  What does the age of participation look like from the perspective of a museum
visitor? Arguably, the concept of participative experiences is already so
deeply ingrained in our culture that we may not even think about it as
participation. Museum visitors engage in a number of activities, of which
observing the exhibits is only one part. Since most visitors come to the museum
together with someone else, they spend time and attention on the people they
came with, and often the needs of the group are given priority over individual
preferences. How can museums tap into these activities - and make themselves
relevant to visitors? In this chapter we will try to approach this
constructively, as a design opportunity. Could it be productive for the museum
to consider itself not only as a disseminator of knowledge, but also as the
facilitator of participative activities between visitors?
  In what follows, we will outline a range of practical design projects that
serve as examples of this approach. These projects were part of the European
Union funded Horizon2020 project GIFT, a cross-disciplinary collaboration
between researchers, artists, designers and many international museums and
heritage organisations, exploring the concept of interpersonal museum
experiences (see https://gifting.digital/). What the projects have in common is
that they build on visitors co-creating and sharing their own narratives in the
museum context. We suggest that these projects demonstrate a spectrum of
possibilities: From experiences that take place almost without any museum
involvement, to those that give museums a role in curating these narratives.
