What can museums learn from Podcasts and Public Radio?

I must applaud AAM for turning their keynote mic over to the Moth Radio Hour, produced by PRX and Atlantic Public Radio.   Three storytellers came up to the stage, one after the other, and spoke about their life.  Each was clearly carefully chosen to match the museum professional audience.  One spoke about confronting her preconceived notions of success prior to entering into a life in the arts.  Another spoke of his weird and wonderful tenure as chief docent and caretaker of the Poe house in Queens, New York.  And, a third spoke about how connecting with a particular viewer reawakened his love of performing.  None of these stories were specifically about museum practice.    But, all were clearly chosen for the way they would resonate with the work of museum staff.

The whole experience made me wonder. What can the Moth teach museums?

Make your choices of stories appear seamless: I would guess that the producers had many storytellers to choose from.  They clearly chose these three became of the way they worked together to create a cohesive package.  But, this was not an overt thing.  It wasn’t like the producer said show will be first talk about understanding personal connections to careers in the arts; second, taken about institutional (and personal connections) to the community; and finally, the role and importance of the viewer/ visitor.  Rather than explaining this structure, they just let us experience the stories.  And, then afterwards, we as viewers are allowed to create our own meaning and extrapolate our own structure for the program.

Get down to business: None of the storytellers prefaced their stories.  They wove their introduction of themselves into the story at hand.

Let one event, or one moment, be the core of the story: Rather than exploring a whole epic saga, each storyteller developed their content around one clear, distinct core.  One talked about her experience in a studio class, another about a few months in a particular job, and another about a single performance.

Speak Small but Communicate Big: While the stories from the Moth were bounded in their scope, they really functioned as metaphors for bigger ideas.  In other words, these big themes were embedded in the story—and this is what made those stories resonate later.

Hook it up: Each story started somewhere, took you down an interesting road, and then arrived at a conclusion that basically brought the story full circle.  In other words the introduction was hooked to the conclusion in a satisfying way.

Make it personal: Each storyteller had a different style.  They each really spoke from their own personality.  Rather than making excuses for being Southern or a Geek, they made this an asset in their storytelling.

Start Strong:  Each storyteller caught our attention from the beginning.  They knew that this was the make or break moment for the audience to check out or connect, and they really put work into making the introduction matter.

Crescendo: While you have to start strong, then you need to modulate your presentation.  There has to be quieter moments, and then finally you need to build up to your final, satisfying conclusion.

Control Yourself: Each speaker had his talk memorized—but it didn’t seem memorized.  You got the feeling that the storyteller was in the moment, telling this story for you (rather than just offering a boring canned presentation.)

Prep and Prep again: The MC mentioned that the producer really worked with the storytellers to get them to work in the Moth format. In other words, don’t think that the content will matter to your audience if your performance sucks.  If you choreograph a wonderful experience, that makes the method disappear, then your audience will really understand (and even remember) your content.

This is the second in a series of posts considering museums and storytelling.  The first is here.

Share the Post:

Related Posts

%d bloggers like this: