Episode #2: Where do we go from here?
Happy May, friends!
It’s only Episode 2 and I’m already behind schedule! My daughter and son-in-law are moving in downstairs from us and between moving, painting, decluttering and all the other details that come with refurbishing the nest, it’s been action-packed here. On top of that, The Experience Alchemists’ longest-running engagement has finally reached opening day. Check out the TEA blog for more on the American Ancestors Family Heritage Experience we’ve been working on since 2018!
Where to go from here? It kinda depends on where you are.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how clients should respond to the fast-moving events of the current day. For historically turbulent times, traditional methods for strategy building and leadership seem inadequate to the task at hand. Even in the best of times, “Best practices” usually felt to me more like “Least objectionable practices” or “Practices least likely to get you fired,” In the current moment here in the U.S, is it even worth imagining there is such a thing? And if there isn’t, how to make sense of what is going on and what needs to be done by cultural organizations right now? At the same time, though, we can’t (or at least, shouldn’t) resort to be being merely reactive. That cedes all power to the forces of chaos and drastically limits our ability to to shape a future we might actually enjoy inhabiting.
So if traditional strategic planning doesn’t work, and resistance alone doesn’t work, what is the cultural sector to do? For many cultural organizations I think it will require relentlessly committing to the places and spaces we are in, and trying to make sense of what the landscape around us contains and requires. Here are two interrelated concepts that I am finding useful to consider: tūrangawaewae and cynefin.
Tūrangawaewae
I first encountered the Maori concept of tūrangawaewae back in the early 2010s. Suse Anderson, Rob Stein and I had embarked on a digital publishing experiment we called CODE|WORDS. We asked thought leaders in the museum digital space to contribute essays. One of those who answered the call was Courtney Johnston, now Tumu Whakarae | Chief Executive of the National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa then newly-appointed director of the Dowse Art Museum in Aotearoa New Zealand whose Best of 3 blog was a constant source of inspiration to me.
She planned to talk about her career path from running a web agency to a public art gallery, and how her outlook had changed as her role had changed. She used the term tūrangawaewae (pronounced too-ranga-WHY-why) – a Maori concept for a place in which you are rooted, the place you belong to, and as a result can speak from. It is usually expressed genealogically and geographically, i.e. the place and people one comes from, but it can also be used metaphorically for a place where you feel deeply connected and empowered.
Te Ara–The Encyclopedia of New Zealand defines tūrangawaewae thus,
“Tūrangawaewae is one of the+ most well-known and powerful Māori concepts. Literally tūranga (standing place), waewae (feet), it is often translated as ‘a place to stand’. Tūrangawaewae are places where we feel especially empowered and connected. They are our foundation, our place in the world, our home.”
In the end, Courtney’s essay never saw the light of day. But my interest in tūrangawaewae remained because museums are tūrangawaewae, "places to stand" where people feel empowered and connected. I’ve had the good fortune to work with some organizations that have developed very deep and strong connections and a shared sense of belonging among their audiences. I had a member of a recent client organization refuse to any answer of my questions until I’d promised them that nothing they said would be used to “slam” the organization. It was their “special place” and they were zealous guardians.
I came to see that many of the people passionately engaged in the debates about the future of museums also see museums as their tūrangawaewae. I used to find some art critics and cultural commentators really annoying. Whenever I would read the latest ill-informed screed I’d think, “What gives them the right to criticize us? They don’t know anything about how museums really work.” They may not understand our practice, but the museum is their tūrangawaewae also, and that gives them the right to speak. That is a tough pill to swallow! But “suffering is learning” the ancient Greeks said, and I apparently have much to learn!
This connection to a place or space could also happen in the digital realm. I’d seen it happen. Nina Simon’s Museum 2.0 blog is (or was) an example of how one could create tūrangawaewae in the digital realm. I’d witnessed how Nina had built an online space where she shared her thoughts and ideas and created a lively community of practitioners who were interested in museums and more participatory practice. For many years, I’d watched that community grow, and evolve as Nina turned into a museum director and became more focused on audiences and community-building.
What would it take to make our institutions help visitors (and staff) feel especially empowered and connected to the world around them, especially the local environment? What could we be doing to make our institutions feel like they are foundational to our visitors, places where not only we workers, but our audiences feel like they are home when they’re there? That’s an exciting challenge!
Cynefin
I don’t recall exactly when I first encountered the Cynefin Framework, but it was sometime during the final phase of research for my book. It is a conceptual framework developed in the 1990s by Dave Snowden of IBM Global Services to aid decision-making and “sense making” in a variety of contexts. Cynefin (pronounced kuh-NEV-in) is a Welsh word that has no direct English translation. Its closest English equivalent is “habitat”, but cynefin encompasses a much deeper and broader understanding of place. The Welsh government describes cynefin as,
“the place where we feel we belong, where the people and landscape around us are familiar, and the sights and sounds are reassuringly recognisable. Though often translated as habitat, cynefin is not just a place in a physical or geographical sense; it is the historic, cultural and social place which has shaped and continues to shape the community which inhabits it”
Sound like tūrangawaewae to you, too?
In essence, the Cynefin framework is all about understanding where you are and what you’re facing, and then making decisions based on that understanding of place. “Ooh, this is an interesting rabbit hole I mustn’t go down right now!” I thought. I bookmarked the page, downloaded a couple of PDFs and went back to the business at hand. Then, the U.S. Presidential election happened, and things got weird. As I’ve been watching the current administration lay waste to the structure of government and the cultural sector contract into paralysis and reactive behavior, I’ve been thinking about how to help organizations strategize in these unprecedented times. And Cynefin offers some interesting ways to look at the current moment.
Cynefin identifies five different decision-making domains: Clear, Complicated, Complex, Chaotic, with Confusion in the middle, and a cliff separating Clear and Chaotic. The four outer domains have their own kinds of constraints, their own orders of operations that need to be performed to understand that situation and act appropriately, and their own kinds of response.
I was immediately drawn to the Cynefin framework because it answered my longstanding frustration with best practices. “Best Practice” only really works in clear contexts where the constraints are tight and well-known, so that there is a right answer, “If X happens, do Y, and you’ll get Z. Every single time.” We do not inhabit this context. In 2025, we seem to be stuck n the central domain of confusion where the constraints and variables are not well-known. For cultural leaders, avoiding misdiagnosis becomes Job #1. If you mistake a complex or chaotic situation for a clear or complicated one, you will likely come up with over simplistic solutions; “best practices” that are not suited to the actual situation. By allowing you to more accurately describe and understand the situation, you can build really adaptive strategies that utilize experimentation, sense-making, and community co-creation to design your way into the uncertain future.
In Other News
Toolbox & Resources
I’ve been crowing a lot about my book lately. Designing for Playful Engagement in Museums: Immersion, Emotion, Narrative, and Gameplay is due out in June. But Amelia Wong’s new book is out right now! I first met Amelia at an NEH-funded workshop on Digital Storytelling in Museums hosted by the Lower East Side Tenement Museum back in 2016. Since then, we’ve stayed in touch. When I was working on my book, I asked Amelia if she’d look at my chapter on storytelling and she responded by saying she was working on a whole book on storytelling in museums! “How Museums Tell Stories” is now out and fantastic! It’s a smallish book, and tightly focused and worth the read!
Closing Thought
Conference season is upon us once again, and while I won’t be at AAM, I am eager to hear what interesting things happen when the community comes together. When you come back, let me know what the zeitgeist is, who’s doing cool stuff, important and hard stuff, and what you’re seeing in the coming months.