A couple weeks ago, I was part of a workshop on building effective museum experiences on June 3, 2013 at Historic London Town and Gardens in Edgewater, Maryland. Thanks to a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, they’ve partnered with the Maryland Historical Trust to present a series of workshops for museums and historic sites in the region.
For this workshop, they assembled an outstanding team of speakers:
- Tom Mayes of the National Trust for Historic Preservation discussing a “shamelessly anecdotal and personal approach” to historic sites that prompted questions about why people visit (or avoid visiting) them
- Robert Kiihne of the U.S.S. Constitution Museum on re-imagining museum exhibits through visitor research and rapid prototyping
- Beth Twiss-Houting of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania on working with kids (and those adults who come with them) drawing on brain science
In the afternoon, we broke into several groups. I led a discussion with Tom Mayes on creating tours using techniques from narrative non-fiction, giving participants a chance to try Continue reading