Abstract
Museums have been criticized for sharing a singular narrative that does not reflect the diverse beliefs and values of their communities. Participatory design has been recognized as an approach capable of processes that allow communities to contribute to designing museums and exhibits. However, as the participatory design processes change according to the specific situation, they can lead to a wide range of outcomes, and degrees of community participation. This paper explores how a specific element of the participatory design approach, knowledge exchange, influences the degree of community participation. Three examples of participatory design processes in museum and exhibit design are analyzed and compared to understand how the degree of participation varies through Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation. Results reveal that processes that are community-driven and embrace frequent knowledge exchange between designers and community members achieve higher levels of community participation.
Keywords
community participation, knowledge exchange, museums, participatory design
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.538
Citation
Nakashima, S., and Del Gaudio, C. (2022) Museum and exhibit design: How forms and places of knowledge exchange influence community participation and empowerment, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.538
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
Museum and exhibit design: How forms and places of knowledge exchange influence community participation and empowerment
Museums have been criticized for sharing a singular narrative that does not reflect the diverse beliefs and values of their communities. Participatory design has been recognized as an approach capable of processes that allow communities to contribute to designing museums and exhibits. However, as the participatory design processes change according to the specific situation, they can lead to a wide range of outcomes, and degrees of community participation. This paper explores how a specific element of the participatory design approach, knowledge exchange, influences the degree of community participation. Three examples of participatory design processes in museum and exhibit design are analyzed and compared to understand how the degree of participation varies through Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation. Results reveal that processes that are community-driven and embrace frequent knowledge exchange between designers and community members achieve higher levels of community participation.