1. Introduction
‍The MMM Live Collection sessions held by the Museum of Meaningful Moments (MMM) as a ‘moment’ at the Festival of Emergence (FoE). It gives an overview of the purpose and intention behind the project and this specific event, and how this played out from the hosts’ perspectives. We reflect on the outcomes of this ‘moment’ and our observations and reflections on the impact this ‘moment’ had both on ourselves as hosts but also as those who attended the MMM Live Collection sessions.

‍1.1 About the Museum of Meaningful Moments
‍The Museum of Meaningful Moments is an online exhibition and archive space curated by Good Health Design, a design research group based out of Auckland University of Technology. MMM started during Aotearoa New Zealand’s first COVID-19 lockdown in April 2020 as a way to showcase small moments of joy and appreciation while life came to an abrupt standstill. It is designed to encourage people to stop, reflect and share the seemingly small and insignificant moments in our lives and give them new meaning in this new context. The Museum releases prompts periodically through its website (www.museumofmeaningfulmoments.com) and Instagram page (@museofmeaning), which range from introspective (e.g., “Tell us about something you are thankful for”) to observational (e.g., “Find and take a picture of something yellow”). The prompts invite an online community to respond by sending in photos or drawings accompanied by a short, written story, via email or Instagram’s direct messaging service (DM). Submissions are then archived within collections (directly related to a given prompt) on the website, and a curated selection of submissions is also posted to Instagram.

‍1.2 Exploration of MMM as a live event
‍The Festival of Emergence (FoE) setting offered a unique opportunity to explore what MMM might look like in a live setting where participants are immediately present to share and discuss their moments. To this point, MMM had collected its submissions passively through digital media, and participants had an indefinite amount of time to respond.

We proposed that the FoE iteration of this event: MMM Live Collection would be an online ‘scavenger hunt-esque' activity that would bring participants into the ‘collection’ of submissions. Participants would also share in the experience of being given the prompt, and the time frame in which they needed to respond. Where our current MMM platform was a space where submissions are collected, our live event would allow contributors to meet as they shared their moments. We wanted to explore the question: “How can a live event enhance connection and the experience of sharing MMM moments?”

In our previous practice, we have acknowledged the significance of responding to contributors, affirming their submission to recognise the value of these shared, everyday moments. We hoped that bringing contributors together would facilitate this affirmation more organically and create discussion around contributions that would not have arisen through a ‘business as usual’ approach to MMM.

‍2. The Moment
‍MMM’s ‘moment’ at FoE was a series of six live collection sessions over the festival’s two-week duration in September 2021. These sessions were run on Zoom by two hosts from the research team, and lasted between 40 and 50 minutes. Each session began with an animated video, which provided context around MMM and its purpose, revealed a prompt, and gave instructions on how participants were expected to contribute. Participants were then given 20 minutes to respond to the prompt and send in their submission (e.g., a photo, a drawing, and/or a story) via the Zoom chat, by email, or through Instagram DM. At the end of the 20 minutes, the hosts shared on screen the submissions (photos) and invited participants to verbally share the story behind their submission or what it meant to the participant. For those who could not attend the live collection sessions, we released and promoted the prompts on our Instagram and website (https://www.museumofmeaningfulmoments.com/mmm-drs-festival-of-emergence), allowing the online community to take part in their own time. Throughout the event, MMM released both past and new prompts, one per live collection session (see Figure 2). Prompts chosen were light-hearted positive in nature and straightforward to respond to, given the short time frame.  

‍3. Outcomes
‍Over the course of the festival, through both the live collection sessions and our usual submission process, we collected 59 submissions and had 20 participants in attendance across the festival duration. Over half of these submissions were collected from the live collection session (54%) while the remaining were submitted in the day or so following the prompt’s release. All submissions were archived on the MMM website, either in new collections or added to existing collections.  

3.1 Live Collection
‍The live collection sessions yielded many responses and attendees reported them as enjoyable experiences. These also allowed us to test how the dynamics of the submission process changed by being held, collected and shared in real time.  

The excitement of a time-constrained task and the spontaneity of an immediate response worked well in these sessions, with almost all participants in attendance submitting a response. We were given a deeper insight into participants’ excitement and joy when looking for responses to prompts — reactions that we were seldom privy to when interacting through email or instant message. The shorter timeframe given to respond resulted in an emphasis on finding meaning in daily life and everyday objects, creating an experience of “new noticing.” For example, as a response to the ‘Something Yellow’ prompt, one participant shared a decorative heart: “this beautiful yellow heart was a gift from one of my close friends, a reminder to search for sunshine every day and to know that my actions and words have the capacity to be sunshine for others.” They shared that this was something they saw every day, but upon further interrogation through this activity, they were able to articulate their appreciation for what it represented to them.  

‍We noted that the experience of verbally sharing a contribution was almost always accompanied by mirth and joy, and this was often affirmed through the audience of participants reflecting this through smiling and chuckling in agreement. The live events and the shared experience of collectively answering a prompt introduced a personal human element to MMM that was not strongly present in its original more passive format. We found that participants elaborated more on their contributed moments and their connection to them when speaking than what was provided in their written caption. For example, in response to ‘Just Noticed,’ a participant shared a photo, with the caption; “A little natural window, into my neighbour’s garden, a break in the hedge, the delight of orange flowers, and beyond, the ripples of the lake. My own secret view, to a world currently off limits, and yet still there. Beautiful. Ordinary. Extraordinary.”

What the written caption did not convey was they story they shared of their initial struggle to find something they had “just noticed” in the home they had lived in for years, and their joyful surprise of discovering a gap in the trees that had recently emerged.   There were some instances where sharing a submission led to a group discussion. For example, in response to the ‘Something Yellow’ prompt, one participant shared an image of a lemon tree. This provoked a light-hearted conversation amongst the group about the current season being unusual for lemons to grow – to which other participants responded with knowledge about different species of lemons for different seasons – and one participant simply commenting that they loved lemons. This conversation captured the potential for MMM to become a conversation-starter, celebrating and connecting people through direct interaction around small everyday occurrences.
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The emphasis on daily life also created an experience of conscious appreciation. Many participants shared responses that highlighted things that they were surrounded with daily, expressing gratitude for those things. For example, in response to ‘thankful for,’ one participant shared a photo of their dog, whom they see every day, “Most mornings my doggo, Java, sits underneath my desk while I work. She knows it’s time to go to my home office when I pick up my earphones. She keeps me company while I work.” While appreciation for typically “unnoticed” aspects of our lives were already embedded into MMM, we felt that engaging people through MMM Live Collection captured a sense of surprise amongst participants who did not expect their surroundings to hold the meaning that they found.  
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‍3.2 Engagement
‍We had hoped the short time dedication to attend a session (promoted as an hour) would result in greater attendance, but on reflection, the hosts’ time zone being vastly different to many other FoE ticketholders and fellow ‘moment’ hosts likely affected this. In hindsight, offering a range of global time options may have increased attendance. Given that digital conferences are relatively new for many, the sessions revealed challenges of holding international conferences that span time zones.  

A key challenge that emerged from MMM Live Collection was attracting enough participants to generate comfortable discussion. The number of attendees made a noticeable difference to the atmosphere of the event — having more attendees present resulted in more casual conversations and participants being more willing to comment and respond to others, enhancing the shared experience. MMM so far has largely drawn on the connections and networks of the Good Health Design team. Through this event MMM was able to engage new audiences at a global level.

‍3.3 Meaningful moments and connection in the context of COVID-19
MMM Live Collection became a reminder of the importance of human connection and small moments of joy and hopefulness. In a timely turn of events, FoE coincided with Aotearoa New Zealand’s second nation-wide lockdown that started in August 2021. Amongst returning to the burdens of working digitally and the loss of social interaction, MMM Live Collection emerged as a tool for reconnection. The event offered our local participants a conscious break from their day to step out of their routines and into a social space that gave insight into others’ lives, acknowledging the shared struggles of being in lockdown whilst collectively finding small moments to celebrate within it.

‍4. Conclusion
‍Hosting MMM as a live event created an opportunity to explore a new way of engaging and connecting people in the response and sharing of a meaningful moment. It demonstrated the importance of creating a space for social engagement and giving people time to stop and reflect. This is especially paramount in such times as a global health crisis; where our need for a sense of connection with one another is more prevalent than ever and the current environment prevents physical socialisation and those important, meaningful moments of solidarity and connection.