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Short abstract:

Based on a conversation piece, 6-10 workshop participants will beta-test the exhibit prototype and will be asked for feedback on how it could be implemented in their fields of research.

Abstract:

Embark on a creative journey as we explore a conceptual prototype for a museum exhibit, harvesting narratives as data to tackle the complexities of ‘soy sustainability’ amidst the Nitrogen Crisis.This proposal concerns a workshop to test an exhibit prototype in which participant groups will be presented with a conversation piece developed for the research project ‘Soy Stories’: an NWO-funded project, which uses transdisciplinary narrative research approaches to engage with sustainability challenges in Brazil and the Netherlands that are geographically dispersed yet intertwined through soy (van der Vleuten & de Hoop, 2022).This prototype aims to engage audiences in conversation on the Dutch nitrogen crisis, allowing for both public deliberation and data collection thereon at the same time (drawing on the notion of situated intervention cf. Zuiderent-Jerak, 2015). As such, it seeks to explore possibilities for museums to relate to current societal concerns by acting as creative and participatory platforms fostering collaboration, deliberation and research (Gorman, 2020). The exhibit prototype will not be designed for one specific museum or place but will include possibilities that allow for embedding it in different museological and socio-cultural contexts. By building on that, the exhibit seeks to stretch and break paradigms and become a novel approach to bridging science, technology and society (Steward, 2006; Raelin, 2012). The goal of this collective effort - both the prototype and the workshop - is to stimulate continuous change based on how visitors in diverse museums engage with it.