Zeum in the Community

Our first Brown Bag Brunch was a huge success in that it gave folks from all departments a chance to voice their insights and get feedback from the group - you guys are AMAZING!

We began the meeting by setting up some BrownBag Agreements, they are as follows:

no restrictions
dreaming
sharing our past and outside of Zeum experiences
<1hr
fun = not meeting
drop in OKAY
focus on positives and achievements
future-oriented
snack-oriented

We began our conversation by talking about what other cultural institutions we look up to/compete with. Mike mentioned that we have more in common with community-based arts providers such as 826 Valencia and Streetside Stories than traditional museums. Heidi agreed that sometimes using the word "museum" to describe what we do is misleading and that she often begins conversations by explaining in what ways we differ from the norm.

This led to a conversation about the value and experience we provide our visitors. Fran mentioned that unlike conventional museums that view their visitors as empty vessels, we acknowledge and celebrate the experiences our visitors bring with them. Sarah W. agreed that we should be proud of breaking the mold in a world where so much museum education is didactic.

This led us to a discussion of the community(ies) of which we are a part and those we serve. Michael began by saying that our influence goes beyond the SF Bay Area and Eli added that our exhibits have inspired folks from as far away as China. With this in mind, we began a conversation about how we can thoughtfully showcase both the media created at Zeum as well as the experience we provide. Anne suggested that it might help to make a short promotional video featured on our DVDs so family and friends could see the process their children went through to create their final product. Heidi agreed that something like this could be a useful tool for our website, and other places of distribution like YouTube, Wikipedia, and Photobucket.

We concluded the conversation by proposing some ideas for future BrownBags. These included:

stress reduction, financial education, work/life balance, website (zeum.org), participation/visitor experience, visitor ownership of zeum (membership)

We also signed up for future BrownBags (you'll note the last spot is free....)

Brown Bag Calendar

Date Facilitator(s) Topic
1/21/09 Heidi and Gil Website 2.0
2/18/09 Fran and Flynn Museum Participation
3/18/09 Christina and Ari Membership and Community Involvement
4/15/09 Anne Work/Life Balance
5/20/09

Although we touched on a lot of specifics, this conversation also delved into more philosophical questions such as "what defines community?" and "what is art?" Likewise, we left thinking about creative ways to include our community in every process of exhibit and program design. If you have thoughts about this or anything else we touched on, please comment below and we'll keep this conversation going until next month!

Looking forward,
Irina