I have spent the last few days in the Netherland’s attending and speaking at Kom je Ook? 3 (which roughly translates as ‘Are you coming’) an event run three or four times a year by MediaMatic in Amsterdam.
The theme of the event was ‘The audience as programmer’ and it brought together speakers from the UK and the Netherlands, it was a wonderful conference which I appreciated all the more for having recently organised MuseumNext.
The first speaker was Fiona Romeo from the National Maritime Museum in London, who had some lovely examples of audience participation. I really liked a piece from artist Chris O’Shea which used the big screens that the BBC have in Liverpool to engage the public.
In these a giant hand appears from high to tickle, flick or even remove from view unsuspecting pedestrians. See a film of this here
Fiona was followed by a presentation by Joost Heijthuijsen from Dutch arts festival Incubate, about the Social Festival Model that they have been developing. This is basically an open source format for an arts festival which see’s them trying to create organizational co-creation by asking the public for input in to everything from marketing plans to strategy documents which are all available for anyone to edit on an online wiki.
This is a really fascinating project which I have bookmarked to learn more about, I am both amazed and in awe at an arts organization being so brave and so open.
Joost was followed by a case study about participation without technology and a short presentation about how you get people to participate in social media, and then my own keynote on ‘coproducing the museum’.
This was followed by a number of pitches, from five individuals who wished to win a workshop to help them to apply for funding to develop there idea’s in some way.
These were:
A curator wanted to develop an educational game in his museum, which would turn kids in to detectives and his venue in to a boardgame.
A group who wanted to set up a website which would allow fans of bands to group together online to raise enough money to book a place for that band to play a gig in there city.
An idea which surrounded commissioning five pieces of art which would only appear on mobile phones.
Grannypedia which would record the knowledge of grandparents and make this available online.
Virtual collections which was a plan from a new media company to digitize museums and place them online in a 3D environment.
One winner was selected by the audience who had to scan their RFID tags on umbrellas held by those pitching idea’s and the other by a jury which I sat on.
The winner from the audience was the website which would bring together music fans to co-operate to get the bands they loved gigs in their home town and the winner from the jury was the grannypedia.
Kom je ook? is well worth a trip to the Netherlands, and I am sure I will return as a delegate next year.
