Extending Museum Walls. Reaching out with site-specific, digital, and participatory interventions

As museums are shifting their traditional focus away from collections and toward their audiences, they are experimenting with new strategies for communication and participation. Consequently, in recent years, a large number of outreach and visitor engagement projects, implemented by museums, have seen the light of day. Although these projects vary significantly in design and setting, they are typically informed by ideas of inclusion, dialogue, and sharing of knowledge – principles that have been inspired by social media and significantly improved by developments in digital technologies. Despite the increasing numbers of museum-facilitated outreach projects, we still know relatively little about the qualitative outcomes for either users or museums. This article investigates the potential impact of including an outreach component in a new museum project that combines an urban setting and the use of digital media.