Exhibits Development Group celebrates 500th member milestone for culturenut platform
Exhibits Development Group (EDG), a global leader in travelling exhibitions, has announced that 500 members have joined its culturenut platform, which was launched in 2019 to reduce cultural waste created by museums, theatres and edutainment producers. The platform was created by EDG founder and CEO, Amy Noble Seitz, and has since connected buyers and sellers in more than 30 countries including Africa and Australia.
“With culturenut, we have really created a unique platform that provides a vehicle for museums and institutions to recycle, upcycle, donate and retire their assets mindfully, all while continuing to earn revenue,” says Seitz.
Recognising a need
While overseeing the strategic tour operations of The Gold of Nimrud and The Quest for Immortality, Seitz discovered a persistent need and significant challenge that museums and cultural institutions had when it came to storage, changing exhibitions, and the waste this causes. Every year, museums and other cultural organisations have to deal with the issue of having too many retired assets stored in their buildings, corridors, and theatres.
Additionally, there are always the extra objects that clients were throwing away, such as furniture, supplies for special events and programmes, and gallery renovation materials. Seitz reasoned that someone may find value in that trash. Culturenut is also open to amusement parks, theatres, TV-film production and edutainment producers.
“Culturenut is on a trajectory of becoming the “eBay” for cultural upcycling,” says Sherry Marshall, president of Oklahoma Science Museum, who has already received 20 semi-trucks of Harry Potter and Mythbuster non-branded assets from culturenut. “The platform helps us solve the sustainability issue, providing a vehicle for museums and cultural institutions to recycle, upcycle, donate and retire their assets mindfully and earn revenues while at the same time making new a lot of new projects for our State’s science centers.”
Clients benefit from valuable retired assets
In close collaboration with the University of Minnesota and a prominent tech company from Minnesota and Arizona, EDG was able to design a global application and a repository system for its clients to store these valuable goods. By the autumn of 2023, the combined technology team hopes to have the app available for EDG’s clients to beta test.
Culturenut has so far assisted in locating venues for complete exhibitions from leading producers including GES Events, the Science Museum of Minnesota, Kokoro, the Children Museum of Minnesota, Mythbusters Exhibition LLC, EDG, and DinoWorld. The pandemic period and the subsequent recovery of the cultural and entertainment worlds have undoubtedly contributed to the creation of culturenut, since users were looking for deals and ways to generate new sources of income, and had the time to assess their excess.
“The mission of culturenut is to allow institutions and producers to know the final purpose of the cultural items even before we begin the project,” says Seitz. “Ultimately, the goal is to have everyone take the culturenut pledge to reduce the waste being accumulated by 55,000+ museums, 30,000+ theaters and countless entertainment producers and allow others to benefit from valuable retired assets rather than filling Earth’s landfills.”
Earlier this month, EDG announced the debut of Dinosaurs of the Sahara at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland, Ohio.
Read the BlooLoop article here.
