#chidm

While Block 37 is a nice place to shop, its third floor is home to something special, the Chicago Design Museum.  As a non-profit the museum fosters a unique ability to open its doors to different people to have their work featured and new audiences to be reached, as well as never before heard voices to speak. I found ChiDM to be a platform where stories could be told, shared and people brought be together through the experience of doing so.  Something I found insightful in their efforts to bring the museum to life was the way they used Kickstarter and entrepreneurial efforts to mobilize a community and foster a long-run engagement and continuing dedication to their mission. 

Breaking The Lone Entrepreneur Model I feel both Kickstarter and entrepreneurship can tend to have a very individualistic spirit, with a reliance on networking to connect people to their product. However, ChiDMs approach to Kickstarter was different in that they garnered interest and support with people not with the enticement of receiving a piece of the pie via a mailed product, but as an investment in a platform that could one day tell their own story or bring to life the work of others that’s worth hearing.  So much of the work is volunteer oriented and the success of it derives from the drive to continue furthering knowledge and viewing each other’s work through these channels and shows presented. This entrepreneurial model based upon a network of relationships, community, volunteering and non-profit based work opens up an opportunity to engage in works based not around solely what is profitable in a collection, like most museums that  are dependent on selling admission tickets, but on what is compelling to share.