Case Study: Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience

      The Wing Luke museum has a long history of engaging their community to co-create their exhibition. They focus on empowering their community members to create exhibitions and tell their own stories on their own terms. The community- based exhibition model they implement aims to integrate community members throughout the process. This is called Co-creating. Co-creative projects are when partnerships are made with participants rather than based solely on institutional goals.

      Their exhibition Sikh Community: over 100 years in the Pacific Northwest came about when museum staff and organizers from the Sikh Coalition conducted an informal outreach to form a committee to direct the exhibition. Sikh coalition is a volunteer organization that began in 2001 to address the misdirected hate and discrimination that the Sikh community faced in the aftermath of 9/11 started. It was made up of 19 people through outreach and conducted oral history with 29 individuals and gathered artifacts, photographs, and documents from 14 individuals and families. By the end there were 75 community members in total helping in creating this exhibition.

Organizational structure of Wing Luke Museum

·         Non- profit organization with 501c3 status

·         Volunteer-run board of trustees currently with 20 members

·         Each member is a member of one of the following committees:

o   Capital campaign

o   Development

o   Finance and capital project advisory

·         16 full-time staff and 11 part-time staff

      Community members participate from exhibition development to design to fabrication and installation, and including exhibition fundraising, publicity and marketing, education and public programming.  The museum aims to put community members in decision-making positions where they are empowered to determine project direction, set priorities, make selections, and guide project execution.

Here is a diagram of their Exhibit team

On a basic level the exhibit team consists of:

·         Museum staff- who are in charge of developing the community vision for an exhibitions and bring it to being. They are the “technical advisors, project administrators and community organizers.”

·         Core community members- consist of 10-15 members who form the Community Advisor Committee (CAC). The members have a direct connection with the exhibition topic and are mostly leaders within other communities. They make the decisions and are in charge of making the main message and encourage participation within the community.   

·         Participating community members- the contribute to the exhibition by:

o   Participating in and helping conduct interviews, translating and  transcribing

o   Artifact, photograph and document loans and gathering

o   General research

o   Outreach

o   Serving as docents, speakers and volunteers.

According to Nina Simons There three main reasons that cultural institutions engage in co-creative projects:

1.       To give voice and be responsive to the needs and interest of local community members.

2.       To provide a place for community engagement and dialogue

3.       To help participants develop skills that will support their own individual and community goals.

For the community the wing Luke museum is an essential community institution because they are part of the process and their voices are heard there is a strong sense of ownership and pride.

Here are some tips from Nina Simon to facilitate co-creation in museums:

1.     Staff members and participants respect each other’s goals and interests in pursuing the project. They should create a set of shared guidelines for what is and isn’t acceptable and expected over the duration of the project.

2.     Staff members should not harbor pre-conceived ideas about the outcome of the project. They should be willing to let the project go in the direction that is of greatest value to participants, within the scope of the project guidelines.

It’s important to think about how to empower the visitors. How can the staff give amateurs the skills and the tools needed to accomplish shared goals?

To give visitors the skills and tools needed to lead their own tours, here are some suggestions to empower them

§  Provide visitors with maps and encourage them to mark their favorite places as they explore the exhibits

§  Ask visitors to assign a theme or title to a collection of their favorite places

§  Post the maps and titles in a central location along with the times when visitors will be available to give the tours they have devised

§  Make available interpretative literature or staff consultations to give tour guides reference materials for their tours

Co-creative projects and the community process that Wing Luke Museum has allows museums to form partnerships and bonds that feed the interests and needs of the community it serves. Engaging the community to become a part of the process in designing programs and exhibition it empowers and give ownership to the participants.

Special Education Classes and the Museum-Coast to Coast

In thinking about my first post for the blog, I immediately thought of an audience that we don't often think of when we think about school groups, a special education classroom that addresses the needs of students with multiple and severe handicaps. At the school I taught at last year, one of my favorite groups to sub for was the K-2 MD (multiple disabilities) unit. This small group of students has a huge amount of personality and an eagerness to learn that makes teaching them a joy. The teacher, Marcy*, agreed to talk with me about the way she approaches planning and executing field trips with her very unique group of students.

Shannon: Thanks for agreeing to talk to me about your class. Can you tell me a little bit about them?
Marcy: My group is a relatively big one this year as MD rooms go. I have eight students with disabilities ranging from severe autism spectrum disorders to Down Syndrome and genetic disorders that severely hinder physical and cognitive growth. Many of my students also have behaviors that draw attention to us and can be heightened by a new environment.
Shannon: So obviously, when you take them on a trip, you have a lot of things to consider. What are the most important things to you when choosing a field trip location?
Marcy: When choosing a field trip I make sure that its a safe environment that is willing to tolerate the different behavior of my students. I like to make sure that there will be opportunities to interact with same-age peers as a practice time for social skills. I also need a place that has a lot of things to do so the students engaged the entire time. I don't like down time.
Shannon: Are there any types of places that are out of the question?
Marcy: Oh yea there are. Last year I had to ask Benjamin's* parents to go to Deer Park (an outdoor park in Northeast Ohio with a petting zoo, lake and areas to feed fish and ducks). I know you aready know this, but Benjamin tends to run off and he loves to climb things. I was terrified that he was going to climb a fence and fall into a fish pond. I've never had to jump into a lake for a student, and I didn't want to start that day. Big, open outdoor places and spaces where there are multiple exits really make me nervous. I always have my aides with me and often a parent or two, but it only takes one second for a child to wander off or bolt for the door. Just one exit and entry point makes me sure that the kids won't try to fly the coop. I know museums are your field, but I would say they would be the toughest place to go. My students would not be quiet and it would be hard for them not to touch. They are also kind of complicated when it comes to layout, and I could just see Marcus* (a student that locked himself in the bathroom stall during my first subbing experience with them) running to hide in some dark corner.
Shannon: So, are there places you have been that were really successful?
Marcy: There are two that stick out to me. The first is Skedaddles, an indoor playground with bouncy castles and other fun equipment. The kids got the chance to interact with their peers and do so in a safe and somewhat familiar environment. The second is really obvious, but it is the dance the local YMCA sponsors for MD kids all over the county. They love getting dressed up and going and it gives us a chance to talk about social behaviors that are appropriate at special occasions like dances which translate to things like parties or weddings in their real lives.

*names have been changed

After talking with Marcy, I was a little sad that museums were almost automatically off of her list of great field trips. I decided to look for museums that have many or all of the qualities she mentioned made a good field trip. Though there aren't many, I want to highlight two, one on the east coast and one on the west, that do a great job of accommodating very specialized classes like Marcy's.

Pretend City Children's Museum-Irvine, California
Pretend City is a new Children's Museum in California that emphasizes learning through pretend play. They offer a host of accommodations for classes of special needs children. Just some of the highlights of their accomodations are staff trained in the support of all learners, special name badges for nonverbal children so staff can help more efficiently, and special needs specific items for special cases. These items include calming items like sunglasses, hats, headphones and weighted shoulder pads for students with sensory difficulties and special exhibition pieces made for motor skill and movement development. Their website is linked at the bottom of the page.

Port Discovery Children's Museum-Baltimore, Maryland
Located in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, Port Discovery stresses its universal design principles and award winning special needs programs. They have partnered with several local groups to help promote their programs and especially to help underprivileged families that have special needs children. Their most successful adaptations are "Discovery Days", on which the museum is closed to the public and only hosts children with special needs and their caretakers. The museum itself adapts on Discovery Days by dimming the lights and sounds and only allowing about 300 visitors in the museum to maximize comfort. Discovery Days happen four days a year, two in spring and two in fall, with one dedicated exclusively to children with autism.

Pretend City
Port Discovery

Community Engagement- The National Palace Museum(Taiwan) as an example

In light of the strategies we talked about in class and seen in museums and sites, I think it would be interesting to look at how museums in other countries are carrying out community engagements. The examples we have seen and strategies we talked about were mainly in developing new visitors from various communities. By means such as developing convenient access for different communities or invite community members to involve in exhibition development. What about strategies to make an existing community improve their museum visit experience? The National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan will be an example for this situation. The discussion is based on the 2011 National Palace Museum Annual Report.

As the major museum in Taiwan, The National Palace Museum had a brilliant collection of chinese artifacts. In the 1960s, in contrast of the communist Mainland China, the NPM in Taiwan under the rule of a right wing government opened with its representative collection of Chinese Artifact. As basically the only accessible Chinese arts collection, the NPM acted as the major resource of Chinese art history research at the time. The significance of its selective but comprehensive collection in Chinese arts remains recognized today. Recently, the components of potential audiences is experiencing a fundamental change. With the government policy canceling the restrictions posed upon tourists from Mainland China, the visitor number in NPM multiplies all of a sudden. Instead of considering the needs for communities and making efforts to engage them into museum visits, the NPM is facing a huge amount of new visitors from a new community that had it had never encountered before.

Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan often take the NPM as a must-seen tourist sight. Many of the tourists are not museum goers, to them, visiting NPM is merely one of the many stops in their fixed touring schedule designed by the travel agency. However, this new community is becoming the largest portion of visitors in the NPM. Thus, the NPM is currently dealing with problems such as large amount of visitors in specific galleries, noise, viewing order...etc. The most urgent issue will be maintaining the quality of visiting experience to all visitors, on the base of that can the NPM talk more about giving a rewarding museum visit experience.     

     

Below are the strategies the NPM is taking to cope with the situation:

• Extend opening hours

In 2010, 3,440,000 people visited the Museum. In 2011, 3,840,000 people visited. (According to the visitor number statistic chart, they main increase of visitors are from Mainland China.

) To alleviate the crowds and to improve the visiting experience, starting July 1, 2010, the NPM prolonged its opening hours. The museum now opens at 8:30 am (instead of 9:00 am) and closes at 6:30 pm (instead of 5:00 pm). 

• Cooperation between organizations

The NPM also maintains close contact with the Tourism Bureau. Any information regarding the Museum’s exhibitions or visitation can be relayed to tour group staff through e-mail. Short films promoting the Museum are also sent to tour groups and tour guides to show on buses. The Museum will continue working with the Tourism Bureau to strengthen the tour guide training process to ensure the quality of each visitor’s visit. (NPM annual report, 2011, p. 69 )

• Order Management in Exhibition Halls

•Circulation route for each gallery are planned and implemented to guide visitors.

•To improve the quality of each viewer's visit, a counting system was installed to monitor the visitor flow in and out of the Main Exhibition Hall.

•Hand-held signs by gallery assistants subtly instruct visitors to lower their voice and avoid verbal or physical conflicts.

•To improve the quality of visit, measures were taken to resolve the noise issue of group visitors.

•To maintain orderliness of the exhibition “Landscape Reunited: Huang Gongwang and ‘Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains,’” the number of viewers in the exhibition at one time was limited to 20. This allowed the Museum to appropriately manage the visitors and to enhance the viewing quality.

It is clear that order management is a major issue in dealing with this community. The NPM is also making efforts to reach other organizations to deal with the situation. In all, I think the positive attitude to embrace this the new community is encouraging. 

Other than the passive community engagement above, the NPM has its outreach programes aiming different communities in Taiwan. Here are some examples:

• When Young People Meet the NPM: The Saturday Night at the NPM

The event was sponsored by the Dinxin International Group

and the Wei-chuan Foods Corp. A total of 52 shows were presented this year, with 53,955 attendants. Another 2 shows were put on during the Lunar New Year and Lantern Festival, with 1,000 attendants.

• New Melody from the NPM

New Melody from the National Palace Museum is held in the Wenhuitang Auditorium every Wednesday between 2:30 pm and 4:00 pm. Starting From July 2009, Lanting Kun Opera Troupe, Taipei Li-yuan Chinese Opera Theater, the Comedians Workshop, and the Chinese Opera Troupe of National Taiwan College of Performing Arts have performed at the NPM. From April to June 2011, the NPM extended its “Fragrance Fills the Courtyard: Chinese Flower Paintings through the Ages” and invited the Taipei KunQu Society to present the late Ming dynasty playwright “The Peony Pavilion.” From July to September 2011, GuoGuang Opera Company presented the “Legend of the White Snake.” From October to December 2011, to coincide with the exhibition, “Emperor Kangxi and the Sun King Louis XIV: Sino-Franco Encounters in Arts and Culture,” the National Taiwan College of Performing Arts featured three plays performed during Emperor Kangxi’s 60th birthday: “Drunken Rage in the Temple of Wutai Mountain,” “The West Chamber – Temple Encounter,” and “Guan Yu’s Daring Escape.” From July 2008 to December 2011, a total of 93 shows were shown, attracting 16,624 attendees.

• National Treasures Ballot

From September 23 to November 22, 2011, the“National Treasures Grand Selection: Splendid Treasures Online Ballot” was held simultaneously with the special exhibition“Splendid Treasures: A Hundred Masterpieces of the National Palace Museum on Parade.”Everyone was welcomed to vote online for their favorite national treasure in the NPM. The online ballot was combined with the physical exhibition to showcase the most representative Museum artifacts. Web links were provided to show related information regarding the artifacts. While voters were selecting their favorite objects, they could learn more about the NPM’s artifacts. The result of the ballot will be used planning the route of student group tours, developing lesson plans for teachers, in hopes of promoting the Museum’s artifacts, enhancing the cooperation with schools on all levels, and increasing the cultural value of the Museum’s collections.

• The Good Neighbor Program

To promote the Museum’s educational outreach, in 2011, the Museum invited local communities to appreciate “The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece,” “Celebration by Marc Chagall” and “Emperor Kangxi and the Sun King Louis XIV: Sino-Franco Encounters in Arts and Culture.” Guided tours were available to help them understand the artifacts better. This year, Linxi, Xishan, Cuishan, and Fulin village were invited. The program received enthusiastic remarks and responses from the residents.

With these community outreach programes, the citizen visiting number did increase from 1,443,204 to 1,643,200 in three years. However, the number of Mainland Chinese visitors were in almost the same number, wich lead the focus back to the necessity to successfully engage them without disturbing other visitors‘ visiting experiences. 

There are many more informations in the annual report, I think it is a very well organized material for us to have a glance of what this museum is doing. The pictures inside are definitely worth a look :)

Teens Consolidated Resource Blog

Teens Are Our Future

When working with teenagers, you realize how incredibly bright and ready they are for the world!  They still have a lot to learn, but what they have already learned gives them the tools to be enthusiastic and valuable contributors to our museum and park communities.  Giving teens the opportunities they need to apply their learning and critical thinking skills helps them continue to grow into citizens who are better able to make decisions consciously and conscientiously as advocates for cultural literacy and support of our cultural institutions.

Teenagers are a group who are about to embark into adulthood.  They are an audience who is seeking an identity and forming their life philosophy and outlook.  Museums and parks offer real world experience, and informal learning environments that greater reflect the world teens are about to join.

We hope the following list of resources consolidated from our series of teenager blog posts will help other Museum Educators access the resources they need to maximize the interaction they have with the teen audience.

M.LiT - Museum Leaders in Training, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

http://www.vmfa.state.va.us/Learn/Teens/MLiT/

Jobs for teens in museums:

http://teens4hire.blogspot.com/2009/06/jobs-for-teens-in-museums.html

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston:

http://www.mfa.org/programs/teen-programs

Museum Teen Summit:

http://www.museumteensummit.org/home.html

Saguaro National Park - link to teen stewards site: 

http://www.nationalparks.org/our-work/success-stories/saguaro-national-park-park-stewards

Additional resources and just a few examples of Teen Nights:

The Walters Art Museum

Oklahoma City Museum of ArtMuseum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
High Museum of Art
“Why Museums Don’t Suck: The Current State of Teen Engagement”

ARTFORUM at WAVE the museums, galleries, and archives of Wolverhampton
This is a regularly held event that provides people between 14 and 25 the opportunity to explore the museum’s gallery as well as learn new techniques and make their own art. It is entirely run by the participants, who decide what they want to focus on.
http://www.wolverhamptonart.org.uk/events/artforum-new-year-3rd-weds-2013-01-16/

ARTLAB at the Hirshhorn
This is a digital media studio that provides all teens age 13-19 access to technology and art. It is comprised of studio time as well as daily workshops and provides participants with marketable skills.
http://artlabplus.si.edu/artlabplus/about.html

Creativity, Community, and a Dash of the Unexpected: Adventures in Engaging Young Adult Audiences
Although this research publication is aimed at the higher end of our focused age group, young adults between 19-35, this report hits on a few key points to keep in mind when programming for older teens. They found that they "... originally thought of this audience as an age group but later realized that style, not age, was a better way to categorize the target audience."
http://denverartmuseum.org/sites/all/themes/dam/files/final_report_to_the_field_1.16.2012_final.pdf

Case Study: Teens at the New York Hall of Science - Science Career Ladder

Although most of previous posts on engaging teen audiences have focused on art and humanities museums, science museums across the country have been working with teens for years. With the nation’s renewed emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education and careers, science museums can be key players in science learning and teaching outside of the classroom. As John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking note in “The 95 Percent Solution,” the vast majority of science learning takes place outside of formal schooling. They argue that one of the major contributors to the achievement gap between low-income students and their more privileged counterparts is the opportunity for learning outside of school time, such as through summer camps, travel, service projects, independent research, and museum visits. Teenagers are also in one of the age groups least like to partake of out-of-school science learning (eg: field trips are less likely in high school than elementary school). Museums and other institutions of informal learning can and should be active supporters of STEM education for teenagers, provoking and supporting their natural curiosity. This post looks at one museum that has done just that.

Since 1986, the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) has sought to engage teenagers of diverse backgrounds and interests and encourage careers in the sciences, through the Science Career Ladder (SCL). The museum recruits college and high school students to work as Explainers, with potential to advance and become leaders of the program and at the museum. At the same time, Explainers are exposed to and encouraged to explore a variety of STEM-related careers. The SCL also partners with Queens College to encourage science majors to pursue science teaching and with other universities and organizations. The program has been successfully disseminated to and implemented in science museums around the country.

In this report on SCL, NYSCI outlines and evaluates the program, which has evolved over time in response to multiple evaluations and expansions. In the program’s current incarnation, interested high school students complete an application and participate in a group interview. The museum does not base selection on grades and actually seeks out students working below their full potential, who have perhaps become disengaged from school or are shy. In this way, the program engages adolescents who have some interest in science, but might otherwise fall through the cracks or never realize their aptitude or passion for science, teaching, communication, or leadership. SCL can be a tremendous opportunity for these often overlooked students, especially since the program emphasizes mentorship.

Participants enter the program as Explainer Volunteers, assisting with public programs and special events. Some may have already been involved at NYSCI, in elementary and middle school as after-school Science Club Members, though many have no prior affiliation. By passing through stages of training and receiving good performance reviews, participants may move up to be paid Explainer Interns and then Explainers, at which point they receive more intensive training and begin interpreting exhibits and demonstrations, one weekend day a week and summer weekdays. Explainers that demonstrate leadership potential may become Explainer Floor Captains, and eventually, Program Explainers, aiding in the overall management of the program and its special projects. Explainers can even continue advancing after high school, which is especially crucial considering the dearth of meaningful museum programming for older teens and young adults, as noted in a previous post. There are real opportunities for growth in all stages of the program, and participants are often encouraged to apply for other positions at the museum.

Through the Explainer program teenagers develop their scientific thinking and teaching skills, while building their confidence, sense of leadership, and scholarly ambitions. The program aims to accomplish this development by making the Explainers full members of the museum community, giving them real responsibilities, providing professional development, holding them to high expectations, and listening to their ideas. Participants are taken seriously. As noted in our earlier post, many teens are eager to work and gain a sense of independence, but the quality of such work is crucial to the positive development of the teen and the impact the work experience will have on future career progress. According to the report, multiple evaluations of the program have noted a sense of peer camaraderie and mentorship, such that older participants motivate younger ones to pursue their goals. As noted earlier, fidelity and identity formation are critical in adolescence. The fact that the program encourages supportive peer-to-peer and adult mentoring helps ensure the confidence, positive development, and success of the teen Explainers.

The impact of the program’s structure and values are evident in its measurable success. For example, the high school graduation rate of participants is five times higher than that of other New York City students in the same diverse demographic groups. Even more dramatically, 98% of SCL’s over 2500 alumni have graduated college, well above local and national averages. The fact that this program targets underserved high school students not necessarily performing at their full potential makes these statistics even more dramatic.

The Science Career Ladder is indeed just that: a ladder. Many of the people now running the program and holding other high level positions at the museum actually started as Explainers. This alumni are key leaders at the museum and can use their own experiences in the program to continue to shape it, evaluate it, and prioritize it. In addition, over 60% of participants have gone into other STEM careers, at least partially as a result of the opportunities SCL provides to explore career options and tap into its alumni network. Many have also gone into teaching, helping to continue the cycle of learning. Meanwhile, NYSCI has helped other science museums implement similar programs. In all these ways, NYSCI does indeed appear to be contributing to Falk and Dierking’s “95% solution.”

Additional articles on and reviews of SCL:
“Explainer Program, New York Hall of Science: Engaging Young People in Science Education and Stimulating Interest in STEM Careers” from The Opportunity Equation
“The Science Career Ladder” from Change the Equation
Sickler, Jessica (2009). “New York Hall of Science Science Career Ladder Retrospective Impact Study Final Report.” from Informal Science        


A sampling of other museums that have also implemented career ladder programs:
--Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History - SciCORPS (Science Career Orientation & Readiness Program for Students)
--Pacific Science Center - Discovery Corps
--Thinktank Birmingham Science Museum - Science and Heritage Career Ladder

Community Engagement-Attracting Audiences with Language Barriers

The United States population is growing every day and becoming more diverse by the minute is a conundrum that museums face constantly.  The communities surrounding museums are transforming through various ways such as by race, socio-economic status, culture, age, and gender.   The Center for the Future of Museums is an initiative from the American Alliance of Museums that studies the changing population by using the 2010 US Census. Their study provides future projections of how the population is becoming more diverse and examples of how different museums are engaging a variety of audiences in their community. It encourages museums to engage visitors from their surrounding communities to enhance individuals and the community as a whole. Many museums face the problem: How do we engage visitors from the community if they are immigrants who speak limited English with different perceptions of museums?  The study uses The Monterey Bay Aquarium in California and The Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose, California as an example of how they implement ideas and programs to help answer this question.

Monterey Bay Aquarium in California- There is a growing Latino population in the Monterey Bay area in 1998; however, only eight percent of the growing population is attending the museum.  To alter this situation in 2002, the Aquarium executes a strategic marketing plan that specifically identifies the audience into subcategories. The Aquarium creates a plan for each of the two subcategories.  One of the subcategories is unacculterated Latinos who are: newly immigrants, pre-dominantly Spanish-speaking, larger families, and low incomes.  This subset has a very negative perception of The Aquarium. The plan to change their perception of the museum includes: advertising on Spanish television, radio and local newspapers. Offering discounts and hiring specific staff members to welcome them into the museum. The Aquarium organizes special events such as “Dia del Nino” and “Fiesta del Mar” to promote community involvement.  The Latino population increases from 8 to 24% by 2008 from their initiatives to engage the audience.

Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose, California-The San Jose area has large Vietnamese-American population who migrates to the United States because of the Vietnam War. The museum quickly realizes that programs to attract Latino visitors do not work on the Vietnamese population.  Once the museum learns the complexities of the population they create a plan to engage the Vietnamese audience in 2002. They call the plan the “Vietnamese Audience Development Initiative.” One of the main parts of the plan was working with advisors from the Vietnamese community. Other parts of the plan include: adding Vietnamese cultural icons such as rice and bamboo into exhibits, inserting the Vietnamese language on signs and changing their perceptions of museums.  The most important information the museum learns and uses to engage the audience was their goals, expectations, and interests.

Community Engagement in Museums: Partnering and Collaborating with Community Organizations

One way that museums can effectively practice community engagement is by partnering and collaborating with community organizations. In a way, museums can view other organizations as a kind of “audience” to work with when creating exhibitions, developing programming, or holding special events. In the process of building these relationships, museums can further engage various groups and individuals in the community, as well. In fact, if you look at the ways in which museums are currently engaging many of the audiences that we have discussed in class (when I presented on museums who have successfully engaged individuals who are homeless, for example), partnerships with outside organizations or other museums oftentimes play a significant role in this process.

While researching the topic of community partnerships and collaborations, I came across an excellent resource that I wanted to share – a document tilted museum/community partnerships: Lessons Learned from the Bridges Conference, put out by the Philadelphia-Camden Informal Science Education Collaborative and The Franklin Institute. The Bridges Conference (held in June 2008) invited museum/community partnership programs that serve families to participate in a discussion on what it takes to create and sustain successful community partnerships and collaborations. According to the report, “The Bridges Conference was designed to bring together professionals with long-term museum/community relationships, and to offer opportunities to share and develop new strategies to: 1. address the practical issues inherent in funding, developing, and managing museum/community collaborations aimed at bringing science and math to underserved families, and 2. focus on the unique challenges and benefits of collaborating to work with families. Information shared during the conference was intended to contribute to advancing the field of intergenerational learning and informal science as a whole."

Though this conference specifically focused on science museums and community-based organizations that serve families, many of the themes brought up can apply more generally to all kinds of museum/community partnerships, as well. I found the first section of the report, in which they discuss the main points of the conference itself, especially useful. At the end of this section, they list the takeways that came out of the conference with regards to creating successful, mutually rewarding relationships between museums and community-based organizations. They are as follows:

• Take time to observe prospective partners in action, get to know them fully, and consider possibilities for collaboration before leaping into a formal partnership.

• Ensure that partners share common goals. While two or more organizations may have similar or complementary programs and resources, this is not enough to establish a solid collaboration. Unless all parties share common goals, they may wind up working at cross-purposes.

• Carefully construct a mutually satisfactory memorandum of understanding (MOU) that lays out not only the fact of the collaboration, but also detailed information regarding each partner’s rights and responsibilities; any financial agreements; and processes to be followed in the event that one or more parties wishes to end the association.

• Develop clear and regular procedures for communication, which includes opportunities for formal interaction, and social gatherings.

I highly recommend reading the article in its entirety, as it goes into further detail about each of these points and delves into other topics that relate to museum/community partnerships and their outcomes. The article also addresses certain challenges that go along with developing these kinds of complex relationships, and how to handle them. As to-be museum educators, learning about these various aspects of community partnerships and collaborations will help us to create successful and productive community relationships (both on the organizational and individual level) in the future.

I know it is always helpful to see some real-world museum examples and applications -- two museums that I came across that have quite an impressive list and explanation of their community partnerships (and the events, exhibitions, etc. that they have put on as a result) are the The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, CA and the Minnesota Children's Museum in St. Paul, MN. You can see that each of these museums has collaborated with a variety of organizations that might not immediately come to mind when you think of community engagement in museums, including the American Red Cross and local public libraries. One additional resource that I found particularly relevant and useful in terms of thinking about community partnerships and collaborations is Strategies for Long-Term Community Partnerships by Jim Zien.

Before closing this post, I would like to share a quote from another resource I came across in my research. In Community Partnerships, an article that focuses on community partnerships and libraries, Nann Blaine Hilyard explains that, “Partnering with municipal government, with businesses, and school communities, and working with other community organizations has bolstered our claim of being the hub of the community and proven our relevance to those who fund our efforts. I cannot imagine how we would make our case without their support." Though Hilyard is referring to libraries in her article, we can certainly apply this quote to informal education institutions in general. We all know how important it is for museums to remain relevant and valuable to their surrounding communities. Community partnerships and collaborations can help with this by making museums an important, integral part in a network of community organizations.

As rewarding and productive as these relationships can be, collaboration is hard work. I noticed that Lori brought up a good question on a previous post with regards to advocating for community engagement in museums. It is certainly possible that we may meet some resistance with regards to community engagement in museums. I think that much of this goes back to what we discussed in Carol’s class this past summer with regards to best practices in museums. If you look back to Excellence and Equity: Education and the Public Dimension of Museums (American Association of Museums, 1992), #6 on their list of recommendations is to: “Engage in active, ongoing collaborative efforts with a wide spectrum of organizations and individuals who can contribute to the expansion of the museum’s public dimension." I would say that the best thing you could do to help prepare yourself to advocate for community engagement in museums is to be aware of the best practices and standards for museums, learn the current trends in museums as they relate to community engagement, and explore how other museums are practicing community engagement in with outside organizations, groups of people, or individuals in their communities. In general, knowing how to find the information that will prove the value of community engagement for your museum will be beneficial in this process. The evidence is certainly out there!

Feel free to comment and share some other examples of community partnerships and collaborations that you have seen or learned about! We’d love to hear about them. I would also be interested to hear if you have any other ideas of how to advocate for community engagement in museums in response to Lori's question.