THE CREATIVITY INCUBATOR IS COMING TO NEW YORK CITY IN NOVEMBER 2019!
If you are located in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Staten Island, or Queens - then we are looking for you!
 
What is the "Creativity Incubator?" it's a chance to put all your pre-conceptions aside, and use your imagination to experiment and explore different ways to  engage with different audiences. The program is hosted by a museum which  becomes a lab - we use that space and the museum's collections to  brainstorm ways to be more interactive and relevant. Activities are led by a "Museum Maverick" - in the past we have worked with Linda  Norris and Rainey Tisdale, authors of Creativity in Museums , Franklin Vagnone of Twisted Preservation, Lia Tamborra from Museum Hack, Gonzalo Casals of the  Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, and for New York City we will be bringing back Andrea Jones of Peak Experience Lab. You can read more about her work here: www.peakexperiencelab.com. We have the "Maverick" now we need the venue.
 
That's where you come in!  We are looking for a museum to host our seventh and final Creativity Incubator.
Past sites have included: Boscobel House & Gardens (Garrison), Raynham Hall Museum (Oyster Bay), Munson Williams Proctor Art  Institute (Utica), Quick Arts Center (Olean), Finger Lakes Boating Museum (Hammondsport), and Adirondack History Museum (Elizabethtown).

WHAT WE NEED IN A HOST SITE:

• You must: be located in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Staten Island, or Queens
• You must: be available November 20 and 21 (one day for set-up/prep and one for the workshop)
• You must: have space for a minimum of 40 people and be able to provide tables and chairs
• You must: have room for breakout sessions
• You must: be accessible to public transportation
• You must: be willing to allow access to period rooms/exhibitions/collections

PRIORITIES FOR SELECTING FINALISTS: 
NYSCA and GHHN staff will review the following to select a host.
Provide the most creative response to the following: The top 5 reasons why we should pick your site.
Tie-breaker: Organizations which have not worked with an outside consultant related to interpretation in the past 3 years. (Please be honest - we can check).
 
WHAT YOU GET FROM BEING A HOST SITE:

• $1,000 rental fee
• Heightened community awareness of your site
• Chance to have museum professionals brainstorm new ideas for your collections/exhibits 
• Free admission to the program for 2 staff members if held at your site

The NYSCA/GHHN Creativity Incubator covers all programmatic expenses (i.e., handouts, catering, supplies, etc)

Ready? Apply by clicking below!  Application Deadline: September 9, 2019

To see other photos from this session, please click here.

We are officially SOLD OUT for our upcoming CI: Northern NY Session - which will be held at the Adirondack History Museum in Elizabethtown. Our #museummaverick for the session is Rainey Tisdale - you can see her in action in the TEDx Boston talk below:
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For this Creativity Challenge, we want you to take work of art - either one from your site or one you can find online (and credit of course!) - and then reimagine/recreate it using unconventional materials. These can be office supplies, or food, or even children's toys.

For inspiration:  check out these classic food paintings, these artistic masterpieces recreated as food, or these "Recreations of Famous Paintings of Myths Using Only My Children’s Toys". 

Bonus points if you recreate the work of art using yourself, like these folks:

As always, don't forget to post your challenge photo on social media using the hashtag #creativityincubator and post in the CI Community on FB, or on Twitter or Instagram - that’s it! Remember to tag GHHN and NYSCA in the posts so we can see them! (GHHN - Greater Hudson Heritage Network, @theGHHN, NYSCA - New York State Council on the Arts, @NYSCArts)

Greetings from your Creativity Incubator (CI) coordinators!

We hope this message finds you well and ready to take on 2019 with renewed energy and a few of the new approaches we learned together through CI workshops.

CI logged thousands of votes and miles, offered interactive programs at five unique museums with unique issues, introduced five “museum mavericks”, launched this blog page and created a Facebook group for continued discussion. We rolled up our sleeves, faced the unknown together and worked hard to imagine different ways to work with our colleagues and communities in meaningful ways.

What’s next?  We would like to hear from you. In particular, we would like to know how we can best support you in your continued search for creative ways to engage your communities. This survey is anonymous and will help us in crafting the future of the Creativity Incubator program - please be as honest as you can!

If you've got 3 minutes, we have 8 quick questions. - Click on the button below to begin the survey.
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To see other photos from this session, please click here.

University art collections present particular challenges — and opportunities -- for innovative interpretation. At the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts at St. Bonaventure University. 17th century religious paintings, 19th century landscapes and 20th century Warhols all exist together.  It’s like a tapas menu—small bites of lots of different things.  Add to that mix a bit of everything in terms of participants—from history museums to arts organizations—and it was a chance to literally and figuratively mix it up.  As a presenter, this gave me a chance to mix it up as well.

Presenters as Activators
As a presenter, there are always those first few moments when you’re puzzling out a room full of participants:  will they want to try activities?  What will they find in common?  Are they lively or will they stand there with their arms crossed?
 
My two big lessons as a presenter are:

• Start as you mean to continue. Don’t begin with a lecture if you want them to be lively discussants.
• Participants only give back the energy the presenter puts in the room.  Bring it and they will too.

By Fabiana Chiu-Rinaldi

There’s this small room on the second floor of a stately house overlooking the Hudson River. Some say this room is in a museum disguised as a house. Indeed, this house is filled with first-rate antiques.  As such, it feels more like a beautiful shell than a home. Nothing wrong with that. As historical objects, the house and its contents appear to fulfill an organization’s mission well, and are proof of what creative minds can do.

The house is Boscobel, circa 1804. It was the home of States and Elizabeth Dyckman, descendants of the New Netherlands Dyckmans. As it fell into disrepair, by the 1950s it seemed destined for demolition. It was moved, piece by piece from its riverfront location in Montrose, NY to Cold Spring, just over 14 miles north. A hospital was built on the original 250 acres.

When it was finally put back together in the early 60s, still overlooking the Hudson, Boscobel opened, showing some of the finest period furnishings of the early 1800s. So fine, it is said, that its collection is second only to that of the Metropolitan Museum’s.
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So what about the small room on the second floor?