The exhibition of the participants : The exhibitions Hej! and Present in theory and practice

Many institutions currently work with visitor participation. Participatory culture is basically to invite visitors to participate and to give an opportunity to co-creation. In my research I have studied two projects. The first one is the exhibition Hej! produced by Postmuseum (the Swedish mail museum) and the second one is Present by Riksutställningar (a Swedish government). This development indicates that the museums are on their way towards a new definition. Earlier museums were defined as a source of knowledge which purpose was to spread lore to the people. Now museums are opened up and their purpose is to let the people participate. I have investigated how the participation culture is embedded in the Swedish cultural policy, how these two institutions (Postmuseum and Riksutställningar) have worked with participation culture and what the exhibitions have led to, and what purpose and goals the institutions had when they produced the exhibitions. My issue has been answered by interviews with the managers of the projects and by studying cultural policy documents. Simply expressed you can say that the participation culture is integrated in the cultural policy, though it’s never said expressively. You can, however, read the documents and interpret them that way. In the investigation I also illustrate the relationship between participation culture and spectator culture. They are often set as a dichotomy, where the participation culture is the democratic and positive one and the spectator culture is the obsolete and dull one. I problematize the participation culture but I also see a lot of possibilities in the phenomena