BY organizations invite community co-creation.
Do you invite community members to contribute their talents, interests, ideas, and resources to your work? Sometimes the fastest way to expand and diversify who your organization is OF and FOR is to expand who programs are created BY.
When you share authority and make it possible for more programs to be co-created BY community members, you tell your community that you respect them. That you trust them. That you want to empower them to share their skills and talents. The more programs are BY your community, the more your community will feel ownership and investment in your work.
There are many concrete ways to increase community participation. It starts with expanding and diversifying your definition of partners who can make your organization stronger. Then, you can identify ways to invite, encourage, support, and collaborate with them to bring their energy, connections, and resources into your work. When your programs are created BY the community, you'll do a better job being OF and FOR the community.
A few favorite BY resources:
How to Make a Community Issue Exhibition [toolkit], Santa Cruz, CA, USA
No Longer Us and Them: How to Change into a Participatory Museum and Gallery [report] by Piotr Bienkowski, London, UK
The Participatory Museum [book] by Nina Simon, Santa Cruz, CA, USA
How Visitors Changed Our Museum [book] by Barbara Henry and Kathleen McLean, Oakland, CA, USA
The Human Library [program model], Copenhagen, Denmark
Pop Up Museum [toolkit], Santa Cruz, CA, USA