I’ll admit to a fascination with IKEA, the Swedish home furnishing megastore with major outposts in major cities. It may be because the store impressed me when I first saw one in the Netherlands decades ago (so big, so clean, so cheap). It may be that I’ll like any<\/i> store that offers Swedish meatballs and lingonberries in the cafeteria.<\/p>\n
But in recent visits, I’ve been impressed with the way they convey their message and their culture to their customers. Certainly, it’s there in every aspect of what they sell, what they charge, and how they arrange it for sale. But there are also these little factoids posted in odd little places where people have time to look.<\/p>\n
There are table signs in the lunchroom, explaining in friendly prose why you have to bus the table yourself, why there aren’t as many sales people to help you as you might like, and why you have to assemble all the furniture yourself (all to benefit you<\/i> of course). There are even little conversation cards posted in the rest room stalls, with a short paragraph and a photo about the store’s strategy, values, or history (“IKEA” is an acronym constructed from the founder’s initials — Ingvar Kamprad — plus the first letters of the farm and village where he grew up — Elmtaryd and Agunnaryd).<\/p>\n
A bit obvious, perhaps, to tell a little story in places where people have a moment to read one. But it’s an obvious step I haven’t seen in most cultural facilities.<\/p>\n
Much of our job in managing cultural spaces is to increase our visitors’ opportunity to succeed in the task they came for — learning something new, recalling something remembered, connecting with a partner or friend through a shared experience. Dare I suggest that interesting little factoids in the restroom advance many of these goals?<\/p>\n
At IKEA, I’ll be darned if I didn’t emerge from the restroom with an urge to share the little factoid with my wife (“Do you know where the name IKEA comes from?” says I with a knowing tone). She had a different factoid to share (“Do you know why they design all their furniture to fit in flat packages?” says she). Together we constructed a little moment of meaning (not dramatic meaning, mind you, but a tiny little moment), with IKEA as both the subject and the source.<\/p>\n
So, I hereby propose the installation of little frames in all cultural facility restroom stalls (okay, urinals too), with a rotating series of information cards about the venue, the event, the discipline, or the artists. To encourage and reward conversation, you would need to post different<\/i> factoids in every stall (giving everyone an opportunity to look smart). And of course, the factoids would need to be interesting, relevant to the event, and quirky enough to be shared (a little tidbit about acoustics, perhaps, or theater terminology, or a nugget about the composer to be performed — “Did you know that medical tests of a lock of Beethoven’s hair<\/a> suggest he had lead poisoning that may have caused his life-long illnesses, impacted his personality, and possibly contributed to his death?” — and other happy stuff like that).<\/p>\n Some symphony, theater, museum, or performing arts facility must<\/i> have thought of this already. Please let me know who you are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ll admit to a fascination with IKEA, the Swedish home furnishing megastore with major outposts in major cities. It may be because the store impressed me when I first saw one in the Netherlands decades ago (so big, so clean, so cheap). It may be that I’ll like any store that offers Swedish meatballs and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1009","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}