ABOUT THE AUTHOR NINA SIMON has been described as a “museum visionary” by Smithsonian Magazine for her audience-centered approach to design. She is the Executive Director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH), where she led an institutional turnaround based on grassroots community participation. She has consulted with hundreds of international museums,

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you for joining me on this quest for relevance. This book was a pleasure to write, a learning journey that challenged and inspired me. I experienced a lot of positive cognitive effect as I wrote it (accompanied by plenty of effort). I am especially grateful to Elise Granata, who served as lead content

A GREAT TREASURE Imagine you are entrusted with a great treasure. A stunning painting. A perfect aria. A pristine waterfall. The word of God. You want to protect the treasure, so you wrap it in ritual and reverence. You put it in a room that is only open to the public during working hours. In

EMPATHETIC EVANGELISTS At its heart, building relevance is about living in the creative tension between evangelizing the things you care about and listening with interest to what others care about. It’s about radiating the inside out, and inviting the outside in. No one does this better than religious organizations. While art institutions and government agencies

TRANSFORMATIVE RELEVANCE What happens when you discover that becoming relevant to a community of interest requires profound institutional change? At that point, you have a decision to make about your willingness to restructure your room for this community. Transformative relevance work is intense. It takes time. It requires all parties to commit. Institutional leaders have

MEASURING RELEVANCE Doron’s story raises a common question about relevance: how do you measure it? If the heart of relevance is people unlocking meaning for themselves, how do you identify the moment when the key slides into the lock successfully? How do you measure something so personal and idiosyncratic? This question is especially complicated when

PART EX-CON, PART FARMER, PART QUEEN Each spring, Doron Comerchero walks into Pajaro Valley High School. The farmer-turned-activist is ready to sell struggling teenagers on something they may want in their hearts but don’t know how to access: a ticket to a meaningful life. Doron runs a youth development program called FoodWhat in Santa Cruz

ONE CORE, MANY DOORS There is a natural evolution of relevance for organizations in relation to their mission or core content. Most start with one core and one door. This is both limiting and focused. A group of people start a children’s museum because they want a place for their kids to learn and build

GETTING PAST THE PRETTY FISH One of the greatest “tests” of your mission’s relevance comes when you have important but controversial content to share. For entities like the Foster Youth Museum or The Dream Unfinished, this test is easy to pass. These institutions were formed explicitly with an advocacy function. Even as they present exhibitions

CO-CREATING RELEVANCE Ten Thousand Things takes an approach that is both traditional and radical. Radical, in that they are breaking down forms and conventions of how theater is produced, and for whom. Traditional, in that they present existing, canonical Western plays for audiences. Ten Thousand Things makes the plays. The audience watches. But what about