Monday, June 7, 2010

The Way We Work

With all credit going to Chart House Learning's Fish! and Fish Tales! I've worked up a set of values for the Peace project team. Week by week, I am working through ways to make it true to how we actually get our work done and work together. Here it is:

WE PLAY: Work made fun gets done. We choose to approach serious topics and tasks in a lighthearted, spontaneous way. It’s not an activity; it’s a way of working that brings energy to the project and sparks creative solutions.

When we enjoy our visits and feel positive emotions, we are more likely to remember our experience positively.
We want our visitors to enjoy Peace.

WE MAKE THEIR DAY: We choose to treat everyone we collaborate with as special members of this project, with something unique and valuable to contribute. We respect the beliefs, actions and opinions of our collaborators and subjects. We will help each other to success.

When someone goes the extra mile for us, it makes us feel valued and respected.
We want our visitors to feel special and respected.

WE ARE THERE: We commit wholeheartedly to this project. The exhibition and the people who work on it deserve nothing less than our total engagement.

When we truly listen and are listened to, we form connections.
We want our visitors to feel connected to Peace.

WE CHOOSE OUR ATTITUDE: When we look for barriers, obstacles and problems, that is all we see. We choose to look for the best and find opportunities. We choose the sunny side of life.

When we choose to look for the good, we can make good things happen.
We want our visitors to have the best possible experience.

Friday, June 4, 2010

Voice on labels

My big question to resolve now is about the voice or tone we use in our Peace exhibition. We want the text to be accessible, friendly, inclusive, and respectful. We've used words like conversational, open, and up-front to describe what we want. Basically, we'd like to step away from the authoritative, single-voice MUSEUM voice. We'd like to acknowledge that we've made choices in what we present and don't present. That we don't have all the answers - or necessarily even all the questions. And most of all, we want to avoid making judgements.

This is new for my museum. We use a generic detached museum voice and first person quotes, and we have adapted other institution's "voices", but we've never been this bold. We will have to make a really strong case for changing. To prepare, I've been reading around, and playing with draft text.

It's not that easy! A lot has been written about how to write proper labels (Serrell, of course), but not much touches on the advantages or disadvantages of different voices or tones in labels. And writing a label that is all those things we want AND within a reasonable word count is tricky! I think the next step is to draft some guidelines or qualities of the voice we want so we can at least define it. Then we will defend it. Then we write!

I've read:

Dumbing down for museum audiences —
necessity or myth?

http://www.emendediting.com/html/ezine/issue3/PDFs/BLUNDEN.pdf
Writing for a Family Audience by USS Constitution Museum Team
http://www.familylearningforum.org/engaging-text/writing-for-families/writing-for-families.htm
The Evolution of Exhibit Labels

Using Questions as Titles on Museum Exhibit Labels to Direct Visitor Attention and Increase Learning
The Everday Activist

Waiting to get my grubby hands on : Connecting kids to history with museum exhibitions