We had an exciting phone call a couple of weeks ago.
Late last year, I wrote to the Melbourne Museum's Community Collections program curator about our boardgames. They called to say that we have been selected to exhibit our games collection at the Museum for the month of September.
What this involves is really up to us - and up to what our gaming buddies can come up with. There's a smallish space with a couple of glass display cabinets and lots of wall space, as well as the opportunity to give talks or run workshops and supply handouts for people to take away with them.
We're in the very early stages of planning what we will do, and hoping to find lots of support from other gamers, both locally and internationally. Obviously, we will set up some games in the display cases, but we're stuck for how best to use the wallspace. Posters? Mounted game boards? Information sheets? Puzzles for people to do? Giant Meeple cutouts?
We don't see much point in giving talks (because wouldn't everyone rather get their hands on a game?), but are keen to set up some workshops where people can actually learn to play games, as well as getting some people to run demonstration games as well. September includes 2 weeks of school holidays, so family and kids' games will have to have a role somehow too. We hope to coordinate with local gamers to run workshops & staff the exhibit during the week as well as on weekends, if possible - and of course we're planning to have some handouts for interested visitors. The museum shop may also be interested in stocking some games, to tie in with the display.
A colleague asked me why we would want to do this, and I looked at him blankly. He elaborated: "What's in it for you?"
I don't really know what's in it for us; it just seemed like a really cool, fun thing to do. In the end, I just settled for explaining that gaming is an evangelistic hobby, and making new gamers is an end in itself. I don't think he understood, though.
Look for more (many more!) posts about this during the year - we are keen to make this a fantastic exhibition as it really could get a lot of publicity. If anyone has suggestions for activities, approaches, great exhibitions, etc, we'd love to hear from you.
Meanwhile, I tried something new this week - an audio post. Comment if you like it, let me know if you don't, but I hope it's enjoyable for you. I talk about my games played over the last week and overuse the word 'social', and there's a special sound clip for you too.
(Post file is about 1.8 MB in size, 7 and a half minutes long).
Until next time,
Melissa
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8 comments:
LOL, thanks Grog! A WW friend was teasing me about nasal australian whines being horrible to listen to. Hopefully it's not as bad as that.
I tried to get Otto to say something but it was not going to happen. You'll have to work on Fraser to do a voice post as well - not sure how easy he will be to convince though!
As long as you could understand what I was saying, that's the important thing.
OK, we all agree here that Biggie's German is very cute. Can you get her to do an audio blog on how to pronounce all those other German games names? Finstere Flure...
Friendless
I loved your audio post, Melissa, and I hope you'll do more in the future. The only disappointment is that you didn't ONCE say "crikey". :)
I hope when you start putting your exhibit together, you'll include lots of pictures for us.
If you temporarily join this Yahoo! Group, you can view pictures of their library displays (`Have You Played Any Good Books Lately') which may provide some layout ideas:
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/NorthCoutnyGamers
mlvanbie
Very nice, Melissa. Clear voice. Very articulate.
Giant poster of the Six Degrees of Collaboration for the wall? ;) I have it in Adobe Illusrator, so it's entirely reproducable at print size.
(Overall I think gameboards and/or flattened boxes are the way to go for the walls. Spotlight some of the most beautiful, interesting, or controversial artwork.
So that you don't have to damage your own boxes, ask some game companies in advance, which is to say nowish, if they can get you boxes to help highlight *their* games. Anyone with good sense will see that it's free marketing. For stuff you want but that doesn't come through, you can make color copies. Try and see if you can get a little bit of a budget from the museum to help with this sort of thing.)
One word:
Scanner
Scan covers and components, and then print them out at an appropriate size for display. Obviously, you should obtain appropriate permissions, but for free publicity, I doubt that should be an issue.
You might have to track down a wide-format printer for display size copies, as well.
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