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

http://fiq.ischool.utoronto.ca/index.php/fiq/article/view/84/220

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

What some students "know" about Peace

More on the theme of knowledge. Every year, we have a award program for senior high school students. It's usually related to an exhibition. This year's in on the theme of peace. Since that is one of the exhibitions I am working on, I get to be on the review panel.
I've done this for six years now and it's always interesting. Students have a lot of flexibility in how they can respond to the theme: they can write, paint, make a Web site or compose music. Some are absolutely brilliant: grasping the theme, and demonstrating great creativity and a clear talent for their chosen medium. Others, well, not so much. It can be tedious to read the same plodding, awkward prose for page after page. But it can also be pretty darn funny: exuberant reparations? memorizing gaze?
What was most interesting this time was to see the patterns in the students' responses and compare that to what visitors said they know about peace. It was pretty similar: Canada's connection to peace keeping, Lester B. Pearson, doves, past military sacrifices and a little bit of social justice.
So again, I am wondering if this is what people know about Peace, how do we reconcile the content (knowledge) of the exhibition with the messages (understanding) that we want to communicate?