop ideas around objects, historical or contemporary, fusing electronic engineering and the historical evolution of that object.

 

To complete the 2 days, Don Undeen provided a Design Thinking exercise whereby the participants were encouraged to think of their intended audience, listen to their needs, respond by developing a prototype and then create a 3D impression of this. The results were incredible and as a group of creatives, the wish to continue, network, create and collaborate was very apparent.
Over the course of these 2 workshops the Creative Museum project has learned a lot and will include in its overall findings for dissemination on its website.
One thing is for sure – creativity is fun; innovative; provides much-needed insights for museums as well as creatives and collaboration as well as risk-taking is key to success.