Book Club: "Creativity in Museum Practice" HME Meeting Notes Feb 23, 2015

 

“Creativity in Museum Practice” by Linda Morris and Rainey Tisdale

Thanks to everyone who braved the cold to join us at Mex-i-can in Hamilton this Monday!

We had a great discussion with people who'd read the book cover to cover, some who'd just skimmed it, and others who haven't gotten to it yet.

Overall, this book was deemed a valuable purchase.

You should invest in this book because:

• Pocket guide in back
• it's simple
• Chapter 2 is meatier "building creative cultures", recruiting creative boards
• Eg: opportunities for creativity in board meetings, almost like warm up exercises like the "Mystery object"
• helps people to understand the cost of doing business eg: have people play a sort of price is right game, with board/colleagues eg: understand cost of advertising, etc...
• Speaking with staff that aren't involved in financial undertakings
• "Get buy in"
• Chapter three tools for creative culture
• suggests you observe target audience intentionally, as well as analogous environments
• Helpful for strategic plans, training volunteers, program development
• it suggests you read outside your discipline to gain perspective and a mental break
• useful in workshops: the creativity inventory and mind maps were used to facilitate an interdisciplinary group of graduate students' exploration of creativity

Things to watch out for:

• allow for the book (especially the first chapter) to appear too elementary because later chapters expand the ideas and suggestions

Other great ideas from the meeting:

• Get staff meetings scheduled for 2 hrs before end of day, people motivated to stay on topic
• Have specialized meetings for marketing, education, etc...