presentation given at West Midlands Museum Policy Forum Open Day, PopUp, Tagging and LettingGo event at Ironbridge, 16 Oct. 2012

1. On pop-up museums…
Gemma Hutton
Marketing Officer at The Higgins Art
Gallery & Museum, Bedford

2. ‘The social web has ushered in a dizzying set of tools and design patterns
that make participation more accessible than ever.
They [the public] expect the ability to discuss, share, and remix what they
consume. When people can actively participate with cultural institutions,
those places become central to cultural and community life. ‘
Nina Simon, The Participatory Museum

6. A call to update Henry Wellcome’s curious collection.
• Bring us a thing during our great bring-a-thing-athon.
• Bring this, bring that, bring the other, just nothing bigger than your head.
• Lend it, gift it, or if you can't bear to part with it, upload a photo of it.
• Snooping is positively encouraged, so tell your friends about Things.
• No one should miss this feast for the voyeur!

8. • ‘So how can museums keep their displays up-to-date without spending millions of
pounds?’
• ‘Everyone’s making feature films: they need to be making news programmes.’
• “These events are brilliant if they encourage people to look again,” he says. “But
our starting point is, ‘How do we communicate history?’ We’re not a theatre; we
are not about one-off emotional experiences.”
‘Flexible Thinking’ Museums Journal, October 2012