Community Engagement & Impact

Synesthesia: Multisensory Publication in a Multisensory World

By Elizabeth Merritt

As soon as TrendsWatch 2015 published in March, I started searching for stories that extend my exploration of this year’s themes. The “synesthesia” trend is, predictably, yielding some of the most playful, pleasurable and simply joyful …
Magnetic Museums Part 1: What Makes a Museum Magnetic?

By American Alliance of Museums

Watch this webinar for a practical overview of the science of magnetism, the art of engagement, and the six practices of magnetic museums: building core alignment, embracing 360 engagement, empowering others, widening the circle and …
Monday Musing: All the World’s a Museum

By Elizabeth Merritt

Due to a technical glitch last week’s Dispatches from the Future of Museums is coming out later today. When it does appear in your in-box, take a look at this article: Dubai To Add Art Museums In Metro Stations Gulf Business reports …
Playing with Food: A Recipe for Success from the Hartford Symphony Orchestra

By Elizabeth Merritt

In 2011, CFM launched Feeding the Spirit, an exploration of the relationships between museums, food & community. That project lives on in a number of ways—most notably, it played a role in the launch of the ongoing Let’s Move Museums …
Building Audience Engagement and Public Awareness through Crowdfunding

By American Alliance of Museums

Watch this recorded webinar to learn how the Smithsonian Freer and Sackler Galleries embarked on the Smithsonian’s first major crowdfunding campaign, raising more tha…
Kickstarting a New Museum: MOFAD

By Elizabeth Merritt

How can a museum fully integrate food into the whole museum experience—not just the cafeteria or restaurant, but collections, exhibits and programming as well? How would a museum designed, from scratch, around food differ from a …
A Case Study in Survival from the Sacred Realm

By Elizabeth Merritt

Museums can learn a lot by looking at how other sectors—for-profit and nonprofit—are responding to the same trends and events that shape our operating environment. Religious communities, for example, are challenged by changing …
Make Art, Meet Strangers

By Elizabeth Merritt

Here’s a story that demonstrates the power of social media to create community: I met Jeff Greenspan via Twitter after I retweeted Michelle DelCarlo (@popupmuseum) when she wrote “Creating communal rather than ‘in tandem’ …
CFM Returns to the Future with TrendsWatch 2013

By Elizabeth Merritt

The Alliance has just released TrendsWatch 2013: Back to the Future, CFM’s second annual watch list of important emergent trends. If we’re right, and the trends we’ve tagged this year shape the evolution of museums, a museum visit in the …
Innovation Lab for Museums

By Judy Koke and Ryan Crisp

This article originally appeared in the March/April 2013 edition of Museum magazine. Fourth of A Four-Part Series Following is the final installment in our chronicle of the Alliance’s Innovation Lab for Museums. a grant-funded …