Museum Reset.

A monthly newsletter with fresh discoveries at the intersection
of technology, design and museums.

Artwork image of filming taking place inside a history museum.

Editor's Letter

Hello!

Historically museums have been organised to tell fixed stories; usually white, Western, colonial stories. Today they are provocations that invite further exploration and discussion.

This month the our team has been thinking about multi-layered interpretation following the opening of the Van Abbemuseum’s new permanent collection display using Smartify. The Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands is one of the most inclusive and accessible museums in the world, and their team took the opportunity of reopening to create multiple journeys and interpretation including a multi-sensory tour; and LGBTQ+ tour, a bodily encounters tour, a family tour and so on… (read more about the project and hear from the curators in this MuseumNext article here)

At Smartify we have always been excited about the flexibility and power of digital guides to showcase new voices and to build links between objects and collections. For Black History Month this year we’re using our new video platform to share our first Smartify original series: We're Here: the Story of Black British Art.

So if you are thinking about projects that add new perspectives. We would love to talk to you.

Anna Lowe
Smartify CoFounder

Ps. This month’s featured guest, Dr Hannah Thompson is currently a finalist in the Time Higher Education Awards 2021 in the Outstanding Contribution to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion category for her visual description tours (available on Smartify here!)

Apps, tools and sites

Mental Canvas - Amazing tool for sketching in 360. Check out this artist’s work here.

Tik Tok for museums - A helpful starter guide by Abby Bird from Black Country Living Museum for Culture24.

Climate Designers - A growing community of climate-active designers. “A global hub for designers and creative professionals from all industries, committed to using [their] creative skills for climate action”. Great idea!

Run Your Own Social - Darius Kazemi wrote this wonderful guide on why and when you should (and should not) run your own social network. A great read if you’re thinking about starting an online community of any kind.

Who Can Use - A web-based tool that “brings attention and understanding to how colour contrast can affect different people with visual impairments.” It made me realise how many different types of vision impairments there are.

Five recommendations
from Professor
Hannah Thompson

A concept worth understanding to ......................

‘Blindness Gain’: the idea that blindness, and things associated with it - such as interventions originally intended for blind and partially blind people – are beneficial to the whole of society. Audio books are an example of an innovation developed by and for blind people that is now increasingly being enjoyed by ‘non-blind’ people.

A film worth watching ......................

If you don’t know what audio description is, watch ANY film with the audio description track on: you will get a whole new perspective into what is happening on screen, what (the audio describer thinks) is important and even what the characters are called. Imagine experiencing the film via its audio description: what would you have noticed and/or missed? There are some fascinating discussions going on at the moment around how audio description can become a creative genre in its own right.

A book worth reading ......................

Georgina Kleege’s More than Meets the Eye: What Blindness Brings to Art is a radical rethinking of blind peoples’ place in museums and galleries. It is a must-read for anyone interested in access, culture, and equality.

An piece of advice worth passing on ......................

This is a tip my son brought home from cookery lessons at school: scrunch baking parchment up in your fist before smoothing it out to lay on a baking tray: especially when baking cookies, this makes the whole process so much simpler! Thanks Zak 😊

A podcast worth subscribing to ......................

I love the French language podcast Transfert - every week someone tells the story of an important event in their life...

Hannah Thompson is a partially blind academic and activist. She is Professor of French and Critical Disability Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London and specialises in nineteenth- and twentieth-century French literature and the visual arts, translation studies and audio description.

Hannah is currently one of 10 AHRC Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Fellows, and works on creative audio description in museums, art galleries and theatres.
She writes about her experiences as a partially blind person in a resolutely visual world on her blog Blind Spot.

Tweet of the month

"Digital projects have a snowball effect when it comes to providing access. In her new post Annabel Gallop writes about some outcomes of the #BLMalay digital project"

BL Asian and African @BLAsia_Africa Oct 18, 2021

Food for thought

The Seating

Should exhibition spaces include seating? If it is provided thoughtfully and intentionally, a place to sit can enhance contemplation of the art. "Seating helps me to both sharpen my senses and unwind among the experience of art, to be embedded and allowed to tune in and out and in again". It should always "add to or facilitate something that is not already there". Beanbags are best

NFT Monuments

Startup Paxis has a bold plan to create a new city from scratch in the Mediterranean, complete with giant monuments funded through the sale of NFTs. To be clear, the plan: design the statues, mint the images as NFTs, sell those NFTs for millions, and then use that money to build the statues for real. Sure, the Praxis city is a wild scheme. But the funding model is pretty interesting. Will we see physical objects – products, artworks, buildings – funded by the pre-sale of NFT depictions?

How can we help you?

Smartify is the world’s most used museum app (and web app!). We'd love to help you deliver and monetise tours, classes and OnDemand video across multiple channels.

Here's 3 reasons to get in touch:

1. You want to offer a mobile guide via the Smartify platform.
2. You want to talk to us about content production: video, audio, animations, online courses, AR, games.
3. You want to talk to us about content strategy or format development for on-site and online experiences.

We do other things too. To learn more and get in touch, visit https://about.smartify.org.

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