I have a confession to make.  I started this book arguing that participatory practices are a design technique like any other, with specific value that can be applied in cultural institutions to powerful effect.  I argued that traditional institutions should not feel threatened by these new techniques because they represent an addition to the design toolkit, not a replacement for familiar ways.  I believe in this argument.  But I also believe in something a little bit crazy.  I believe there is the potential for participatory design methodologies to give rise to a new kind of institution, just as interactive design techniques led to the ascendance of the interactive science centers and children's museums in the late 1900s.  Some of the leading institutions in this area, like the Boston Children's Museum, were radically transformed versions of traditional institutions, but others, like the Exploratorium and countless other science and children's centers, were newborn in the 1960s and 1970s.  By now, cultural institutions of all types often involve some interactive elements, but this design technique and its implications for audience experiences are most dramatically displayed in the institutions that are wholly interactive.

And so I have this small dream of a new kind of institution, one which is wholly participatory.  It already exists in places like the Wing Luke Asian Museum and the Denver Community Museum.  It exists in exhibitions like Click! and In Your Face and The Tech Virtual and MN150.  It exists in programs like the Living Library and the SF0 game.  It exists in research platforms like Children of the Lodz Ghetto and learning platforms like ScratchR and dialogic platforms like Signtific.  Imagine a place that every person enters through a personalized profile experience that connects her to experiences and other visitors of interest.  A place where her actions are networked with those of others into cumulative and shifting content platforms for display, sharing, and remix.  A place where objects become opportunities to connect with other individual's stories and personal experiences, locuses of conversation about value and meaning.  A place where visitors are invited on an ongoing basis to share, to contribute, to collaborate, to co-create, and to co-opt the experiences and content in a designed, intentional environment.  

It's my expectation that the cultural and technological shifts that have given rise to the world of the participatory Web are not a passing fad.  I certainly expect them to change and shift over time, but the growth of customized experiences, creative expression, and distributed community engagement set new benchmarks for what is possible and attractive to users. I believe that these shifts will change the way that cultural institutions of all types, from museums to libraries to for-profit "experience vendors," do business.

I'm not sure that the final result, this imagined place, will much resemble a modern-day museum.  It may look more like a coffeeshop or a community arts center.  It may function like a co-working space or a sewing lounge.  It might feature content based on democratic processes rather than top-down designations.  And while these imagined places sound fundamentally different from museums, I think there is good reason to start from the cultural institutions we already have.  I believe that object-centered experiences can be the basis for a creative and respectful community dialogue.  I believe that interpersonal interactions around content can generate new social capital among diverse audiences.  I believe that participatory activities can provide valuable civic and content learning experiences.  And most importantly, I believe that the idealistic mission of many museums--to engage visitors with heritage, to connect them to new ideas, and to inspire them to take positive action--can be attained through participatory practice.

How will you integrate participation into your professional work?  How do you see it benefiting your institution, your visitors, and your broader audience of community members and stakeholders? 

These questions are not rhetorical.  I hope that you will join the conversation about this book and these topics online, at www.participatorymuseum.org.  There, you can find the entire text of this book, along with active forum discussions about the content, links to all online references, and space to share your participatory experiments and questions.  This book is just a start, one rock tossed in the water.  I hope that it will help you in your design thinking and that you will share your new ideas and innovations with all of us so that we can move forward together into this new, participatory world.