Planet Word Museum : a proposal to build and manage crowdsourced content

Abstract

Planet Word is a new, non-profit museum in downtown Washington, DC, dedicated to celebrating language, words, and literacy. Intended to “bring language to life through revolutionary technology, interactive exhibits, and voice activation,” the multimedia installations depend heavily on extensive and elaborate hardware and software. Located at the now renovated Franklin School—a National Historic Landmark—Planet Word was originally scheduled to open in late 2019. The opening was pushed back to the spring of 2020, and then a worldwide pandemic placed everything on hold. As city regulations eased, Planet Word finally opened under careful Covid19-safe conditions on October 22, 2020. Two days later, due to another increase in local cases, the museum temporarily closed again.

Upon entering, each visitor is given a “stylus” to keep or return at the end of their visit. Starting on the fourth floor, visitors follow a path from one exhibit to another, with each exhibit installed in a separate room. The stylus can be used in several exhibits to tap onscreen buttons that allow the visitor to answer questions, advance to a different screen, or choose an activity or category. Planet Word has been working to earn traditional media coverage and to develop a social media following. The staff have hosted online poetry readings, author talks, comedian nights, games nights, and classes. At the moment its Facebook page has 2590 followers, and its Facebook posts receive approximately 8 “likes” per post. On Instagram1, the account @PlanetWordDC has 3,344 followers and each post receives dozens if not hundreds of interactions. Although there have been livestreamed events aplenty, the YouTube and Vimeo channels for Planet Word only have 3 and 4 videos respectively. [For comparison, an older non-traditional museum in the area, the American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM) in Baltimore, has 95 videos and 585 subscribers on YouTube, over 48,000 Facebook followers, and 24,900 Instagram followers.] Planet Word is truly a museum for the general public, for all ages, for people from any language background and any sensory ability or disability. I do not know if there will be an entrance fee, but during its one month opening, the museum was free to all who were able to access its online reservation system. Donations, of course, are welcomed. Conceived by an educator, the museum has many “partners” in the education and homeless communities, and is clearly intended to be a museum that all schoolchildren in the DC area will visit in their youth. Large meeting spaces and corporate sponsorships also imply there will be elite events in the evening hours when the museum is closed to the public.