NYC research trip (museums, galleries and maybe a couple of cocktails)

I've started planning my trip to New York this week. I'm heading across the pond to meet up with Catherine Mailhac, a friend and ex-colleague of mine from Museums Sheffield. Catherine's been awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship to go and research education and outreach programmes in Washington, New York and Paris. She'll be meeting lots of museum staff, visiting lots of museums and galleries and will be blogging all her adventures. Her experiences, case studies and ideas will be shared and put into practise back at Museums Sheffield. The lucky peeps.

Sounds like a great trip....and so I've invited myself along for a few days of the New York leg.

I'm going to be looking at two things. Firstly, permanent provision for sign language users within museum and gallery settings. I want to discover some new ideas and compare provision with what's happening here in the UK regarding permanent interpretation for sign language users (whose first language is not English). This is a growing area of interest fuelled by my involvement in the deaf community and my final few months of BSL Level 3.

Secondly, social media. And digital technologies within exhibitions. As part of Stories of the World, a Cultural Olympiad project, I'll be working with young volunteers who will be curating and programming a series of projects and exhibitions in the run up to 2012. Social media and digital technologies will be at the heart of their work. I was hoping to meet up with Shelley Bernstein at the Brooklyn Museum to talk about how they use social media and digital technologies - having read her recent article in Museums Practise (December). Unfortunately she's off to New Zealand to talk about their social media work - unsurprisingly in high demand but I'll see who else I can catch up with.

I'll be blogging and documenting my trip on here, so check back for pictures and commentary.

And there may be the odd cocktail thrown in for good measure. Would be rude not to really.