The thematic collection campaign (tematikus múzeumi gyűjtőkampány) of social museums is a form of participatory and collaborative museum practice with a unique methodology. The campaign is a way of developing collections and exhibition scripts with the active participation of museum users or the individuals and communities who make up the museum’s social context. It has the following constituents: an open call for the voluntary donation of objects, photographs, documents, stories (hereinafter: objects) that serve a specific purpose or theme in the museum, receiving these objects and processing them together with participants, documenting the process of interpretation, exhibiting, publishing, and archiving the objects.

 
 
The concept
 
By introducing the concept of the thematic collection campaign, we aim to place the practice, known in Hungarian museum circles as donating or lending objects (with a focus on the gesture made by participants), on the map of museological methodology. The term is similar to outreach and community project used in the English-speaking world or Mitmachen Projekt used in Germany, but it does not cover such a diverse range of collaboration. It is also slightly different from collecting project or participatory collecting, which also involve a wide range of participatory practices. These usually refer to collections development projects not necessarily carried out with volunteers, but in other collaborative forms, such as fieldwork, education, school workshops, etc.
 
Thematic collection campaign has a more limited range of meaning: it is an umbrella term for museological projects that can involve various topics and are functionally complex, but are always based on voluntary participation, mobilise a great number of participants if possible, and are carried out within the museum domain. The word campaign highlights the active, mobilising, temporally limited aspect of bringing objects into the museum. Thematic refers to the fact that the driving force behind participation is a topic (or feature) announced in the open call that participants can relate to through their objects. These campaigns are also community projects in the sense that they focus on an activity that originates from outside the institution. Their methodological minimum is the use of museological tools in the presentation and handling of objects, but within a rather broad framework. Their results are typically, but not exclusively, summarised in the form of an exhibition presented in a gallery or museum space. In many cases, the campaign creates comprehensive museum projects: participation is often extended to the research process, the fieldwork, the exhibition, collections development, and to both real and virtual domains.
 
The most comprehensive thematic campaign is a community project with the dual goals of acquisition and exhibition. This is characteristically also a research project: the exhibition, as an open work, gives participants the opportunity to shape the concept through their objects and thoughts. Some projects expand the work in progress even further and allow focal points of the research to be determined with the involvement of participants. Asking for 1 object only is a special form of thematic campaign that requires preliminary interpretation from the participant: the selection of only 1 object from the set of possible personal items. Depending on the curator’s and the participant’s concept (and the coordination of the two), the object can enter the collection or can be a guest object on loan for the exhibition’s duration. In the exhibition, objects that were already in the collection, donated objects, and guest objects are all of the same status and all contribute to a shared reading. The documentation and archival of guest objects, however, requires tailor-made solutions: once the campaign has closed, these can become part of the collection as virtual objects with an emphasis on their associated stories and meanings.
 
Campaigns launched during the exhibition are also common in museum practice: these build on the mobilising power of the finished display and the interpretations on offer. In this case, participation may be constrained by the limited space available and the closed (or closing) concept. These difficulties are mitigated by an archiving and source-generating campaign that takes place during the exhibition but in virtual space, capable of keeping participants engaged once the exhibition is already closed. Another special case is the artistic contest that adjoins the exhibition, where the results (including social reflection on the topic) may also become collection items.
 
 
Disciplinary background
 
The term thematic collection campaign endeavours to describe a fairly new acquisition practice that puts the emphasis on participation. The collection campaign itself is, however, an older museological practice: with the aim of acquiring new collection pieces, museums have been mobilising the public for a long time.  
Campaigns from the 2000s, however, have introduced a new form of social activity that took shape within the museum, where it was given a function but also retained its intrinsic value. Previous campaigns were focused on objects established in the historiographical canon (such as relics of important events in national history), with the intention of incorporating them into the museological canon, as they were missing from museum collections. These campaigns were therefore only partially open, as they defined the circle of objects, already invested with meaning, that the museum was looking for. With this expectation, they ruled out the possibility of musealising the subjective and social experiences these objects carried: they were thinking exclusively in terms of artefacts instead of campaign objects, meanings, and life stories that would support the meta-museum concept and museum fieldwork. That being said, filling in the gaps in the museum’s collection is a legitimate goal and it is still a (central) component of many contemporary collection campaigns.
 
Around the year 2000, experimental collection campaigns prevalent in UK museums since the 1990s started to resemble a movement: several museums announced millennium-themed community collecting and outreach projects. Methodological accounts of these initiatives point out that ‒ apart from serving current political agendas ‒ the most important objective of the exhibitions created from voluntarily donated objects was to increase museums’ social embeddedness, or more precisely, to expand it from the white middle classes towards marginalised groups. These projects signified a shift within outreach work: community work, which used to be the domain of outreach departments, slowly became an integral part of curatorial thinking, collections management, and the museum’s operation in general (Reynolds 2000). These projects did try to create the methodological foundations for a new exhibition and acquisition strategy, and in that sense they were still invested in an object- and collections-centred approach. Yet their interest in contemporary material culture, its personal dimensions (with an awareness of gaps in the collection), and its new fieldwork methodology (such as thematic campaigns) already bore witness to a process that moved museums away from an institution whose main goal is to collect objects towards one whose primary task is to represent social diversity (Rhys 2011: 35). As for the Hungarian context, thematic campaigns were not so much the product of participatory institutions, but rather that of contemporary cultural studies, where they appeared as a related challenge in museum methodology.  
 
Theory
 
A basic theoretical principle of thematic campaigns is that museums view every object in the world as a potential collection item, and they invite members of society to share (or even take over) the right to decide which of these objects should be featured in the exhibition or the collection. Channelling participants’ experiences with objects and related themes into museum work ‒ with all its idiosyncrasies such as random, voluntary selection ‒ makes this practice the museological analogy of contribution-based projects. Crowdsourcing and citizen science, which started out experimentally in the early 2000s and soon became common practice, originate in engineering and scientific projects that collect and validate data with the involvement of a great number of volunteers from different backgrounds. Volunteers are recruited through an open call and mostly cooperate online, substituting the work of professional employees. Community knowledge as a problem-solving model brought about the realisation that the diverse, fragmented knowledge of participants and their experiential expertise were a hidden resource for the institution that could be activated. In the museum, this method also meant a new direction in thinking about communities, i.e. a shift away from source communities towards constituent communities (cf. Mensch 2012: 89; Handschin‒Lichtensteiger‒Vögeli 2012).
 
According to the community knowledge model, a randomly selected and possibly large number of people, objects, thoughts, and stories can create a field that would not, in this form, otherwise exist. On the (real or virtual) museum platform created by the campaign, fragmented elements of knowledge (everyday household objects) do not simply coexist, but enter into dialogue with the museum’s knowledge and are thus awarded a new status: they become campaign objects with social significance. The primary platform for attributing social significance to a personal household object is the open call that sets the campaign’s theme. According to curators’ observations, the circle of participants mobilised by the campaign does not, or only partially overlaps with the social circle that normally donates objects to the museum. In other words, the public’s willingness to participate depends upon the theme and the media outlets used for announcing the open call. A surprising theme can be just as encouraging as the topicality of a more common one. Special dates (millennium, anniversary, international museum day, the museum’s renovation, etc.) allow curators to phrase new questions and participants to use the museum in a different way. The magic of numbers is in itself a mobilising force. Instead of asking the public for objects in general, many campaigns announce that they would like to work with exactly one hundred or one thousand items, a quantity already given significance by the round number (Crowley 2000; Reynolds 2000). The wholeness of the targeted number elevates and legitimates banal, personal objects that have no special significance in everyday life.
 
 
Methodology
 
The owners of the story and object who are mobilised by the campaign are generally motivated to engage in participatory work: as soon as they step into the museum space, they become initiators. The campaign gives them the chance to better understand the museum’s operation and to attribute social significance to their personal experiences. This realisation, however, usually does not come until a later moment in the campaign. The shift in curatorial and research attitudes is not automatically followed by a change in visitors’ image of the museum; it is therefore useful to make reciprocal education a component of the participatory process. Tools for integrating participants and breaking down barriers can include behind-the-scenes guided tours, discussions in museum storage spaces, or debates around the meaning of collection items and personal objects. An important (closing) chapter of this dialogical process can be the inclusion of participants in the afterlife of campaign objects (in the museum’s repositories or archives).
 
The museological objective of the collective work process is to explore the narratives and personal reflections attached to submitted objects, which in turn opens the way for the attribution of meaning before, during, or even after the project. The object combinations discovered by participants and curators, the ‘mnemotechnic energy’ (Aby Warburg) of everyday and museum objects turns the project into something like a laboratory (Korff 1993).
 
Once the campaign has finished, the meanings (narratives) live on, attached to the objects (catalogue cards) and/or as autonomous genres (archived sources, publications). Methods for the collection and generation of texts can be diverse, including texts readily prepared and typed up by participants, online forms, oral history, thematic interviews, writing museum labels with participants or allowing them to formulate them in their own way, etc. Object and story do not necessarily arrive at the museum together; sometimes it takes weeks of interpretative work for them to find each other.
 
Besides (or rather before) the attribution of meaning, the aim of the collective work process is to select an object (or to narrow down the range of candidate objects) that would represent the person, community, topic, etc. An important curatorial observation regarding thematic campaigns is that conscious reflection is often missing when it comes to personal object worlds, even in the case of participants who find it easy to interpret objects and signs that represent others (Crowley 2000).
 
Opening the door to subjective readings, as well as a personal tone in meaning attribution and collective work, can be a double-edged sword: it can be an effective tool and a risk factor at the same time. There is no bulletproof way of handling personal and collective sensitivities: it is the participatory process itself that gives rise to compromise solutions that are acceptable in the given situation, and these can range from complete anonymity through multivocal texts to the full disclosure of personality. Upon entering the museum space, participants mobilised by the contraselective, voluntary process can define the extent of the “emotional investment” they are willing to make (Simon 2010: 130), but may also be influenced by the collective work and the process of initiation into the museum. The museum may utilise several different strategies to enhance the acceptance of participating persons and identities: it may use the voice, texts, or (minority) languages of participants within the exhibition and the collection, or evoke unspeakable stories by displaying objects without commentary.
 
Campaigns may realise multiple participatory models. In their most basic form, they are limited to the donation of objects. In this case, the contribution-based participative model is defined by the donation/loan as the “minimal form of participation” (Flagmeier 2012: 196‒197; Simon 2010: 184‒189). More dynamic participatory models, such as collaboration and co-working, usually appear in thematic campaigns that consider participation as the only adequate methodology. These campaigns are rooted in the failure of passive collecting and the urge to move from object to narrative in a process where curators are experimenting with topics beyond the museological canon. As research fields, contemporary life and object worlds, stories, and subjective meanings rely on social participation as their primary source. Participative work shifts the emphasis from a traditional, curator-led, object-centred approach towards people, their experiences and their ideas of the past, present, and future (Korff 1993; Rhys 2011: 88; Frazon 2012; Fejős 2013: 53). Certain campaigns acquire a new quality by transforming the participatory process into their main objective. Working on projects where acquisition is no longer the main focus can contribute to community development, as well as increase museum literacy and interactions with the institution, which in turn enhances the social embeddedness of museums. Some curators think that in the long run the impact of social processes is more important than the collected object, whose future decoding is a procedure with a rather uncertain outcome (Durrans 1993). It is unsure, however, whether process-based projects can be archived and displayed using the museum’s toolkit, i.e., whether campaigns would ultimately lose the characteristics that link them to the museum.
 
 
Criticism
 
Most criticism and curatorial self-reflection touches upon the methodologies of process-based community work and product-centred (exhibition-oriented) practice. A research project and the processing of objects (receiving submitted objects, conducting interviews, attributing meaning) can take several years and may necessitate the flexible modification of original goals and the coordinated work of a curatorial team (curatorial team 2.0) (Ross 2004; Fejős‒Frazon eds. 2007: 17; Findley 2000; Pitt‒Loosemore 2000; Wenk 2012).
 
Campaign projects compel both participants and curators to think outside the box. This can include accepting donations that may not fit the original criteria or unconditionally embracing campaign results. Dilemmas, conflicts, and dead ends are inherent features of balancing between the result and the process, or the aesthetic and the ethical understanding of projects (Bishop 2006): they are not failures but methodological idiosyncrasies. For example, if some of the objects will not be exhibited, then the selection itself can take the form of collaborative work, where besides the curator, external partners are also allowed to make decisions about the objects’ status (Flagmeier 2012; Piontek 2012).
 
Campaigns may have an effect on collection work as a whole: subjective contexts may shed new light on objects in the collection and encourage the reinterpretation of collections (Ross 2004). The lessons learnt from a participatory project may even call for a revision of acquisition strategies, such as redefining the circle of collectors, broadening the circle of donation types, and removing restrictions on intangible ‘objects’ or duplicates (Crowley 2000). The afterlife of objects that enter the collection through campaigns is a sensitive issue. What rights are given to the curator in the participatory process? What context can the object be used in? Who decides about this? What meaning does an object bring to another exhibition? What role can it play in a publication or in an upcoming temporary exhibition? Does it necessarily continue to carry the meanings it acquired during the participatory process?
                                                                                                                
Campaigns are thematically diverse, but a large number of projects focus on social responsibility and sensitisation to social issues. They present marginalised or criminalised groups, environmental issues, local, religious, ethnic, and gender-related topics, bringing them to the focus of the collection. Themes are often defined after a review of the collection, giving a chance for underrepresented sociocultural groups and themes to enter the collections strategy (Burdon 2000; Rhys 2014: 20). This is aided by thematic collection campaigns, where open calls for objects, if announced through the right platforms, can reach wider circles of society and expand the museum’s social horizons.
 
From a formal point of view, open calls as means of communication encourage public participation, i.e., they give every member of society the chance to take part in thinking about the museum. This seemingly open attitude is, however, often restricted by the topic itself (e.g. a historical date), the language of the open call, or the forum where it appears (e.g. a lesbian weekly). Some campaigns are aimed at communities instead of individuals and are therefore characterised by representative participation. In such cases, instead of whole communities (such as an association), it is their representative who takes part in museum work and meaning attribution. The personal aspect is thus relegated to the background; it is rather the (real or imagined) collective expression of thoughts and the establishment of common ground that takes centre stage (Reynolds 2000). The use of a collective voice in the museum is, however, a rather sensitive issue: it calls for a compromise from representatives, community members, and curators alike, and includes the possibility of subsequent dissent or commentary.
 
A recurrent criticism of campaigns highlights the fact that, although open calls can mobilise the middle classes, they are not the ideal medium for addressing poorer or marginalised groups and the elites. A possible methodological answer to this involves curators supplementing the collection campaign with targeted fieldwork that allows it to get closer to participants, personal objects, and subjective meanings (Reynolds 2000; Ross 2004; Crowley 2000; Findley 2000; Mensch 2012; Piontek 2012).
 
Vera Schleicher