Unity Center at the California Museum: Stories Against Intolerance
It’s always a pleasure to evolve our work with museums, and especially a pleasure as museums evolve too. We’ve upgraded our longstanding Storykiosk installation at the California Museum for incorporation in the museum’s Unity Center, a large center in the museum focusing on the state’s diverse people, taking a stand against intolerance and hate.
The Center, designed and developed by West Office with the Museum and community advisers, grows out of a series of hate crimes by white supremacists during the 1999 “Summer of Hate.” The exhibit includes a focus on tolerance and unity, a message that grows stronger and more urgent with time. We focused on visitors’ own experiences standing up for others — verbalizing experiences through stories is a key part building commitment. Visitors answer questions focusing on both personal experiences and commitments such as:
- Have you ever been bullied or discriminated against?
- What problem in your community do you want to solve?
For this exhibit, we redeveloped our bilingual interface, and built an easy path for the Museum to upload videos to their YouTube channel through our cloud-based content management system. Looking forward tracking the progress of the exhibit through visitors’ own stories…
Watch or tell a story
Credit: Robert Durrell courtesy of California Museum