What do these creative, mind-blowing, reality-warping museum projects have in common?

• An “Amazing Race”-type game that sends teams scampering through the city to explore their communities

• Museum staff hanging out in bars, using beer coasters embossed with provocative questions to start conversations about science

• A education program gone meta modeled on Pixar (Animation Studio) University: museum staff teach other museum staff in the kind of programs usually aimed at visitors

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Got you stumped? They are all winners of the Brookings Paper on Creativity in Museums competition.

And why am I blogging about this? Museums need to foster creativity to thrive in the future! Creativity & innovation are the institutional equivalent of sex—sources of variability that spawn new forms that may thrive (or die) in new environments. (Have I mentioned before that I’m a biologist by training?)

Have you got a project to enter in the Brookings competition this year? The deadline for papers is February 2 but (shhhhh, sharing a secret) I can wrangle you an extension if you need it, just ask.