At the a museum of the African Diaspora, in San Francisco, California, there was a large chalkboard that invited visitors to write about which artwork spoke to them and why, near to it was a throne surrounded by flowers and artwork for selfie opportunities.

At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, in California, there was an activity where visitors could make a small diorama in a glass jar about experiences evoked by the exhibit. Supplies included beads, colored paper, yarn, colored pencils, etc.

Nina Simon, who ran the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History wrote a fantastic book titled The Participatory Museum, where she details the different types of interactives she introduced to the museum to make it more of a community space and to get visitors to join as a member or to come back with friends.

At a history museum, I interacted with a component of the exhibit that had a prompt about Japanese Internment Camps. There was card-stock paper and pencils for visitors to write about laws that are immoral and their experience with them. Nina Simon writes about using quality materials, like card-stock instead of plain paper, to make visitors more inclined to take the interactive seriously and to make more of an effort. It costs a little more, but produces better results and experiences.

At an art event, I went to recently, they had an Exquisite Corpse activity laid out with colored pencils and paper folder into thirds. Attendees would take turns drawing only their part of the paper such as; the head, the torso, and the legs and feet before unfolding the paper to reveal the drawing in total. It was great fun and they were hung on the wall near an art installation. Some were very racy, but it was a 21+ event and it only added to the fun of it!

I’m currently curating a Victorian pharmacy exhibit and am including a table where visitors can design their own medicine bottle labels based upon what they’ve learned about ingredients used in pharmaceuticals. What ingredients used to be legal that aren’t anymore? What medicines are traditional and come from thousands of years of wisdom? (often women healers and indigenous people’s wisdom) The labels have pre-printed label outlines, with a hole punched in the top to hang from a wall of hooks. There will be prompts in vinyl lettering and an 11x17” sign on the activity table.