Presented to senior EU cultural figures at A Vision for European Cultural Heritage 2025, I presented Museum in a Box as a forward-thinking company trying to succeed in making the best of the current state of digital cultural heritage. (Notes included in this version).

1. “Museum out of the Box“
A Case Study
George Oates, CEO & Founder
Museum in a Box
museuminabox.org @_museuminabox
glo@museuminabox.org @ukglo
Varna, May 2018
Good afternoon. Thank you to Harry for inviting me to speak with you today, and I’m looking forward to participating in the workshop too. Thank you also to the
translators in the room. I’ll try to remember to speak slowly.

2. What’s Museum in a Box?
What’s our business model?
Commissions so far
Challenges being a startup in the
cultural sector
Here’s what I’d like to describe for you in this session. After some discussion, Harry and I thought it might be useful to use Museum in a Box as a case study, to help
think through the themes of this meeting. It’s a real company trying to do things a bit differently, so I’ll be very interested to hear what you all think.
Also, I’ve brought a box with me, so everyone will have a chance to try it out - either today, or tomorrow.

3. What’s
Museum in a Box?
So, to begin… the best way to describe Museum in a Box is to show it, so let me play you a short video to explain the concept:

4. Video plays

5. Our core mission:
Increase access to cultural
resources
From the very beginning, its been our mission to help museums, libraries, and archives increase access to their collections. Even though we’re learning we have other
types of customers, this remains our number one goal.
What can we do with all the fantastic work being done to increase our digital cultural heritage?

6. For Museums:
Send your collections
everywhere
There’s certainly a lot to be said for putting digital versions of your collection online. No doubt about that. But, you’ll notice there’s a different verb here: to send. Instead
of just publishing millions of metadata records, we want our partners to carefully choose which of their objects to gather, describe, print, and share. Perhaps it’s a bit
more effort, but, this careful selection makes for great results.

7. For Teachers:
Support kids to build
their cultural capital
As the company has developed over the last two years or so, we’ve met and talked with lots of teachers. There are lots of challenges in a classroom relating to cultural
learning:
- A trip to a museum is too expensive, and not only that, but a museum might simply be too far away to visit, even in another country
- It takes too much time and effort to gather materials for a subject that’s outside of the standard curriculum
- Time on a computer might be difficult, not only for the teachers, but students too, and even if you can do that, it’s hard to find good resources, and the digital
experience can be really bland
The idea of a museum handling collection is not new. Museums have been sending sets of objects to schools nearby for years. But it’s one school, at one time. What if
you could send a handling collection to a hundred schools? All over the world?

8. For Kids:
Let museums from around
the world visit you
I was recently in Washington DC delivering a box to one of the poorest schools in the area. I loved hearing the librarian tell the kids “Where are we going to travel today?”
when she opened up the box with the class.
It’s not enough anymore to expect people to cross your threshold. Why not bring the museum to them?

10. Collection
Collection
Collection
Collection
Collection
Collections can be sent from anywhere to a box.
Collections can be made of objects from more than one organisation.

11. Our Company Values
There are many histories
Creativity is as important
as numeracy and literacy
Tech is a tool, not our
master

12. What’s our
business model?

13. 1. Commissions with GLAMs
2. “Make Your Own”
3. Direct to Consumer sales
4. Subscription to things
you’re interested in

14. Commissions
Let me show you a few of the commissions we’ve made so far

15. London Metropolitan Archives,
Abira Hussein
1 box
Several workshops
1 collection, undescribed
Healing Through Archives initiative
“using technology to work with community groups around themes of migration, memory and identity”
Then, without any descriptions, she took the set of images and objects into a workshop with older Somali women in London, and asked for their input…
play audio

16. Gathering new histories

17. And now the box travels around playing responses created in the workshop
(Video plays)

18. British Museum + National Museum of Iraq
2 boxes (one in Baghdad, one in London)
1 collection

19. (Video plays)

21. Smithsonian Institution Libraries
10 boxes
10 schools
2 collections

23. Our first major commission - 11 boxes!

26. Creative ecosystem
Smithsonian Folkways Audio Archive
2 researchers
2 writers
3 actors
1 recording studio
1 printing house
Free sound archive
There were lots of other people involved to create the Smithsonian collections…

27. Digital spine
Multi-sensory
Deliberate curation
(Video plays, boy tells us this is his first time actually liking a museum)

28. Victoria and Albert Museum
1 box
1 museum, and local schools nearby
1 collection
Seeing Red: Posters of Protest and Dissent

32. Video plays - audio footage of the printmakers speaking
HALF WAY THROUGH - CHECK TIME

33. Video plays - audio footage of teenagers responding to the content, and how it feels in 2018

35. Commissioning
Body

36. Commissioning
Body
local distribution

37. Customer
Commissioning
Body
local distribution

38. Customer
Commissioning
Body
local distribution
Sale

39. Customer
Commissioning
Body
local distribution
Sale
Revenue

40. Customer
Commissioning
Body
local distribution
Sale
Revenue
Update
Response

41. Customer
Museum
Library
Museum
Museum

42. Museum
Library
Museum
Museum

43. What does that start to look like when there are thousands of boxes all over the place?
How does that change the meaning of access and impact? What does a visit mean?

44. CHOOSE OBJECTS
“Make Your Own”
CREATE CONTENT
MAKE THE TECH
Now I’d like to introduce the second type of the product: Make Your Own Museum in a Box.
Thanks to our commission work, we’ve developed a relatively stable process which each collection and box needs to be made. It’s these three components, and we’ve
heard loud and clear from teachers that they love the idea of having kids develop their own collections, and even maybe make the boxes too. It’s potentially a real cross-
curricular learning tool, that taps into a bunch of the skills mentioned in the various reading materials for this meeting. Curiosity, critical thinking, collaboration, and even
performance.
When you…
Choose Objects - curation, research, digitisation, 3D printing
Create Content - writing and communication, audio production, information/media literacy, subject area knowledge
Make the Tech - maker skills, fabrication, coding, interaction design

45. In this case, we sell the components, not the collections…

46. We’re natural collectors
CHOOSE OBJECTS
- use the frame of “museum” to encourage gathering, cataloguing, describing, presenting
- “Museum of My Backyard” or “Museum of my Grandma”
-

47. There are many histories
CREATE CONTENT

48. MAKE THE TECH

49. - here’s a diagram of the componentry inside the box
- the tech is not the complex bit, and we’ve also deliberately chosen off-the-shelf stuff as well as Raspberry Pi as our “brain” because we want it to be easy to
reproduce… for kids to make their own.

50. Maker
But we’re also curious about a longer term dynamic that might be possible…

51. Maker
Museum
Library
Archive
Collection
Make Your Own
???
Maker
What have the GLAMs got?
That first interface is likely to be digital.

52. Maker
Museum
Library
Archive
+ LIFE
Collection
Maker
Make Your Own
Collection
Makers can make a collection about whatever they want. They may draw on “official” resources, or not.
I like imagining Lizzie, who is really into lizards, and wants to make her own collection about them. She may draw from a natural history museum, or, she might just use
her own set of objects or photographs she creates herself.

53. MakerMaker

54. MakerMaker
local distribution
Collection

55. local performance
MakerMaker
I think there’s also a point to be made here about “performance” being a great way to develop cultural capital, and 21st century skills. For Lizzie to show her collection to
her classmates or friends or family means that she has to do a lots of work to make it presentable. Does it make sense? Is the information interesting?

56. Customer
Maker
local performance
Maker
What if Lizzie’s box about Lizards is so great that Mark wants to buy one for his nephew?

57. Customer
Sale ?
Maker
local performance
Maker
Could Lizzie who makes an excellent, well-researched collection about lizards actually sell her collection?

58. Customer
Revenue ?
Maker
local performance
Sale ?
Maker

59. Customer
Sale
Revenue
Update
Response
Maker
local performance
Maker
She can certainly start an exchange with other people around the world who like lizards!

60. Museum
Library
Archive
????
Maker
- How does this change the relationship with cultural organisations?
- What’s the opportunity here?
- What’s the philosophical relationship?
- How does this kind of content development and questioning affect an institution?
- Can an institution hold a dialog like this?
- How might that improve the situation?

61. Challenges

62. 1. Impact needs time
2. Economic return on social
investment?
3. Moving at different speeds
4. Royalties & open content

63. Our Next Steps

64. 1. More commissions
2. Make Your Own pilot
3. Seek investment
4. Sell more boxes!

65. Thank you.
George Oates, CEO & Founder
Museum in a Box
museuminabox.org @_museuminabox
glo@museuminabox.org @_ukglo
Varna, May 2018