It’s January, and though my internal clock is still very wired to the scholastic calendar (September will always and forever be the start of a new year to me), budget and program cycles are telling me it’s a fresh start and a chance to do something new and cool for 2015.

What will your guiding words for this year be? Photo of sculpture from outside the Fuller Craft Museum, photograph by Meg Winikates.

For me, that includes things like planning new exhibits, getting a new set of museum guides up to speed with drop-in programming in the galleries, and coming up with ways to evaluate last year’s changes and figure out where we can be even more responsive to our visitors in both exhibition and program design.  (I’m currently working on ways to get visitors to inspire each other to greater heights of creative play in our Investigate Zone designed for visitors under 5 and their accompanying adults.)

Here are a few cool reads to help you get inspired (personally and professionally) for the new year:

• Nina Simon over on Museum 2.0 has a neat interview with a member of Museum Hack, thinking about how to reinvigorate the tour experience.
• Seeking inspiration and a way to keep on track for the new year?  The Artful Parent has suggestions for making a vision board to hang in your home or office.  (This is much prettier than the strings of to-do lists I tape to my apartment door!)  She’s also doing a daily sketchbook project.
• The Jealous Curator is doing a monthly “Creative Un-Block” challenge: January’s features altering copies of the same image in as many ways and with as many materials/media as one can imagine.

What are you planning for next year?  What grand experiments and adventures are getting your grin a little wider than usual?