what's cookin'
In our What’s Cookin’ blog, you can find the latest news on our company, current hot projects, speaking engagements, insights on the latest trends, and more.
What makes Minnesota, Minnesota? This not is a question many of us from places beyond the North Star State ask ourselves (at least not regularly), but it did serve as the catalyst for MN150, an exhibit at the Minnesota Historical Society that presents 150 people, events, and inventions that have changed Minnesota. The exhibit is a fantastic example of how visitor-contributed content can successfully drive an exhibition – and how Web 2.0 can help make it all happen.
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Critical mass. It’s the existence of sufficient participation in something (an event, for example, or a campaign) for it to become self-sustaining. Political campaigns, new technologies, and product launches all depend on it to help build momentum and fuel growth. So why should museums with visitor-contributed projects think about critical mass?
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Featuring a complete redesign and reorganization by Night Kitchen Interactive, The National Constitution Center has launched its new website. After a thorough overhaul of the site’s home page, Night Kitchen Interactive organized the entire website to convey the NCC as a historic destination with a thoroughly modern, interactive visitor experience. The new, streamlined design targets four key audiences with “must see” message points and ensures visitors can find the information they need, quickly and easily.
The website redesign is just one of Night Kitchen Interactive’s projects with the National Constitution Center. Additional projects include the Sieze The Vote! online game, the award-wining interactive exhibit Abraham Lincoln’s Crossroads, the Centuries of Citizenship online exhibit, and the wiki-based Constitution Day website.
The Parrish Art Museum has launched East End Stories, a Night Kitchen Interactive-designed online exhibit that captures the art and stories of the historic Long Island East End artists’ community. To enhance the online tours of over 1600 images, Night Kitchen incorporated an innovative mapping feature to help visitors discover connections between the locations, artists, and their artwork. The result is a dynamic, informative, and captivating presentation of the people, the art, and events of this storied community.
Google Maps may not immediately come to mind as a resource museums would necessarily find useful, but three very different projects reveal the power of interactive maps to bring a museum’s content (and mission) to life:
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Visitor participation is a key topic on this blog - why it’s important for museums, when it’s the right approach, and how it’s best implemented. But what about examples of engaging, dynamic projects that have successfully incorporated visitor contributed art?
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The Night Kitchen Interactive-designed National Constitution Center website has been selected by EDSITEment as one of the best online resources for humanities education. EDSITEment, a partnership among the National Endowment for the Humanities, Verizon Foundation, and the National Trust for the Humanities, offers links to the highest-quality humanities-related educational content on the web, and typically gets more than 400,000 visitors each month. Night Kitchen Interactive’s work for the National Constitution center includes the Sieze the Vote! game, the award-winning Abraham Lincoln’s Crossroads, the Constitution Day wiki and the online version of the Centuries of Citizenship exhibit.
Innovation Philadelphia reached out to Night Kitchen Interactive President Matthew Fisher for its news story on Mayor Michael Nutter’s reopening of the Office of Arts, Culture and Creative Economy.
Discussing the Mayor’s announcement, Matthew offered his take on the potential impact the office could have on Philadelphia’s economic — and creative — future.“It’s not just about dollars and contracts … it’s about engaging the next generation of audiences and benefactors, and showcasing Philadelphia’s cultural riches to a young, talented pool of employees, artists and citizens.”
Night Kitchen Interactive will create a participatory, social media-based website for the National Museum of American History’s Star Spangled Banner exhibition. Designed to present this nearly 200-year-old flag as more than just a historical artifact, the new website will encourage visitors to contribute their own points of view about this symbol of American patriotism and identity.
Timed to launch with the re-opening of the Museum and the new, state-of-the-art Star Spangled Banner Gallery in November, the website will entice visitors to see this national treasure firsthand.
Night Kitchen Interactive is excited to be creating the Star Spangled Banner website for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. We’re incorporating storytelling and visitor participation to help capture the unfolding legacy of this symbol of American patriotism and identity and the national anthem it inspired.
Designed to present the flag as more than just a historical artifact, the new website will incorporate social media and interactives to encourage visitors to contribute their own creativity and unique points of view. The website is timed to launch with the re-opening of the Museum in November and will entice the public to visit this national treasure firsthand.
