At the end of a Museomix, happy but exhausted, we discover that the event has risen lot’s of interests. Because of the energy, the format, the technology and the prototypes delivered in such a few time, Museomix looks like a performance. Its outer form engages and seduces. Lots of museums and people want to join in.
But this could hide the real purpose of Museomix and what it really brings to institutions, professionals and volonteers. As we pointed it last year (sorry in french…) , Museomix generate a community, professional links, working methods, another way of considering Museums.
Does Museomix really jostle museums where it happens ? Did the participant really take over and open the institution ? That’s what we have to look for.
The event itself and the prototypes are only formal aspects. When the first is done, when prototypes are disassembled, time comes to develop the relationships and the dreams that have just been initiated. Communities have to grow localy, new projects emerge from participants, museums start to redesign their own organisation. We are just not yet enough organised to make it visible and to help vibrate all these energies. But we also have to invent it… together.
We really should not reduce Museomix to a 4 days cultural hackaton. During the event, teams focus on their project and often feel as a pain every demand from the local orga distracting them from their production (exchanges with other teams, documentation, videoprototypes). Similary, local orgas focus on their event and their local context. They often feel as an external constraint every demand form the global orga (real time communication, mixroom, web site…).. However what everyone receive in Museomix relies on permeability, exchanges, agile methods, collective intelligence. It’s much more about the impact of digital culture on cultural organisation and participative public than a simple technical realisation.
We have a 4 day format that begin to work well out, but we have a lot of work to figure out how we can make Museomix vibrate at a global and durable scale.
I’m sure local communities will imagine new way to make Museomix live all year long and bring it to other contexts. I’m also sure that we will find ways to develop global remix methods so that Museomix may not be a simple collection of local and disconnected experiences but a globally connected and creative community. Great challenge for 2014, isn’t it?
Yves-Armel