| This article is part of the “Children’s Museums and Climate Change” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Charlie Trautmann, PhD, Cornell University
Many children’s museums are thinking about whether to introduce the difficult but increasingly important topic of climate science into their programs. They are looking for guidance not only on where to start, but does it make sense for their primary audience of very young visitors. Will preschoolers even remember anything about this complex and sometimes scary topic?
Whether the purpose of a visit to a children’s museum is education, relationship-building, entertainment, or some other goal, the visit often involves making memories. When museum professionals understand the basic elements of how human memory works, they can design for the types of memories they want children and families to have when developing experiences for their audiences.
Before we apply the science of memory to museums, it is helpful to understand the time element of memory. Psychologists use three timeframes when discussing memory: sensory, short term, and long term.
Sensory memory is ultra-short, ranging from a few milliseconds to seconds. Our five senses provide information continuously, and most of it cannot be processed fully or stored (Sperling 1963; Orey 2021a). The image of a giant robotic dinosaur, the sound of the spark from a Van de Graaff generator, or the voice of the staff member who asked us not to run are all sensory memories. Some sensory information does survive and moves to a different part of the brain, becoming retained in short-term memory.
Short-term memory, also called “active” or “working” memory, lasts for only 20-45 seconds (Miller 1956). We have a relatively small capacity to keep information in working memory, with a limit of five to nine items, and so after sensing something, we need to do something with the information, or it will be lost (Miller 1956).
Some short-term memories become preserved, or “consolidated,” into long-term memories (Dudai et al. 2015). Long-term memories can last a lifetime. However, since short- and long-term memories occur in different parts of the brain, a transfer of information is required. In many cases, consolidation takes place during sleep. Key Point #1: Getting adequate sleep promotes improved memory (Ruch et al. 2012).
To describe five common types of long-term memory, psychologists usually divide them into two groups: conscious and unconscious, as shown below in Figure 1 on preceding page (adapted from Saylor Academy 2012).
Conscious Memory: Conscious memory involves consciously recalling information, such as what that happened a minute ago, or last year, or what two plus two equals (Cherry 2020). Within this broad category, episodic memory is recalling specific personal events, such as the time, place, and description of something that happened to us. Can you remember your first kiss or the senior high-school prom? These are episodic memories. In contrast, a semantic memory is a piece of general knowledge that has no specific time or place associated with it, such as “dogs have four legs” or “grass is green.”
The two types of conscious memory interact: semantic knowledge often starts as a sensory experience and becomes an episodic memory for a period of time. The child who releases a blown-up balloon taped to a straw on a string experiences the phenomenon of jet propulsion, which might stick in her mind as an episodic memory for that day. Eventually the time and place will become lost to her, and the concept of Newton’s Third Law—that “every action has an equal and opposite reaction”—will just become part of her general (semantic) knowledge about the way the world works.
On the other hand, episodic memory relies on our framework of semantic knowledge: the more we know about a subject, the more likely we are to be interested in further learning about it, paying attention to new sensory information that comes to us, and remembering it. The young boy who can watch birds at a window feeder during breakfast is much more likely to engage with an exhibit about the migration of birds at the museum. Key Point #2: Episodic memory and semantic memory can support each other.
Another important fact is that most humans have few episodic memories before the age of four or five. This universal phenomenon, called “infantile amnesia,” means that although children hungrily learn from the time of birth, young children are unlikely to reward their caregivers or museum educators with descriptions of their learning experiences.
Unconscious memory: In contrast to conscious memories, unconscious memories, also called “implicit” or “automatic” memories, are those that we don’t think about on a conscious level (Squire and Dede 2015). These kinds of memories are also important, because they influence our actions and behavior. Three primary types of implicit memories are of particular interest to museums.
Procedural memory refers to motor and cognitive skills that allow us to walk, talk, ride a bike, or type without consciously thinking. Children’s museums provide many opportunities, particularly for children with the fewest opportunities, to develop their procedural memory. In designed spaces, early learners can develop and practice gross motor skills, fine motor skills, observational skills, and sensory perception, often in ways they can’t at home. Although some would consider such activities frivolous, children at play are often testing their theories about the way the world works and, in so doing, are developing the foundations of scientific thinking (Gopnik, Meltzoff, and Kuhl 1999). Key Point #3: It is important that we emphasize the concept of learning through play to our stakeholders, and particularly to funders, who sometimes balk at the idea of supporting “play” with their funding.
Priming refers to how recalling information from one domain can trigger memories in another domain. In other words, by strategically activating knowledge in one area, we can use that activated knowledge to elicit knowledge in another area. Staff and volunteers can use priming questions with museum visitors, activating their prior knowledge—perhaps in an unrelated field—as a way of engaging them with a topic (Tulving and Schacter 1990).
Classical conditioning, the third kind of unconscious memory was discovered by Pavlov, who found that one stimulus can become associated, through repetition, with an unrelated stimulus that has a specific response (Cherry 2019). In his famous experiment, Pavlov rang a bell when feeding dogs, and this feeding caused them to salivate. Eventually the dogs would salivate whenever he rang the bell, even if no food were present. Marketers employ classical conditioning when they associate a logo or audio jingle with a pleasurable experience; the McDonald’s jingle can conjure up images, thoughts, and even smells of burgers and fries on the radio. Museums seeking to evoke positive thoughts and increased visitation can use their sounds, logos, and other images in much the same way.
Now that we have an understanding of the common types of memory, let’s apply it to a current topic of interest to many children’s museums: climate change. How can we prepare our children for the future without: 1) boring them with semantic knowledge about the climate they will largely forget, 2) traumatizing them with episodic memories of climate change in a way that scares them and prevents them from connecting with the topic, or 3) conditioning them, through repetition, to simply ignore or shut down on the topic of climate change?
One approach is first for children’s museums to capitalize on their ability to inspire relationships among people, objects, places, and concepts. As poignantly expressed by Baba Dioum, “In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught” (Valenti and Tavana 2005).
Museums are well-positioned to inspire a child’s love for the natural environment by creating positive semantic memories about animals, places, water, and other elements of the environment that will last a lifetime. These positive memories about the environment can form a foundation to support later learning about the environment and its key systems, in a way that is age-appropriate and in line with a child’s cognitive learning abilities.
Second, through their programs and exhibits, children’s museums can encourage children to improve their critical thinking skills, which are important in countering much of the disinformation about climate change. Museums can help children become more comfortable in asking good questions, and simultaneously building children’s confidence to seek help from adults in answering their own questions. Museums can advance these goals by helping adults understand how children learn and form memories so that they can support childhood learning most effectively.
The science of climate change is complex. Many children’s museums struggle with the decision to include it at all for their primarily very young audiences. What engaging activities related to climate change could be presented in a playful way that a four-year-old would even remember? But as many other authors in this issue have stated, the early years are the optimal time for laying a learning foundation of critical thinking skills and building a sense of wonder and appreciation for the natural world, which in time, can blossom into a conservation mindset. By understanding how memory works, children’s museums can enhance learning and other positive impacts for the children and families they serve. Positive episodic memories and semantic memories can enhance each other, and museum educators can use this understanding to create the most effective programs and exhibits.
Charlie Trautmann is an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. He is director emeritus of the Sciencenter of Ithaca, New York, and a past board member of the Association of Children’s Museums and the Association of Science and Technology Centers. At Cornell, he teaches Environmental Psychology and directs the Environment and Community Relations (EnCoRe) Lab. He can be reached at cht2@cornell.edu.
| This article is part of the “Children’s Museums and Climate Change” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Stephanie Shapiro and Sarah Sutton, Environment & Culture Partners
Culture Over Carbon is a research project designed to improve the museum field’s understanding of energy use by examining data from five types of museums (art, science, children’s, history, and natural history), plus zoos and aquariums, gardens, and historic sites. The two-year research period, which began in September 2021, will cover at least 150 institutions in all geographic regions of the United States, spanning varying sizes and types of buildings (e.g., office vs. collection storage). The project will collect enough information to establish an energy carbon footprint estimate for the museum sector, while creating individual “roadmaps” to help participating institutions understand and use energy more efficiently. Resulting aggregate data will boost the cultural sector’s broad understanding of its current energy practices and help to plan for future expected changes in energy availability, policies, and regulations.
Culture Over Carbon is funded by a National Leadership grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to the New England Museum Association, which leads the project in partnership with Environment & Culture Partners and the nonprofit energy consultants New Buildings Institute (NBI).
Very few museums have the ability or resources to monitor and assess their own energy use, especially during this prolonged period of economic stress due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet without this data they are unable to make strategic energy management decisions to save money or reduce the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) that worsen the climate crisis.
Museum staff interested in benchmarking their energy use and comparing use reductions struggle with the lack of comparisons. While the Leadership for Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) building certification program and the Environmental Protection Agency’s EnergyStar program provide energy performance ratings for buildings, there is no comparison framework/Energy Star score specifically for museums. (There are too few museum-user entries to create appropriate comparisons from a broad base of information.) Museums can join the International Association of Museum Facilities Administrators, which provides access to comparative data from about 200 institutions, but at a cost. Even with this information, staff and leadership often still struggle with how to make good energy use choices and how to pay for them, especially when they may require sometimes costly changes to existing operations.
Nearly every other major US sector understands that its energy use impacts the climate in some ways and has paths to strategically reduce their emissions. Without this context or guides to implementation, it is difficult for museums to find the means to make these shifts. As codes and regulations change—and budgets get tighter—museums need a strong case for competing for public and private funding for compliance.
The Culture Over Carbon project seeks to build a research foundation by focusing on the following questions:
The climate challenge is so significant that all who can possibly participate in creating solutions must do what they can. Until now, the museum sector has done little research on its own energy use, spent little time looking ahead to predict changes, and has expended minimal effort into articulating the need for investment in our energy systems to make better decisions. As nonprofit institutions, many museums recognize that they have a mission-driven responsibility to limit negative impacts of their work while modeling thoughtful, responsible behavior. Recognizing our fiduciary responsibility, this project tackles both the global and institutional issues that are so important to our futures.
Participating museums provide general building information describing their building design and construction, and how it is used. Based on their submission of twelve months of past energy use data, they will receive a profile of their site which prioritizes areas of concern and provides a roadmap of next steps, including working with an energy technician or engineer to achieve results. Many are eligible to receive a stipend for sharing their data.
Using all the data collected during the project, NBI will create a free report that identifies the variety and extent of energy formats and uses in the museum sector, comments on the most common areas for improvement, and offers recommendations for how the field can collectively reduce energy use that contributes to global warming.
Culture over Carbon participants share their energy use data through Energy Star Portfolio Manager (ESPM), a free online software program provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Anyone running a home or a building can use ESPM to understand how much energy is used on a monthly and yearly basis, and what the GHG emissions are. Many museums of all types or sizes already use ESPM for budgeting and managing energy consumption. However, the Carbon Over Culture project will move beyond this basic level by processing the data through First View, a software program developed by NBI with EPA funding to explore the research questions stated earlier.
If you are interested in learning more, please contact Sarah Sutton (sarah@ecprs.org) or Brenda Baker (bbaker@madisonchildrensmuseum.org), children’s museum sector organizer and project advisor.
Stephanie Shapiro and Sarah Sutton co-founded the nonprofit organization Environment & Culture Partners (previously Sustainable Museums) in 2021 to strengthen and broaden the environmental leadership of the cultural sector. Sutton, CEO, now lives in Tacoma, Washington; Shapiro, managing director, lives in Washington, DC.
| This article is part of the “Children’s Museums and Climate Change” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Langley Lease and Paige Childs, National Children’s Museum
Engaging children and their families in a meaningful dialogue around climate change can be tricky, to say the least. How do we playfully introduce children to this serious topic and inspire them to take action?
Answering this question became a priority in 2018 during the early stages of developing the newest iteration of National Children’s Museum, which opened in February 2020 in Washington, DC. It was evident that climate change lacked representation when assessing the landscape of children’s museum content at that time. As an institution that combines children’s museum experiences with science center content, it felt both natural and necessary to dedicate exhibit space to such a timely and critical science topic.
With the help of educators and experts, the museum developed its Climate Action Heroes framework, which empowers young activists to defeat climate “villains” while exploring the science behind climate change. Located in our Innovation Sandbox space, this exhibit will live in our museum for at least the next two years. (More can be learned about the museum’s in-person and virtual Climate Action Heroes experiences in the November 2020 issue of Hand to Hand.)
Since the museum’s reopening to the public in September 2021, the in-person Climate Action Heroes experience has been named a favorite exhibit by 28 percent of visitors who complete a post-visit survey. The climate science-dedicated space in the museum has influenced our on-site and digital programming priorities, community partnerships, and future exhibit development. In fact, a Climate Action Heroes experience will soon make its debut at Dulles International Airport, where children will be invited to discover climate-friendly travel tips and challenges. Content is continuously added to the digital experience at www.climate-heroes.org, including monthly missions that share small ways young activists can help protect the planet.
At National Children’s Museum, our mission is to inspire children to care about and change the world. Our changing climate is one of the most important issues facing our world today. As stewards of the next generation, we believe it is our duty to empower and inspire young innovators and activists. This means committing to and expanding upon our work in climate science. Climate change and the important role today’s children will have in tomorrow’s solutions will remain an undercurrent in every facet of National Children’s Museum’s work, from our daily operations to the programs we offer. Climate Action Heroes is just the start.
Langley Lease is exhibits + experience manager and Paige Childs is communications + digital specialist at the National Children’s Museum in Washington, DC.
| This article is part of the “Children’s Museums and Climate Change” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Rachel Daigre, Cate Heroman, and Alexandra Pearson, Knock Knock Children’s Museum
In 2019, MakerEd, a nonprofit organization that brings maker education to communities, selected Knock Knock Children’s Museum to be a regional hub for Making Spaces, a two-year professional learning and capacity-building program designed to support local leadership around maker education, with an emphasis on sustainability and growth. Knock Knock then selected program participants, including fifty preK-third grade educators and administrators from eight elementary schools as well as staff from the nearby public library.
After Hurricane Ida passed through our region in August 2021, Knock Knock provided resources and guidance to help children cope after this natural disaster. To extend our reach, we decided to use our October Making Spaces training as an opportunity to help educators create supportive learning environments in response to severe weather events. We brainstormed how we might use making and tinkering experiences to accomplish two goals: 1) support the emotional needs of children during traumatic events and 2) help deepen their knowledge and understanding of weather-related events in our community.
To reach the first goal, we wanted to inspire teachers to create environments and provide experiences to help children:
To achieve the second goal, we talked about all the things that children might experience during hurricanes: strong winds, power outages, downed trees, flooding, community helpers, lost or destroyed toys, lost pets, gas shortages, long lines, no electronic games to play, giving/receiving donations, damaged buildings, evacuating, relocating, and more.
With these two goals in mind, we set up activities throughout the museum that educators could explore and later implement in their classrooms. The public library assisted by sharing children’s books—both fiction and nonfiction—to support children’s understanding of this weather disaster and to help them cope with their feelings. Teachers quickly realized how they could use the making and tinkering experiences listed below to help children recover from the effects of severe weather events:
Big Backyard: creating weavings and faces with items from nature;
Maker Shop: creating homemade circuit switches in a homemade neighborhood that could be broken by tree limbs, making battery-operated fans and flashlights, making whirligigs powered by wind;
Art Garden: creating miniature Zen gardens, making string art by hammering nails and wrapping them with string, wrapping sticks with yarn to make patterns;
By-You Building: exploring wind at the wind tunnel, building strong houses and water bottle forts;
Paws & Claws: designing and building pet carriers, creating lost pet posters;
Geaux Figure! Playhouse: creating homemade board games;
Go Go Garage: using a homemade grappler tool and working as a team to move roadblocks and ease traffic on the racetrack, playing with model bucket trucks;
Bubble Playground: making floating boats, discovering items that sink or float;
Story Tree: exploring books related to hurricanes as well as supporting the emotional needs of children.
After an hour of exploration, the educators met by grade levels to reflect on these questions:
With the increasing occurrence of hurricanes and floods, children in our community are experiencing phenomena that are difficult to comprehend. Planning new ways to help them and their families understand and rebound after disasters is critical. Making Spaces teachers walked away with making and tinkering strategies to use now and in the future to help children cope, deepen their knowledge, and spark their curiosities.
Rachel Daigre is director of learning innovation; Cate Heroman is education committee chair; and Alexandra Pearson is Maker Shop manager at Knock Knock Children’s Museum in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
| This post was originally published as ACM Trends Report 4.14, the final report in the fourth volume of ACM Trends Reports, produced in partnership between ACM and Knology. |
This is the final report in the Museums in a Pandemic volume of the ACM Trends Report series. Since March 2020, the ACM Trends Report team has tracked the impacts of the pandemic on children’s museums through surveys, conversations, and other data collected by ACM. This ACM Trends Report presents data from museums that responded to our Spring 2021 survey.
Throughout the pandemic, we collected data on children’s museum operations and what was vital to their survival. We benchmarked this information against 2018 fiscal year 990 data. We used these data because 2018 represents the last pre-pandemic fiscal year for all of the organizations in our sample set. This comparison helped us understand the pandemic’s impact on museum operations.
As the pandemic continued into 2021, children’s museums were balancing re- opening to the public with the continued need to focus on securing necessary funding to keep operations going. We documented ACM members’ fundraising efforts in the early stages of the pandemic (ACM Trends #4.2 and #4.7).
By Spring 2021 many museums were welcoming visitors back into their spaces, with new safety protocols in place and varying capacity restrictions. Museums rely on these patrons to sustain operations. When we reviewed 2018 990 financial data from 218 museums in the ACM member network, our analysis showed that the median institution (regardless of size) relies on program services income (this includes income derived from admissions, events, and other general operational activities) for roughly 45% of its total income. Attendance directly impacts how museums balance income and expenses. By the time of this survey in Spring 2021, the numbers of visitors to the museums had not returned to pre-pandemic levels. This dip continues to impact children’s museums’ income.
To track how the field’s attendance had changed throughout the pandemic, we captured monthly total attendance numbers from March 2019 to March 2021. Sixty-two museums responded to this portion of our Spring 2021 survey. From this data set, we know that the average museum was open to in-person visitors for 34% of the total days during the pandemic’s first year than the year prior. Additionally, based on survey data from 52 museums, we know that in March 2021 attendance for the average museum remained at 26% of pre-pandemic attendance levels.
Knowing that museums rely on their patrons for 45% of their total income from program and services revenue, we asked for up-to-date data, as of March 2021, on fundraising during the pandemic. Specifically, we looked at governmental and non-governmental funding sources. As we reported in ACM Trends Report 4.7, the median value of funding from governmental sources in September 2020 was $205,000 (N = 96). Of the 96 museums responding, 77 had approached private funders (ACM Trends #4.13) with an average return of $50,000.
A second round of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funding was awarded in early 2021, in time for award announcements before the Spring survey. At this time, most museums responding to the survey (n = 80) reported moderate success in obtaining government funds during and related to the COVID-19 pandemic, exhibiting an 80% success rate with a median value of almost $400,000. Appeals for private funding were even more successful (98% success rate) but yielded smaller amounts, with a median value of just over $100,000.
Two new streams of funding were available to museums to apply for through the American Rescue Plan Act and the CARES Act. In March 2021, nearly one-third of museums (n = 27) indicated that they had applied or intended to apply for a Small Business Administration Shuttered Venue Operators Grants (SVO). At the time of the survey, SVO had not yet been distributed.
Additionally, just over one-third of museums (n = 32) indicated that they had received Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERTC) funds, with the median museum receiving $290,328. We have not collected further data on either the ERTC or SVO at this point.
Fundraising success is about more than securing grants. Museums are constantly looking for new funding sources and streams and setting goals to meet operating budgets. This remained true during the pandemic. Reviewing 218 museum’s 990 information, we found that the median museum relied on donations for almost half of their total income. In the Spring 2021 survey, we asked children’s museums whether their fundraising efforts were more successful, just as successful, or less successful during the first pandemic year (March 2020 – March 2021) compared to the previous year. Three-fourths of museums indicated that fundraising was just as or more successful during the first pandemic year (n = 79).
In Spring 2021, children’s museums were generally confident that they could meet their financial obligations one year on in Spring 2022. Eighty museums responded to the question “How confident do you feel that your museum will be able to maintain its financial obligations to maintain operations a year from now?” on a scale from Not at all confident to Very confident. Slider responses were recorded as numerals between 0.00 and 1.00, accordingly.
Seventy-three museums responded with a degree of confidence equal to or higher than 0.5, indicating that museums had found a way to compensate for the financial hit caused by drastically lower attendance numbers.
Government funding proved vital for many museums. Overall, their fundraising success during the pandemic seems to have stimulated children’s museums’ confidence.
Figure 1.Confidence in meeting financial obligation by Spring 2022. (n = 80)
Figure 1 above is a Box and Whisker Plot displaying the responding museums’ confidence (n = 80). We will explain each element of the Box and Whisker Plot and what it shows about our data. Box and Whisker Plots are useful for displaying the range of values in a dataset, including the median value and quartiles of the data’s spread. Each quartile includes 25% of responding museums. Here, the orange box shows us the second quartile, the third quartile, and the median values of our data. The median is represented by the vertical line down the middle of the box. The left “side” of the box displays the second quartile, and the right “side” of the box displays the third quartile. The purple dot in the second quartile is the mean, or average value, of our data set. The whiskers, or the horizontal lines, on either side of the box show us the first and fourth quartiles. The five blue dots ranging between 0.10 and 0.45 are outliers.
So, what does all this mean in the context of museums’ confidence in meeting their financial obligations? By looking at the median, we can tell that the middle value of our data set represents a museum that is quite confident that it will meet its financial obligations in Spring 2022.
On a scale where a rating of Not at all confident yields a value of 0.00 and a rating of Very confident yields a value of 1.00, a median value of 0.85 reflects fairly high confidence. Meanwhile, the orange box tells us that half of the museums in the dataset, or 40 out of 80 museums, are moderately to very confident that they will meet their financial obligations in Spring 2022.
The short right whisker tells us that 20 museums are very confident in their ability to meet their financial obligations. Of the remaining 20 museums, five (represented by the blue dots) are less than confident about meeting their financial obligations. The box’s long left whisker shows that the first quartile of museums is somewhat confident in meeting their financial obligations. The takeaway is this: 75% of the museums in this data set are moderately to very confident that they can meet their financial obligations in Spring 2022. In the following sections, we explore the reasons for their optimism.
Every museum has a unique rationale for any confidence it has about its late- and post-pandemic future. However, we identified six general categories that illustrate why museums are right to feel confident. Thirty museums referenced a diversified funding stream, including federal and local government funding as well as private funding, as a reason for confidence. Twenty-seven museums have been encouraged by attendance during their re-opening phases and have received more visitors than anticipated. Twenty-three museums indicated that a reduction in operational spending as part of a long-term planning strategy, along with current cash reserves, meant they could be confident about meeting future operational needs.
Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, reducing operation spending also included a reduction in staff. We detail the impacts of staffing over the course of the Pandemic in ACM Trends Report #4.12.
Additionally, seven museums in our data set either belong to a larger museum/university structure or are completely funded by local government and have moved to more sustainable budgets to ensure future operations. Finally, one museum mentioned that rent reduction has been helpful, and four museums moved into new spaces with higher capacity and lower operating costs.
In the past year, museums have reimagined their operations and service to their communities, and this has affected their staff. During an ACM Leadership call in Fall 2021, about 6-months after the Spring 2021 survey, ACM and Knology followed up with roughly 20 ACM member museum leaders to hear if they were still confident in meeting their operations’ budgets in 2022.
With attendance not yet back up to pre- pandemic levels, museum leaders’ confidence in meeting financial obligations in 2022 was high yet speculative. On a scale of 1 (least confident) to 5 (most confident), museum staff on the call indicated confidence between 3 and 5, with specific caveats and new concerns. Key concerns centered around the continued need for federal and state governmental funding to fill in the gaps of lowered earned revenue. Specifically, the Shuttered Venue Operating Grants and PPP loans were still covering many 2021 costs and were projected to continue to support museum operations into 2022. A second round of SVOG and funds from the Employee Retention Tax Credit were noted as potential future governmental funds that these museums were banking on. A museum CFO noted that, “Once the federal funding runs out, our confidence drops off tremendously not knowing which direction covid stats are going to go. Just when we thought it was getting back to ‘normal’ the Delta variant picked up. What’s next?” This was met with widespread agreement from others in attendance.
Museums staff noted that donations from individuals and foundations were starting to taper off, with many noting that perceived “sympathy giving” at the height of the pandemic in 2020 was not as common in Fall 2021. Many did not expect their fundraising to be as successful in 2022 compared to their early pandemic success.
We will continue to monitor the state of the children’s museum field into 2022 to understand how these concerns impact their missions and operations.
The data used in this report came from an online survey that ACM sent to US-based children’s museums. Overall, 91 museums responded to at least part of the survey. All participating museums were based in the US. Additional data was collected through an ACM Leadership call discussion forum where data was presented back to museum leaders for their response.
Flinner, K., Voiklis, J., Field, S., Attaway, E., Gupta, R., & Fraser, J. (2020). Museums in a Pandemic: Financial Impacts. ACM Trends 4(2).
Flinner, K., Voiklis, J., Field, S., Thomas, U.G, Attaway, E., & Gupta, R. (2021). Museums in a Pandemic: Diversifying Funding Streams. ACM Trends 4(7).
Flinner, K., Field, S., Voiklis, J., Thomas, U.G., & ACM Staff (2021). Museums in a Pandemic: Personnel & Rebuilding Teams. ACM Trends 4(12).
Fraser, J., Field, S., Voiklis, J., Attaway, E., & Thomas, U. G. (2021). Museums in a Pandemic: Patterns in Fundraising. ACM Trends 4(13).
This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent those of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
The Associations of Children’s Museums (ACM) champions children’s museums worldwide. Follow ACM on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Knology produces practical social science for a better world. Follow Knology on Twitter.
| This post was originally published as ACM Trends Report 4.13, the thirteenth report in the fourth volume of ACM Trends Reports, produced in partnership between ACM and Knology. |
Since May 2020, the ACM Trends Report team has tracked the impacts of the pandemic on children’s museums and the field’s innovations through survey studies and other data collected by ACM.
This ACM Trends Report presents data from 28 museums that shared information on their donors and funds received by Spring 2021. This includes 147 corporate donations and 119 private foundation donations made to children’s museums. Corporate donations were stratified into categories by type of donor. We also collected data on whether the funds were provided as restricted or unrestricted gifts. To understand the pandemic’s impact on donations, this information was benchmarked against 2018 fiscal year 990 data. Comprising the most complete data to date, the 2018 fiscal year represents the pre-pandemic fiscal year for all organizations.
Three small museums, 10 medium museums, and 11 large museums provided information on corporate donations received during the pandemic. We also learned about a few extraordinary donations that represented historical commitments to large children’s museums, which should not be considered typical of the day-to-day fundraising expectations.
This early assessment of donor type, scale of donation, and comparisons helped us learn how to support comparison between museums irrespective of scale.
We normalized the data by comparing the percentage of total income from corporate and private funding received during the 2018 fiscal year to the percentage of total income from corporate and private funding received during the pandemic. This way, we were able to develop clear benchmarking that can be used by all children’s museums to consider their relative prospecting success and opportunities in their markets. This report focuses on understanding how to benchmark and set reasonable expectations for donation size as our field emerges from the pandemic.
An assessment of the 2018 nonprofit tax filings for all ACM member museums showed that an average children’s museum receives 47% of total income from donations and gifts. While some museums rely more heavily on donations than others, museum size did not impact total percentage of income from donations.
Museum development teams build an understanding of their local supporters and focus on relationships that can last over time. As a result, many of these gifts may be a function of annual giving unique to each community. This report focuses on whether there are patterns to giving that can help museum leadership set expectations. The context for this study was the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 civil rights protests, which caused donors to reconsider their funding priorities.
We explored a snapshot of fundraising results from the 2020 pandemic year to assess how these varied from pre- pandemic times. We also looked at donors by industry to aid in benchmarking anticipated gifts from any representative of the sector, and whether being part of a local, regional, or national brand impacted the size of gifts.
Twenty-four museum respondents reported corporate donations received during the pandemic. These donations ranged from $100 to $100,000. Most donations were below $5,000 (Figure 1). Around 2/3 of donations (n = 98) were gifted as unrestricted funds, 40 were completely restricted, and six were partially restricted. Larger donations were more likely to have restrictions attached.
Let’s walk through how to read this figure. Each black circle represents an individual donation from a corporation or corporate foundation. The purple line shows the mid-point (median) of the distribution of donations. The orange line represents the average (mean) corporate donation in this dataset. The mean is calculated by summing up all the numbers in a dataset and then dividing by the number of values in the dataset. This is different from the median which refers to the middle number when a set of numbers is placed in order smallest to largest. Three outlier donations (two of $70,000 and one of $100,000) are not shown in Figure 1 but are included in calculations.
Figure 1. Corporate donations reported by museums.
Because firm size and industry impact corporate giving (Amato & Amato, 2007), we categorized the set of corporate donations by industry and discovered that different-sized corporate donors gave varying gift amounts. To understand how to benchmark these gifts for comparison purposes, we suggest that is more relevant to consider the “median” donation rather than the “mean,” as one large donation to one museum can skew the results of the average.
Let’s walk through how to read the next pair of figures. Here, the circles represent donations from corporate donors and corporate foundations to children’s museums. The purple circles show the median donation for each industry while the orange circles show the mean donation for each industry.
Figure 2. Comparing the mean and median donation to children’s museums from corporate donors and corporate foundations.
Our analysis of this small dataset suggests a few things, but we would need additional data to more fully understand the funding patterns of corporate donors and make recommendations as to how children’s museums might approach them. These data suggest that if a museum were to approach an energy company for funding, they might be more likely to succeed if they explain that many children’s museums are supported by energy companies at the $5,000 level, but a few energy companies make large gifts that average $10,000.
While this approach may seem to reduce the potential gift, it helps to establish two norms or social expectations for the industry that could benefit children’s museums in the long term. Industrial and organizational research has shown that corporate donations are likely to level to match the norms for their industry, but are modified by regional norms across industries (Marquis & Tilcsik, 2016). Presenting funding request in this way may increase willingness of corporate donors to consider small gifts that were not on their priority list because they wish to represent their corporate citizenship as consistent with industry standards.
We also categorized corporate donations by the service territory. National brands were more likely to donate in the $10,000 range, regional brand gifts were at the $5,000 level, while local businesses hover around $1,000 (Figure 3). As noted, these are early findings, and we will continue to gather additional data in future surveys.
Figure 3. Comparing mean and median donations to children’s museums based on corporate reach.
The complete corporate funding data represents information from 24 children’s museums, a number too small to generalize across the field. A qualitative comparison of these data does suggest that in 2020, larger museums faced more challenges securing donations that matched historic patterns. In our data, medium sized museums fared better than their larger counterparts, but only a few maintained the pre-pandemic pace. Figure 4 presents a picture of 2020 corporate and private donations and the shortfall from 2018. To create the graph. we normalized the 2018 data for every museum to 100%, then divided 2020 funding into three categories and added a fourth representing 2020 donation shortfall compared to 2018. Private philanthropy in 2020 was by- far the most important category for supporting museums at about 3x the value of corporate donations (Figure 4), but still well below pre-pandemic levels of support.
Figure 4. Corporate and Private Donations to Museums as % of all donations reported in 2018.
Fundraising in the pandemic was vitally important for most children’s museums to fill the loss of earned income. As explored in earlier reports in this series, many museums reimagined their operations and services to accommodate fiscal realities, including a recognition that donors were reprioritizing funding. This ACM Trends Report shares data demonstrating useful patterns in fundraising, which can inform how museums can leverage industry norms to launch new requests to local, regional, and national corporations. However, more data needs to be collected to pain the full picture of corporate and private giving. In this report, we also normalized data by museum size to allow for comparisons irrespective of scale, while still allowing us to understand how scale will continue to influence public support for children’s museum funding.
The data used in this report came from an online survey that ACM sent to US-based children’s museums, and the 990 public tax filings of all U.S. children’s museums who are members of ACM.
Amato, L. H., & Amato, C. H. (2007). The effects of firm size and industry on corporate giving. Journal of Business Ethics, 72(3), 229-241.
Flinner, K., Voiklis, J., Field, S., Thomas, U.G, Attaway, E., & Gupta, R. (2021). Museums in a Pandemic: Diversifying Funding Streams. ACM Trends 4(7). Knology & Association of Children’s Museums.
Marquis, C., & Tilcsik, A. (2016). Institutional equivalence: How industry and community peers influence corporate philanthropy. Organization Science, 27(5), 1325-1341.
This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent those of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
The Associations of Children’s Museums (ACM) champions children’s museums worldwide. Follow ACM on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Knology produces practical social science for a better world. Follow Knology on Twitter.
January 12, 2022 (ARLINGTON, VA)—The Board of Directors of the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM) today announced Arthur Affleck as Executive Director, starting January 31, 2022. Following an extensive executive search, the Board unanimously selected Affleck to lead ACM, the world’s foremost professional society supporting and advocating on behalf of children’s museums, with more than 470 members in 50 states and 16 countries.
“We are thrilled to announce Arthur Affleck as ACM’s new leader,” said Tanya Durand, President, ACM Board of Directors, and Executive Director at Children’s Museum of Tacoma, powered by Greentrike. “ACM’s growth and development under the leadership of Laura Huerta Migus offers Arthur and the Board a wonderful foundation upon which we will build the next phase of ACM’s service to the children’s museum field and to families worldwide. Arthur brings to us impressive resource development experience, museum field savvy, and has a solid reputation as a connector and a doer. We look forward to working with him to set the most exciting vision for ACM yet.”
With considerable experience in nonprofit work and higher education, Affleck most recently served as Executive Vice President at the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), where he led an array of AAM programs and services, including membership, development, and meetings and events.
“Arthur’s vision, leadership, and many contributions to the museum field as part of AAM’s leadership team for the past five years has prepared him well for this new role,” said Laura Lott, President, AAM. “ACM and its members will grow and thrive thanks to Arthur’s dedication and talent. I could not be more pleased by his appointment.”
During his tenure at AAM, Affleck helped to secure seven-figure foundation grants to support the Alliance’s ground-breaking Facing Change—Diversity, Equity, Accessibility and Inclusion Initiative. He worked to advance DEAI efforts and financial sustainability for both the Alliance and museum field, as well as to expand museums’ growing role in the Pre-K-12 education ecosystem.
“I am excited by the opportunity to serve as Executive Director of the Association of Children’s Museums and to lead the effort to champion children’s museums worldwide,” said Affleck. “At this moment in our history, we need museums more than ever—especially children’s museums. In partnership with the board and staff, we will continue to support our members and advance the field in ways that are responsive, innovative, and impactful.”
| This article is part of the “Inside the Curve: Business as (Not Quite) Usual” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Pam Hillestad, Glazer Children’s Museum
I believe passionately in silver linings, but I have to admit that even my optimistic ideals were shaken to the core when we re-opened the Glazer Children’s Museum in June 2020. None of us knew what to expect. From a business standpoint, I wasn’t sure how we were going to recover, but I was even more worried about how we were going to create a positive experience for families coming out of quarantine. Would they come? What would they expect? What would they need? We weren’t sure, but we hoped that if we watched and listened we would figure it out.
Fairly quickly, we noticed that groups stayed together and experienced the museum differently than they had in the past. They remained in family units and were much more aware of where their children were and what they were doing throughout their visit. No longer distracted by phones, conversations, or the outside world, adults appeared more physically and mentally involved in their family’s visit. The reality of the threat of COVID-19 and navigating a new normal seemed to force them to be more present in the moment. We saw caregivers genuinely immersed in their children’s experiences.
We were not surprised that caregivers were newly cautious, but we were excited at the renewed attention they gave to their children and the overall level of family engagement. Preparing to add daily programming back into the schedule, we asked ourselves, “What if we could create programming in such a way that even when COVID-19 is no longer a concern, families still exhibit this kind of engagement during museum visits?” In an attempt to answer this question, we re-imagined our daily programming schedule and began to prototype what eventually became the Family Play Project (FPP).
First, we set up a programming area designed to give families their own spaces within it. The museum has two staircases. When we reopened, we designated one as the “up” staircase and one as the “down” staircase. The programming space we chose at the top of the “up” staircase was immediately visible and welcoming to families as they made their way to the second floor. In this 1,100-square-foot area, we set up six small, family-sized tables, six feet apart, and put a bottle of hand sanitizer on each table. Our program team staff, called playologists, stood near the top of the stairs and invited guests into the area to try the day’s activity. They shared materials and instructions with families by placing items on colorful trays and passing each family a tray as they entered the space and sat at their own table to participate.
In the first few months, activity themes changed frequently. On one day, we would offer an art activity at 10:00 a.m. and then a STEM activity at 11:00 a.m., for example. In one of these first art programs, playologists gave families a tray of leaves and other natural objects and invited them to use a glue gun, eye stickers, paint sticks, and other materials to create an animal or picture of some sort to either leave on a gallery wall or take home. After handing each family a tray, playologists then stepped aside to allow them to complete the activity on their own. Initially intended to keep both staff and guests at a social distance from each other, this type of “hands-off” programming was a big shift for everyone. Our playologists were used to interacting with children face-to-face while parents either opted out or participated in a cursory way. Families were used to letting us guide their play.
We put this new format in place as a temporary measure to help staff and guests feel safer. However, we soon found it also gave our program team time to observe and encourage family play. More importantly, we discovered it allowed caregivers more time and space to engage deeply with their children around the program. It wasn’t just that they were keeping closer tabs on their children’s physical location during a museum visit; we now saw a new level of interest in the programming activities. We saw deepened, joyful connections and knew we had stumbled upon something important.
As you can imagine, the initial change was not easy for the playologists. The moments of joy the team had formerly experienced working one-on-one with children had been transferred to the caregivers—and that was a hard adjustment at first. The team missed their old interactions with children and weren’t sure they were doing their jobs correctly anymore. After all, who were we, if we were not directly instructing or playing with children? That question led us to take a deep dive into the world of playwork and to begin to determine for ourselves where the intersection of museum play, family play, and playwork lay.
We had to dig in, examine our mission, consult our strategic plan, and determine who we wanted to be and who our families needed us to be—now. And while a little painful at the time (isn’t all change painful?), it was ultimately revelatory. This process has put the museum on a path, toward not only establishing ourselves as convening experts in the field of play, but also centering ourselves in the community as champions of play for children and families. Within a few weeks not only had the percentage of engagement in our daily programs grown, but so too had the amount of dwell time in them, the quality of the interactions, and both the level of participation and overall satisfaction of caregivers. The daily program participation capture rate soared under 10 percent in 2019 to 34 percent in 2021. We felt we had found the holy grail!
By stepping back and providing families with tools, we were building a more meaningful programming space. To celebrate this discovery, we decided to put all of our daily programming “eggs” into the family play “basket,” and we have not looked back. Prior to the pandemic, we had the typical scheduled programming at timed intervals and in different locations throughout the museum. Now we are committed to open programming throughout the day and primarily in one location.
The Family Play Project’s discovery phase continued through the fall of 2020 in the dedicated “up” staircase area. Frequently observing families in the space, we tracked daily metrics as well as dwell times. Families were engaged and having fun, and we were learning how to interact with them from the sidelines, wearing what Penny Wilson calls “the cloak of invisibility” in her essay, “The Playwork Primer,” published by the Alliance for Childhood.
By late December, we were posting daily capture rates over 30 percent. We instinctively knew that this was not simply a COVID-19 phenomenon, but that we had stumbled on the great white whale in children’s museums: a way to build relationships with caregivers and give them the support and space they needed so that they could enjoy a meaningful and playful experience with their children.
By January 2021, based in part on metrics and in part on gut feelings, we decided to continue the Family Play Project format for our daily programs in the upstairs space. But instead of running a couple different daily programs, with ever-changing themes, we selected one theme per month, allowing us to deepen the impact. Phase 1 of this new iteration involved building a Family Play Project calendar, choosing a theme for each month and tying as many of the other daily elements and museum spaces of the museum into it. Our first extended focus topic, bears, was an introduction to the Wild Kratts exhibit that followed. A screen in the FPP area was tuned to a Panda Bear webcam, and families learned how to fold origami bears together in the project activity. In addition, playologists learned a number of interesting bear facts to share with guests and all of our story time books were about bears.
Along the way, we also discovered the well-branded Family Play Project was very appealing to partners and donors. In April 2021, we partnered with Tampa Bay Water and created a Family Play Project with a special emphasis on water. Families stepping into the “up” staircase space were welcomed by water-related images on the walls, including art by First Nations Artist Christi Belcourt portraying the interconnectedness of nature and images explaining the water cycle. Families received a tray that included a black sheet of paper, oil pastels, and a copy of a family water pledge, which they could sign. Bilingual signage on each family table shared information about Christi Belcourt as well as some key water-related vocabulary words, such as aquifer, mangrove, and percolation. Children were captivated by the oil pastels, and adults were intrigued by the artist and her technique, which is characterized by rich, saturated colors that look like native beadwork, frequently on a dark background. Many families signed the water pledge as well.
The Family Play Project nicely illustrates the lessons we have learned about family play. While children are almost always eager to participate in an activity, choosing a topic that also interests caregivers increases family involvement. Currently, Family Play Projects are planned well in advance and integrated into the broader museum program. Some months the focus is attached to a partner (Tampa Bay Water) or an exhibit (Daniel Tiger), while other months it is attached to an event (celebrating the museum’s birthday). Each month we develop a theme-based, scaffolded family play activity, a story time book list, a musical play list, and a felt wall in the play space. The Family Play area is open all day long and families participate on their own schedule. Playologists are focused on inviting people into the area and supporting them, while giving families space to do the activities themselves.
We are still in the process of determining exactly what elements complete the perfect recipe for a meaningful, playful family experience, but we are learning more every day. In retrospect, Meditation and Mindfulness, our least successful theme, seemed to be an unfamiliar topic to caregivers, with activities like trying yoga poses and writing affirmations. What seems to consistently work best are themes that involve a lot of loose parts for children and a reason for caregivers to pay attention (either an intriguing topic or a perceived dangerous or “adult” tool, like a glue gun or hammer). Over the last eight months, we have continued to add and tweak elements, consult our play experts and families, and work cross-departmentally to develop a framework that captures what we are seeking. Our current model for the ideal project includes family learning goals based on topics we believe will delight and appeal to both children and adults, such as the use of interesting or novel tools (microscope, skin tone crayons, oil pastels), colorful tabletop and wall signage, multimedia elements, and an opportunity to either display a project on the gallery wall or take it home.
This summer, we added an intercept survey to our metrics, and now ask random families to complete a short survey on their way out of the programming space. To date, responses show that 91.7 percent of caregivers agree or strongly agree their child/children discovered something new about themselves and/or others today; 84 percent agree or strongly agree they discovered something new about themselves or their child today; and 97 percent agree or strongly agree they had fun. These responses have convinced us not only that are we headed in the right direction, but also that we are filling a need for the families we serve. Currently under development, a research project with the Department of Child and Family Studies at the University of South Florida will further probe FPP outcomes and results will guide future work in this area.
While so many difficult and awful things have happened during the past year and a half, we are thankful and extremely glad we took the time to watch, learn, and listen to our families when they returned to the museum. Their vigilance in protecting their own families struck a chord with us and the Family Play Project grew from there. We have recently added back some daily pop-up activities in other areas of the museum throughout the day. Families are starting to relax and sometimes will even join another family at the FPP table. On the whole, they are still more engaged than they were pre-pandemic. It is our deepest hope that the lessons learned will inform our future playwork and help families continue to build deep connections through play.
Pam Hillestad, vice president of play and learning, has served at the Glazer Children’s Museum in Tampa, Florida, since 2017. Previously she was a high school English teacher and soccer coach on U.S. Military bases in Portugal, Turkey, Bahrain, and Italy.
| This article is part of the “Inside the Curve: Business as (Not Quite) Usual” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
Before assuming her current role as Lead Arts Educator and Developer in June 2021, Liz worked for twelve years in a variety of other positions at the Chicago Children’s Museum (CCM). Most were part-time, enabling her to also work for Chicago Public Schools as a middle school and high school art teacher.
Liz came to Chicago from Houston, Texas, to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2005-2009). As a teen, she volunteered at Children’s Museum Houston and worked on the Teen Council at the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston. She describes herself as “a bit of a museum nut!” Along the way she got a master of teaching degree in art education at Columbia College (2013), worked at a zoo, and sold bath bombs.
Let’s Grow Together, a visitor-created art exhibit, was born out of a desire to celebrate reopening the museum in June 2021. In a large display case located in a well-trafficked hallway (across from the dinosaur), Liz developed a program to transform the space to welcome returning children and families. Liz: “So much loss happened while we were closed. But I didn’t want to focus on that so it was natural to think about growth instead, and gardens immediately came to mind. We can’t see all the emotional and social rebuilding that’s happening within us, but we can see a garden grow.”
For Liz the exhibit was a “great mental challenge as a developer/educator.” Guests dropping in to the Art Studio could make a leaf (or a flower or a bug) and either take it home or tack it to a burlap wall in the studio. Because individual leaves, flowers, and bugs were made over eleven weeks by young visitors, she couldn’t anticipate how the mural would look from week to week. When the museum was open from Friday through Sunday, Liz worked in the closed museum during the week to gather parts that had been “planted” on the burlap wall (seen in panel #1 of the cartoon) to assemble into the hallway mural. (Panel #2 shows the visitor process in action.)
Liz uses cartooning as a tool to help develop other exhibits and programs. In the cartoon presented at left, Liz portrays the many components of Let’s Grow Together—from the participating artists (kids), to their families/caregivers, to the staff, to the ideas and feelings that the project sparked—in six meaningful and delightful panels.
Let’s Grow Together’s garden beds are full now but will remain on display for the coming year. —ED
In panel #3, week 1-5 shows flowers, week 5-8 leaves, and week 8-11, bugs. Were you encouraging a botanical story progression? As a gardener, I noticed flowers come before leaves. Huh? But I also notice you included the bugs! Oh, the bugs…
Liz: Good eye on noticing we planted out of order. Flowers don’t come first, but we started there because it was so bare! I love leaves, but maybe our returning guests wouldn’t find them as interesting as flowers. As it turned out, leaves were the most popular! Just yesterday, a three-year-old talked to me about how he continues to make leaves at home. We ended up with “body builder” leaves, “cat” leaves, “dragon” leaves, “alien” leaves, and “COVID mask” leaves. From a practical standpoint we did leaves second so I could more easily arrange them naturally in bunches around the flowers. (You can see the whole process on my Instagram highlights— instagram.com/lizziemaerose.)
Through Let’s Grow Together, what have you discovered about the kids in your audience?
Liz: I was amazed at how they really embraced the unique aspect of it all and how responsive they were! We are really into process-based education in the Art Studio at CCM and so I would show them folding techniques to work with symmetry. And that was it! They came up with whatever they wanted! I didn’t think two- or three-year olds would get the symmetry bit very well, but they really seemed to enjoy it.
Your Instagram feed has a lot of cartoons that seem museum-related, e.g. Lay off the Masters, Sock Puppets, Scribbling, Bird Creative Play, etc. Do you actively push these out to museum audiences? Are they related to other programs at the museum?
Liz: Some of my comics have been featured on our CCM Instagram page. During pandemic quarantine, an artist I know asked me to make comics for her to share with her many followers who were caregivers. So, for a while there I challenged myself to make a comic every weekday. She would share them with her followers, and I shared them with mine. I was working very little at the museum at the time. All my videos were made in my own apartment! (I’m the gal with purple hair.) So, yeah, I wanted to help people in the best way I could—with play tips!
Under the developer umbrella, I am also currently working as an illustrator at the museum. I make illustrations to highlight upcoming projects or to help people understand how our spaces can spark play. My illustrations are very comic-like too. Even though these past eighteen months have been really tough, it’s been a great opportunity to try new things.
Do you regularly use cartooning to help develop programs?
Liz: I definitely use how I think about cartooning in my work. A challenge with cartoons is the balance of visual and word. I see that same challenge when introducing activities in the museum. I want kids and grownups to use their imaginations and the visual cues all around to inspire their making. So, sometimes I have to hold back. I can get too wordy in my comics too—ha-ha!—and, dare I say, in this interview!? Every museum experience is unique. For some guests it is their first visit; others are regulars or having a special family time together who may not want an educator talking to them very much. So I designed the Art Studio space to do a lot of the communicating on different levels.
What are the advantages of using cartoons in program development, over the usual written word or conversations? What can you communicate in a cartoon that’s hard to capture otherwise?
Liz: Accessibility! You’ll notice I tried to include Spanish translations in my cartoon (examples in panels #1 and #2). During the pandemic I worked with a colleague who is a native Spanish speaker (Hola, Alex!). I thought really critically about how to use Spanish meaningfully by making the text equal in size along with the visuals! If you don’t speak English or Spanish, a picture can help you understand something. When you travel to a place where another language is spoken, you can tell the power of simple images when you are looking for a bathroom. Or, where not to step. Also, for early learners, seeing a picture or simple cartoon of something and then the word is a classic phonics exercise. The simpler the drawing, the easier it is for our brains to “read” it or store the information.
The characters who appear in this cartoon—are they museum “regulars”?
Liz: Many of them are combinations of many regular visitors. The person in the hijab (panel #4) recently saw the comics and asked if it was her. Yes! An educator and artist who inspires me, she always wears bright and beautiful headscarves.
I also hide things, like cochlear implants, in my comics (seen in panel #5 in the little girl’s earlobe). The high school where I worked had a great “Hard of Hearing” program. I used to collaborate with the older high school students to teach our younger middle schoolers about sign language when I was introducing hand drawing.
I really love people, and many of them make it into my comics in different ways. All people should be able to find themselves in art.
How did you come into cartooning? Do you draw cartoons in other, non-museum aspects of your life?
Liz: I’ve been making cartoons since I was a child. In my teens I tried to move away from them because it wasn’t “cool,” but I kept going back to it. I have dyslexia and ADHD. My mind moves really fast. Comics are satisfying because I get to think about a million different things at once. Ultimately, I loved art because it was a place I excelled when I was struggling at school (I didn’t read until I was in 4th grade!). My parents were great and really encouraged it.
I try to draw every day, and not just art for work. Years ago, I saw people I knew on Instagram sharing art they were making and I decided I wanted to do it too. I have a comic about the power of envy. Occasionally jealous of what I saw among other people, I realized I had…unrealized desires. I also have a children’s book and a graphic novel I’ve been working on for multiple years. I don’t know if anything will ever happen with them because I work like crazy on one or the other for two months, then I don’t touch it for a year. I do take breaks when I need to but again, with the ADHD thing, I’m more stressed when I’m not doing something.
So yes, I do make comics in all parts of my life.
What do you think about when you draw a cartoon? How do you start? One idea/image, then a story flows from it?
Liz: I usually will begin with a thought I’m stuck on. A random memory pops up. Or something happens that totally changes my perspective. I write it in my notes app where I have dozens of ideas stored in no particular order. If an idea triggers a really big feeling, I will sketch out the comic, super messy, to get it out. Then later refine it.
Other times I’ll just go to the notes app and scroll until I find something that resonates with me at the moment. I tell my teen students to go with your gut, go with what you like. Art is about sharing with others things that give you a big feeling—good or bad. Preachy moment: art does not have to be made for a museum (except when it can?!). There is so much emphasis on the idea that art has to have some ultimate destination or objective—which also relates to the fact I’m a total play expert. If you want to get geeky about the definition of play (I got a comic about it), play is just doing a task for no particular reason.
| This article is part of the “Inside the Curve: Business as (Not Quite) Usual” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Kerrie Vilhauer, Children’s Museum of South Dakota
Following a fifteen-month closure, Dora Castano, custodian at the Children’s Museum of South Dakota, was looking forward to getting back to the little things—like cleaning fingerprints.
“I can’t wait to see little fingerprints on the windows again!”
Given the many tasks involved in a custodian’s work at a children’s museum, especially during a pandemic, it’s not often one would ask for more work to do. But, for Dora, those fingerprints aren’t just little messes.
They are a symbol of what was missing. They represent the unique role the people of the Children’s Museum of South Dakota play every day. They are the stories the museum learned to amplify, bringing our staff and volunteers to the world even when the world couldn’t come to us.
When it came time to reopen the Children’s Museum of South Dakota to visitors, it’s no surprise the bulk of the plan addressed health and safety. Messaging, talking points, and signage all focused on what guests would need to know when they came back to play.
As the team dug into the reopening communications plan, they quickly realized a more personal approach could go much further in reconnecting with visitors. After all, families had not been able to enter the museum’s doors—or connect with staff and volunteers in person—for over a year.
There’s precedent around this. The side effects of the pandemic—stress, developmental issues, and mental and physical health challenges—are real. Having a friend (or playmate) who is experiencing things in a similar way can be a comfort as society begins to move forward.
Which is why, when writing the reopening communications plan, we knew it was important to reintroduce the people behind the work—and the play—at the Children’s Museum of South Dakota. This strategy imparted empathy, showing how much a museum friend like Dora is ready to get back into the swing of things.
In a way, that set of fingerprints is a beautiful way to start a conversation.
Children’s museums are built for community. They are safe spaces for children, caregivers, and the surrounding area. As the only museum of its type in the state, this community space takes on an even more important role for the Children’s Museum of South Dakota.
Located inside a 40,000-square-foot repurposed elementary school on the edge of downtown Brookings, the museum takes on a more personal tone when guests arrive. Whether they are members who visit weekly, or tourists from many states away, the open-ended, child-led, inquiry-based way of play invites people into a relationship.
For many guests, it’s like coming home. It’s not uncommon for children to walk through the door and ask for a specific staff member or play guide. Some arrive and immediately look for a special loose part or toy—the life-sized stuffed sheep, or the large plush border collie, for example.
But as we all know now, reopening a children’s museum in a pandemic doesn’t mean things go back to the way they used to be. The museum knew we had to share safety protocols and guidelines that might make the play experience look different. We also knew that some protocols, like masking or limited capacity, could be controversial for some.
Here’s where those people and that community came into play again: by sharing the human side, guests could see that not only was health and safety a top priority, but so too was the fun.
This personal approach happened in two ways, first with a project headed up by museum educator Lauren Dietz and second, with the Museum’s Kidoodle Council Youth Advisory Board.
Tasked with freshening up a documentation wall in an exhibit just outside the art studio, Lauren wanted to show how excited the museum staff was to reopen. She connected with each staff member and asked what they were looking forward to the most.
She took photos of each person in their favorite exhibits. Because staff would be wearing masks upon reopening, she made sure one photo was with a face covering, and one was without, creating a balance of friendly smiling faces and safety protocols.
The project not only resulted in an inclusive, on-site display, but it also drove content for a digital campaign that spanned Facebook, Instagram, and the museum’s email list.
Amid messages about safety protocols, limited capacity, and adjusted hours, were the museum’s friendly faces—faces excited to reconnect, spark imagination, and learn through play. These faces belonged to long-lost friends who were ready to play again, even if it might look or feel a bit different at first.
And if engagement on social posts and guests sharing their excitement online and on-site is an indication of success, this was exactly what the museum’s audience was looking for.
The Kidoodle Council Youth Advisory Board is a volunteer group of nine six to twelve year olds who work as ambassadors for the museum and help generate ideas for programs and exhibits.
Throughout the museum’s closure, the board continued to meet through a combination of video conferencing and in-person meetings.
The Kidoodle Council had the honor of experiencing the first run-through of the exhibits prior to the indoor exhibit reopening. The council saw firsthand how to open and turn on exhibits, getting a behind-the-scenes sneak peek. In return, the museum staff could not only confirm everything worked as expected, but they also had a glimpse of how children would re-engage with the space following the closure.
The meeting resulted in a YouTube video that gave a time-lapse tour of the museum and shared what each board member was most looking forward to when they came back to play.
The video was shared with the public and used for staff training purposes. It offered new hires and those who haven’t visited in quite some time a chance to see the museum in action through the eyes of a child.
The pandemic put a hard stop to paid advertising. Even today, as the museum operates at limited capacity, advertising is on hold since play space continues to fill organically. However, the museum continues to look for ways to stay top of mind.
Whether it is offering ways to play along at home on the blog at www.prairieplay.org, continuing conversations on social media, or playing along in person, the museum will continue to focus on taking a personal approach. They know it’s these people—the ones who are excited to clean up fingerprints—who will help bring the museum back to life.
To stay in front of people. To follow the child. To be a resource. And to spark imagination that is as big as the sky.
Kerrie Vilhauer is director of marketing at the Children’s Museum of South Dakota in Brookings, South Dakota.
| This article is part of the “Inside the Curve: Business as (Not Quite) Usual” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Krishna Kabra, San Diego Children’s Discovery Museum
Inventiveness and ingenuity are stimulated by difficulty. When the going gets tough, we are forced to think in ways we never have, stretch beyond convention and comfort, and focus on positive outcomes or, at least, solutions.
People are creatures of habit. We stick to what we know and focus on what we’ve mastered (and can be bothered to do). We regulate for rote and plan for predictability, and it is in this overall balance that we find flow. We function with familiarity. The last year, however, has thrown a royal wrench in that highly evolved and deeply conditioned human tendency. The children’s museum field, like many others, has been flung into lands unknown, inadequately sourced, staffed, and skilled. Overnight, we have become artful adaptors, from mastering digital content production to going from staff commanders to staff counselors.
Research shows that leaders believe that to advance their missions they need to imagine and create new approaches to solving social challenges — they need to innovate. But innovation isn’t easy. More often than not, innovation is an enigma — an amorphous intangible “thing” that is challenging to scope, shape, and size. Despite this, we value attempts to pursue it. No doubt there has been an unprecedented degree of innovation in our organizations over the last year. We have needed to innovate to in order to survive.
So, how have we adapted and adopted new ways of functioning so adeptly in such challenging times? Necessity is clearly one reason, but I would argue there’s more to it than that. Albeit anxiety ridden, many of us found ourselves operating in an environment where the rules of the game changed overnight. With the absence of lines within which to color, opportunities for the unstructured, unexpected, and unfamiliar were born, a perfect breeding ground for creativity. However, innovation and the creative process require structure, familiarity, and intention. It also requires a shared vision around which key stakeholders can coalesce and feel inspired.
In this piece, I have identified fundamental principles and cultural prerequisites to successful innovation. This is not a finite list by any means, rather it includes the ones that have served my organization well over the last year and a half. To accompany them, I will briefly share a very simple three step process organizations might follow to help infuse a regular heartbeat into the innovation practice.
The first principle is visionary thinking. To paraphrase the Cheshire Cat’s conversation with Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” Vision-led innovation is fundamental to success. A clear North Star provides destination, inspiration, and ambition. Most visionaries are thought to have a poorly developed sense of fear or understanding of the odds against them. A blessing, if there were ever one, over the last year when we took all kinds of risks amongst pervasive fear and unknown odds.
Uncontrollable external events make vision setting on the fly very challenging, and any innovations as a result might only be reactive. It’s like trying to draft a military strategy while in the trenches and under attack. When I worked in the for-profit world, one of the executives I worked with had an incredible vision for our start-up, almost akin to Frodo being guided by the power of the ring. He knew exactly where the organization was headed. I once asked him, “How do you know where our North Star is?” “Intuition,” he said, an arresting and alluring conviction of what could be. Even with an inspired vision in place, the everyday challenge is figuring out the pathway(s) there and staying on course.
Second is the principle of diverse and curious teams. I have had the opportunity to build my own team over the last year. One of the key criteria for hiring solid talent has been looking for people who have an innate sense of curiosity, creativity, and courage. We actively lean towards professionals who exhibit critical thinking — those with a “yes and…” attitude, a “what if…” perspective, and a willingness to get creative. Collaborative, inquisitive multi-disciplinary teams, whether in nonprofit or for-profit organizations, bring distinct perspectives that present a rich and fertile ground for innovation. It may be led by a specific department, but it’s the smorgasbord of skills that brings the magic to the method.
The third principle is identifying pathways towards the vision. Innovation can be non-linear and nebulous but establishing pathways and processes can help achieve meaningful outcomes. As an example, one of our museum’s strategic imperatives is to create a welcoming and inclusive environment where every family feels they belong. We want to engage visitors from rural communities in San Diego County, who can be difficult to reach directly due to financial and/or geographic barriers. We have identified three possible pathways: The first is to leverage partnerships, such as with school systems, other nonprofits, or even retail outlets. For example, we drew on our existing relationship with county libraries to deploy them as distribution partners for our hands-on STEM education kits. The second pathway is to reach these communities ourselves with our mobile museum or pop-up museum experiences in high traffic areas within those communities. The third is to franchise a micro version of our museum experience to local education partners and parent communities/groups, packaging the best of what we do as a ‘plug and play’ off the shelf experience with educators and parents guiding children through specific hands-on (and digital) educational and enrichment experiences.
Given that the most obvious pathway is not always the only one, creative solutions can lead to alternate pathways. It’s worth the time and effort to come up with smarter, leaner, and more impactful approaches. Our museum recently talked about the idea of having an ‘R&D fund,’ a pot of money that allows us to explore new ideas. In today’s climate, this may sound nonessential, but it’s worth it if the resulting innovation could lead to greater efficiencies and/or even systemic change.
Have you ever heard the phrase, “culture eats strategy for breakfast”? It’s real. Culture determines the success of any endeavor, no matter how well briefed, organized, or executed. Innovation is not simply a practice or a singular strategy, it defines a culture and a philosophy kept alive by leadership. I have worked with many for-profit corporate clients that have the most brilliant and bountiful new product pipelines or the most well-honed processes in place. However, when an organization’s culture does not embrace a healthy innovation culture (which includes failure), there is very little, if any, progress or growth.
A key part of an empathic organization’s culture is understanding who you are innovating for and what their needs are. For our museum, that means understanding the families we serve, including their concerns, motivations, and both reasons for and barriers to visiting. Before joining the museum, I once worked with a medical device company that manufactures pioneering heart health products, and despite their cutting-edge technology, success was stifled. Sales agents were equipped to describe the superiority of their devices to doctors, but their talk track lacked any patient needs narrative. They consistently failed to capture the voice of their end patient and, therefore, had a limited understanding of the emotional needs of a typical heart patient. They were disconnected in a way that mattered and, pun intended, their approach lacked heart.
Below are three aspects of an organization’s culture that are key to successful innovation.
If you had to build your organization today from the ground up with exceptionally limited resources, what would you do? How would you make it happen? The flip side: if you had to build your organization today from the ground up but with plentiful resources, what would you do? These hypothetical questions allow you to flex an entrepreneurial mindset, feeding creative thinking, curiosity, bravery, and resilience. They challenge established ways of thinking and force you to consider how you could do things differently and better.
One of our strategic plan’s organizational imperatives is to create insight-informed and needs-based programming by understanding the lives of the families we serve and using those insights as a basis for innovation. Empathy is everything. Our museum recently formed a “community circle,” a diverse focus group of patrons that represents our visitor base (members, non-members, sensory needs families, educators etc.). Through quarterly in-person meetings, we are gaining a better understanding of our audiences and, in that context, exploring meaningful ways we can add value to their museum experience.
Typically, innovation starts at an uncomfortable and sometimes frightening place where you have some ideas, but few (if any) answers. You might experience internal contention, asking, “Why are we dedicating resources to this while we’re trying to recuperate from last year? Is it really a priority?” I often hear the phrase, “nonprofits do not have the luxury to spend time innovating.” However, as resource-challenged organizations, we must be more innovative. We will never have all the answers, but if we don’t try, we’ll never have any.
The paradox of success is that you need to fail to achieve it. We must embrace failure as part of the innovation process. Employees need the freedom to try new things, to smartly, fail fast, learn from their mistakes, and continue to refine the process and keep trying as they move along. Again, this might seem like a luxury after the past eighteen months we have had, but our missions are driven by highly passionate and purpose-driven employees. In Daniel Pink’s book Drive, autonomy, mastery, and purpose are identified as motivation factors for most people. Autonomy is the feeling of being self-directed; mastery is the feeling of getting better at things that matter by getting feedback; and purpose is knowing you are doing something meaningful.
German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said an important idea must “endure a hostile reception before it is accepted… At first the idea is ridiculed, second, it is violently opposed, third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” Innovation requires breaking ranks and challenging convention. Responses may be accompanied by a degree of “Are you nuts?” Be prepared for it and hold on to your vision, intuition, optimism, and passion. Historically, most innovators were ridiculed for their ideas at some point. The rebuttal and resistance are part of the process.
The innovation process is deliberately simple. Inspired by global design company IDEO’s human-centered design thinking model, it is a non-linear process where each stage has contours and character, with the person you are innovating for at the center.
The three stages of innovation are inspiration, ideation, and implementation. Here’s what each one looks like:
Inspiration includes opening yourself up to creative possibilities while immersing yourself in the lives of your core (or design) audience. During this first stage, frame challenges to be simple and vision-aligned and, with your team, create a project plan that includes critical milestones. Throughout the process, identify natural points of divergent and convergent thinking. A team that is diverse in skills and expertise will focus on harnessing insights from their audience and perhaps even other secondary sources. For example, what do we need to understand about this group of kids? Which experts might we talk to for additional insights? At the outset, your primary purpose is to scope the project and capture insights in advance of any generative ideation work. The goal is to ensure that all your team members are on the same page — informed, inspired, and aligned with the task at hand.
All the insights gleaned in the process described above are leveraged to spark the second stage, ideation, where lots of ideas (good or bad, big or small, incremental or disruptive) are generated. Insights from your core audience become platforms for new ideas; some human truths as present challenges that require creative solutions. As an example: “Some kids in the digital divide, who might benefit from STEM education, are not able to physically visit our museum, how might we solve for that?” From there, the ideas begin to emerge — mobile programs, pop-ups, partnerships, expanded and more accessible online programs, etc.
Finally, the implementation stage is a time for prioritization, prototypes, and pilots. Essentially, you must rank the ideas generated, build first run versions of them to see if they have legs, and identify metrics for success. You must consider which metrics might be important to various audiences and how you might want to share your story with different stakeholders. Not every prototype will work. For those that do, you ultimately want to know why so you can build a roadmap for future success.
The entire innovation process lives at the intersection of empathy and creativity. Each stage can be simple or complex depending on the tasks and resources at hand and your level of experience.
We all know that we live in a world of increasing uncertainty, which isn’t likely to change any time soon. The need to adapt is essential — in fact, it is the new way of life — so we might as well develop the skills to help us get good at it. Right now, many of us are focused on just keeping going, continuing what we have been doing over the last year while at the same time pausing to reflect on what can be done better going forward. What have we learned from limitations? Are there any new processes or approaches to consider? Where and how can we be leaner and more impactful? Which philosophical or operational fundamentals do we need to reconsider or redefine?
Evolutionary steps achieve revolutionary goals. Successful innovation is not an event, but a continuous process embraced by all. It need not be cumbersome. By starting with small novel ideas, piloting, experimenting/testing, learning, and refining, we can achieve our basic objective of maximizing social impact. The needs of our respective communities have never been greater, and we have all shown we can indeed navigate unchartered waters. Now is the time to examine lessons learned over the last year and consider where disruption has empowered and accelerated our museums to better serve our missions.
Krishna Kabra has served first as executive director and later CEO of the San Diego Children’s Discovery Museum since September 2020. Previously, she was executive vice president of The Value Engineers, an innovation and brand strategy organization serving Fortune 500 companies. As a certified Positive Parenting educator and child mediator, she was also previously founder/owner of Atlanta-based Squeeze My Soul.
| This article is part of the “Inside the Curve: Business as (Not Quite) Usual” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Hilary Van Alsburg, Children’s Museum Tucson | Oro Valley
Who knew ramping up out of a pandemic would be as hard (or harder!) than spiraling into one? As an organization, Children’s Museum Tucson | Oro Valley (CMT) is facing the same challenges as others in our industry and community and we have gotten nimble in anticipating and tackling them. We shifted to remote working, rolled out our first virtual programming and activity kits, introduced private play dates, and focused on fundraising for things we were inventing at the same time. In the last eighteen months, we have often used the phrase “building the plane as we learn to fly it.” What began as a sprint soon turned into an endurance marathon. We thought reopening to visitors would be the finish line. Wrong again. Opening turned out to be just the end of the first leg of a relay.
When we first closed to visitors, there were maybe fifteen cases of COVID-19 in our state. By September 2021, there were 3,000 new cases reported every day. And we are open. When we closed to in-person experiences in March 2020, we didn’t receive a single complaint. Our community was in solidarity with us, we were all in it together. When we reopened a year later, our community rallied and celebrated along with us. Six months later, our staff is weary from navigating the fickle and sometimes hostile public opinion about masks, social distancing, and visitor engagement. The vast majority of guests appreciate the rules, and the policies are not a source of contention. The joy in being back at the museum and having a place for kids to play is very real. But for a vocal minority, the policies around masks are an invitation to snipe, challenge, and verbally abuse staff. Pile that responsibility on to a brand new team just learning their jobs—and a team primarily made up of staff under age twenty, entering the workforce for the first time, and facing their own anxieties about working in a public-facing position—it can be overwhelming. These are the challenges of reopening we hadn’t anticipated and are learning to navigate.
The hiring landscape has also completely changed, not only for us but for all organizations and businesses. After being closed to the public for a year, we knew that most of the frontline staff we were forced to let go would not be returning. Our core team of eleven people had worked in the trenches all year, but now, we were looking at hiring all new frontline staff, more than tripling our staff, adding twenty-three new people, in just a month.
Prior to the pandemic, when a position opened up at the museum, we would post the job description widely, seeking diverse applicants. Since most of our frontline staff are college or high school students, targeting school advisors to share the job has been very helpful. We would then review applications, email applicants to schedule initial phone conversations, then set up follow-up in-person interviews. On average, the process took about three weeks. As the museum began to re-open, that process proved unworkable very early on. Half the people who applied didn’t show up for the interview. Many who were hired often didn’t show up to work on the first day, and many others who were hired left after a short duration to take another position.
Now, in a world where every industry is hiring and can’t meet the demand, we do it all in one day. The second we get an application, we call, interview, and decide on the spot to extend a job offer to the applicant. Yes, it is now that competitive. This buyer’s market mentality has unanticipated ripple effects. You take a gamble on folks who might not really be the best fit. You risk sacrificing diversity for immediacy. It is a hard enough landscape to hire and keep people—add to that grumpy visitors who feel entitled to take their frustrations out on young staff, and we have scrambled to sharply refocus and invest in staff support measures.
We are focused on building an all-new customer engagement team. In addition to the normal training, bonding, and layering of organizational culture, we are investing in a good vibe. We are role-playing and modeling how to deal with tense situations and de-escalate confrontation. We are working across the organization to support our frontline Guest Experiences team. Back office staff shares more face time with the frontline team, and together we diffuse tension and laugh. We listen to the banter on the walkie-talkies in case senior staff needs to go to the front desk to offer support when a team member needs assistance with a difficult customer. Every time additional staff needs to support a frontline staff member in enforcing policy, it takes them away from the daily work needed to run a museum. It’s exhausting and disheartening. But it also has unanticipated benefits. This newly focused support helps us build trust, break down silos between front and back of the house, and share experiences that create opportunity for discussion and reflection on our mission and role in the community. We value feedback from all staff and encourage reflection with daily debriefings. We share highlights and focus on our entire team in ways we never did before. This helps us navigate the hurdles and will have lasting benefits. When we do finish this race, we will do it together, and the museum experience will be all the better for everyone. Even the grumps.
Hilary Van Alsburg is the executive director of Children’s Museum Tucson | Oro Valley. Prior to this, she was the chief development officer at University of Arizona Libraries, The Humane Society of Southern Arizona, and the Children’s Museum Tucson | Oro Valley.
Grabbing the Brass Rings
Vanessa King, director of education, along with Michael Bilharz, associate director of guest experiences, and his three managers, Manny Gomez, Roshea Meyers, and Christine Peterson, are jointly responsibly for hiring and training a highly flexible crew frontline staff. Vanessa describes their approach to navigating a wild job market, retaining new hires, and making organizational change. Tucson is home to the University of Arizona, so many of our frontline staff are college students. In addition, students and interns from local high schools fill these positions. For many of these young people, working at CMT is their first job. So, our training focuses on not only the usual museum components—family learning in exhibits, program delivery, customer service—but on how to have a job—being reliable and punctual, working with other staff. In “normal” times, we would hire and train one or two new staff at a time, giving them opportunities to shadow experienced staff before they were on their own. Recently, we hired fifteen people in two weeks and trained them as a group. To make these mostly part-time jobs more appealing and retain as many staff as possible, we have become even more flexible, adjusting to ever-changing schedules and a competitive job market. The silver lining? Relatively new to the museum, I wanted to make some changes anyway, including giving frontline staff more opportunities for interaction and the education team more ownership of programming. So, when we re-opened, staff (and visitors!) expected some things to be different. And they were. We didn’t have to pretend that everything was the same. |
| This article is part of the “Inside the Curve: Business as (Not Quite) Usual” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Kari Ross Nelson and Stephen Ashton, PhD, Thanksgiving Point
Events of the past eighteen months have created opportunities for children’s museums to become more resilient and to position themselves as significant advocates for children and families in their communities. Children’s museums launched new efforts and transformed existing ones to address unprecedented needs. Two surveys distributed as part of the Association of Children’s Museums’ (ACM) Museums Mobilize initiative documented these efforts, as well as some of the resulting transformations in children’s museums themselves. As we consider ways in which some museums have changed, and the impacts of this change on current and future planning in the field, we would do well to consider that many currently front and center community challenges will not subside when the pandemic or protests have ended. Moving forward, the good that children’s museums can do as advocates for children and families must continue with intention and resolve.
ACM launched Museums Mobilize in November 2020, in the thick of the COVID-19 global pandemic. The initiative sought to highlight and amplify the efforts of children’s museums around the world to support children and families during the pandemic. ACM sent two surveys to their more than 300 museum members. The first produced a landscape view of efforts; a follow up survey was sent to the first survey’s respondents, exploring more deeply the efforts they reported and the resulting transformations of both the museums and their communities.
This landscape survey captured the big picture of how museums activated during the pandemic. Eighty-seven museums across thirty-four US states and foreign countries reported on 195 programs ranging from virtual learning to activity kits, to school and community partnerships, to parenting resources, to learning pods. ACM reached out to Thanksgiving Point’s Research and Evaluation team to help analyze the large number of responses. Thanksgiving Point is a member of the ACM Research Network, an IMLS-funded collaboration between ACM, the University of Washington’s Museology program, and fifteen children’s museums in the US and Canada. During its initial three-year grant period (2015-2018), the Research Network conducted four full-scale research projects on the learning value of children’s museums.
As described above, initial survey results showed how many and what kinds of programs were happening. But what did it all mean? How could the data be analyzed to illuminate children’s museums’ commitments to serving the needs and interests of children, and the unique and important ways in which these actions were being carried out? To facilitate this kind of analysis, we used ACM’s guiding document, “The Four Dimensions of Children’s Museums,” as a structure to sort and classify responses.
For many years, the field has been wrestling with the defining question, “what is a children’s museum?” In an attempt to come up with a succinct answer that would resonate both inside and outside the field, ACM articulated the key attributes of a children’s museum in a 2019 document. In short, they are much more than just places to visit. All children’s museums, they argue, function as local destinations, educational laboratories, community resources, and advocates for children.
Using these Four Dimensions as a coding scheme in the context of Museums Mobilize data, the survey responses began to illustrate a picture of the myriad ways children’s museums contribute to the wellbeing of children and families in their communities. The table {below} describes each dimension and a few examples of how each one was evidenced in survey responses. (The lines between the dimensions blur easily; many efforts fit into more than one dimension.)
When ACM drafted “The Four Dimensions of Children’s Museums,” they could not have anticipated how these roles would be challenged and magnified in the coming year. Nevertheless, we found evidence of all four in the Museums Mobilize survey responses.
| Dimension | Examples |
| Local Destinations
Designed exhibit spaces elevate child-centered learning and development while striving to reflect and address community needs. |
Even when they were closed to general visitors, many children’s museums welcomed visitors to dynamic virtual spaces. Some were able to accommodate visitors in their physical spaces in the form of learning pods, highly controlled special group visits, and modified or expanded outdoor exhibits. |
| Educational Laboratories
Play-based pedagogies are developed and tested. |
Staff used their expertise in learning theories, child development, and pedagogy to design and execute meaningful programs, testing the possibilities of play-based remote learning. |
| Community Resources
Helping to build child-friendly communities and places where parents and teachers can turn for information and training. |
Children’s museums produced resources to help parents and caregivers recognize and foster developmental milestones during a time when professional services and evaluations may have been put on hold. They helped children process a new environment full of isolation, fear, and grief. They helped parents/caregivers connect and support each other as they navigated parenting in the pandemic. Others initiated outdoor community events such as farmers markets, sidewalk art, and socially distanced festivals. |
| Advocates for Children
Responding to current needs of children and families in their communities, while cultivating cross-sector partnerships for wide reach and high impact. |
Many museums pivoted to online programming and creating activity kits and distributing them through food banks, schools, libraries, and other community organizations. |
Perhaps most poignantly, we found children’s museums shining in the role of advocating for children. Merriam-Webster defines an advocate as “one who supports or promotes the interests of a cause or group.” This definition is reflected ACM’s explanation of the “Advocates for Children” dimension and how museums fulfill it:
One of our (Learning Pods) program participants lost access to his classes in March when his school went virtual. He did not have wifi or a device to use at home to connect with his classes. In August he was provided a Chromebook from his school, but he still did not have access to wifi. When he arrived at the museum he had pages of overdue assignments. He came in, took a deep breath and immediately relaxed when he saw he could access our Internet. He opened up his breakfast and began eating while he logged in, for the first time to join his class. And in two weeks of being in the program he was able to catch up on his work.
–Fort Worth Museum of Science and History (TX)
The kits are designed to meet the needs of young children who are missing out on interactive learning experiences during the pandemic. There is a particular focus on children who are low-income, underserved, and at-risk. The inspiration for the kits was sparked early on in the pandemic when the Family Support Center asked the museum to create free learning kits to provide homeless children with enriching activities while quarantining at a hotel. The success of these early kits triggered a wave of similar requests that continues to grow. To date, we have distributed nearly 10,000 free kits to schools, libraries, and community organizations, with support from grants and individual giving.
–Hands On Discovery Museum (Olympia, WA)
One of our initiatives involved distributing Play Packs to children and families encountering difficult situations – from food insecurity to homelessness to not having access to places to play and learn. One partnership involved the distribution of a series of three Play Packs to children involved in area Judy Centers (which provide early education services via area Title I Schools), plus lunch, and live programming with Port Discovery educators. Judy Center staff and families regularly expressed their gratitude for the program. One participant told us how the Port Discovery program was the one thing that she would get excited about participating in; others expressed appreciation for the chance to continue live, early enrichment programming.
–Port Discovery Children’s Museum (Baltimore, MD)
We created 4,000 ThinkerPlayerCreator Boxes for an entire school district’s Title One kindergarteners because the families and children were REALLY struggling with online work. The district told us that when the kids got their boxes, the dropout rate among the families slowed dramatically. Also, one of the parents told the district that the materials in the box were the first time the child ever had their own book, scissors, and crayons.
–Children’s Museum of Phoenix (AZ)
The Mid-Hudson Children’s Museum opened the Poughkeepsie Waterfront Market in summer 2017 to connect city residents and families with fresh, affordable and locally-produced food. In doing so, it became the first children’s museum in the country to open and operate a public farmers’ market as a strategy for fighting urban food insecurity and advancing community health. The market is a certified SNAP market and participates in the WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Programs to ensure the affordability of fresh produce and farm products for low-income individuals and families. In spring 2020, in response to the near total disruption of the local food system in Poughkeepsie due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the market rallied its vendors and opened one month early to help bring fresh healthy food to downtown Poughkeepsie during the public health crisis. Support for this pre-season opening came from multiple private and public organizations. Due to the continued COVID-19 crisis, for the first time, the market extended its season through October 2020.
–Mid-Hudson Children’s Museum (Poughkeepsie, NY)
In reviewing the results of the landscape survey, the Thanksgiving Point team wanted more details that could show, beyond numbers, the impact of programming during the pandemic. This second survey more deeply explored transformations to museums themselves and to their communities as a result of these many new programs and practices.
Bear in mind that all responses are self-reported and may be deemed subjective. While about half of respondents indicated they did collect evaluative information beyond numbers, they were asked only to provide key findings, not methods of measurement or data-based evidence.
As seen in Graph #1, the 51 respondents to the second survey reported eight distinct impacts (plus a ninth “other”) on their museums:
Along with the stories included in the discussion of the “Four Dimensions of Children’s Museums” above, other stories shared by the respondents provide concrete examples of some of these transformations.
An elementary school in Chicago reached out to us who had seen our videos on YouTube. They asked us to put together a virtual field trip for their students to teach the art of shadow puppetry. It was a wonderful experience to reach new audiences and gain a new opportunity for meeting our mission!
–The Woodlands Children’s Museum (TX)
The owner of our local Chik-Fil-A franchise purchased 100 kits to distribute to foster families in the area. This was a new partner for the museum, and we have since been able to partner again with them on future projects. The museum was thrilled to be able to provide these fun family kits to a new audience as well.
–ExpERIEnce Children’s Museum ( PA)
With help from a local funder, the museum was able to provide two sets of PAL kits to a fourth grade class last year when they had to quarantine at home for two weeks. The school was incredibly grateful for an opportunity to provide hands-on learning and we were able to reconnect with a funder to not add a financial burden to us. The experience was amazing for the museum and for the students.
–Mid-Michigan Children’s Museum (Saginaw)
Additionally, museums recognized the impacts their work was having in their community, as seen in Graph #2, and reported seven distinct community transformations (plus an “other” category):
Again, more stories from the respondents show what these transformations look like in the community.
A social service agency was able to use our boxes as part of their therapy sessions now that they were doing them virtually. It allowed children at home who were not in therapy something to do while another child/parent had therapy. Families could engage after the therapy together.
–KidsQuest Children’s Museum (Bellevue, WA)
One parent expressed that she did not know anything about our museum but when her child received a take-home kit he immediately recognized our logo and began telling his mom all about the fun times he had at the museum during monthly field trips with his kindergarten.
–Lynn Meadows Discovery Center (Gulfport, MS)
One single mother was a loyal kit user and requested eight different kits. She messaged us several times that the kits were “lifesavers” and that she especially appreciated that her special needs teen son and her two-year-old daughter could both find activities to enjoy. Another time she wrote that her daughter put together her first sentence talking about the balls and tubes in our Infant/Toddler kit.
–The Children’s Playhouse (Boone, NC)
In open-ended questions, respondents expressed that while there is no replacement for in-person programming, they learned to stretch, adapt, and practice new skills. They stayed connected with existing audiences and even reached new ones both local and remote. They recognized that partners were an important part of making an impact. All of this helped museums feel validated in their work and bolstered their commitment to understanding needs and serving children and families everywhere.
In the past year and a half, children’s museums have stepped up—and continue to step up (the pandemic is not over)—with responsive and caring work in service to children and families. Although we will remember the pandemic as one of the most stressful times in recent history, Museums Mobilize findings serve as an inspiration to move forward with intention and resolve, magnifying our role as advocates for children and fostering a new, better normal in the years to come for our audiences and for our museums.
With media focused on social, political, and pandemic unrest, are children being lost in the agitation? Last fall, one Washington Post op-ed writer surmised, “American children are out of school, out of food and increasingly getting chucked off their health insurance. Yet somehow, they seem to be an afterthought in [the November 2020] election.”[1] Children bear a disproportionate share of the hardships caused by the pandemic. The August 2021 online tracker from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities[2] shows that households with kids report higher rates of food insecurity, housing instability, and other metrics of financial insecurity. Add to this inadequate or uncertain health insurance, childcare, and schooling and the picture becomes even more dire.
Children’s museums cannot be the solution to all of these hardships. However, we are uniquely positioned with facilities, expertise, creativity, and a dedication to children that can be leveraged to make children’s lives better. This deeper perspective, hard won in the past year and a half, could form the foundation for a more meaningful approach to advocacy, but also challenges us to take a look in the mirror. Most children’s museums, known as joyful spaces for learning and play, have promoted those concepts in fun, positive ways. Does “learning and play” need to be reframed as surviving and thriving, and perspectives shifted accordingly? Has the pandemic expanded our answer to the question, “what is a children’s museum?”
Kari Ross Nelson is research and evaluation associate and Stephen Ashton, PhD, is the director of audience research and evaluation at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, Utah.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/americas-children-are-suffering-why-are-they-still-an-afterthought-this-election/2020/10/12/6c4f8440-0cbd-11eb-8a35-237ef1eb2ef7_story.html
[2] https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/tracking-the-covid-19-recessions-effects-on-food-housing-and
| This article is part of the “Inside the Curve: Business as (Not Quite) Usual” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.
—Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark
By Jonathan Zarov, Madison Children’s Museum
The pandemic forced Madison Children’s Museum, like many children’s museums, to pare down staffing and operations drastically. Though it is not a path anyone on the museum’s staff or board would have chosen, stripping back created opportunities to reorganize departments, roles, and systems as we rebuilt. The result is a more sustainable and efficient organization—more data-driven, and stronger in many ways than before COVID.
The museum closed March 13, 2020 and reopened to the public on June 3, 2021. Over that period, our staffing levels dropped from seventy-five employees to twenty, most working part time. Staffing levels wouldn’t increase until spring 2021, as we prepared for reopening, and current staffing remains at approximately 50 percent of pre-COVID levels.
During the long closure, the museum served the community with COVID-safe outreach, such as hopscotch games painted on sidewalks in more than 70 neighborhoods; take-home activity kits; outdoor drive-through events, cross country ski classes at a local park, and online programming.
Some of the most important work during closure, though, was gestational, as leadership engaged staff in considering what a reimagined, post-pandemic museum would look like and then planned for reopening.
Some opportunities to create efficiencies arose in the wake of staff departures. When two members of our leadership team moved on to new positions, we restructured and reduced the team from seven to five, a more manageable number for meetings and decisions. Remaining leadership team members took on additional responsibilities to support development work, meeting with supporters, writing grants, and helping to shape and support a major campaign, “Our Future in Play: a plan to survive, thrive, and play outside in 2021.” The campaign has raised over 4 million dollars to date, which, together with relief funds, has sustained the museum through the pandemic and reopening—and funded a new, 10,000-square-foot outdoor exhibit for active play called the Wonderground, opening at the beginning of October 2021.
But the institutional reorganization that most affects—and improves—day-to-day operations was the creation of a new Visitor Services Division.
Pre-COVID, the education and marketing departments each managed separate teams responsible for different aspects of the visitor experience.
When we merged the teams, we increased pay and benefits for these public-facing positions. We were able to re-hire several experienced staff who had been laid off for nearly a year. Having one combined team creates efficiencies through cross-training, enabling many staff to assist with front desk admissions, visitor engagement in exhibits, and membership processing.
We are currently employing John Doerr’s Measure What Matters approach to work strategically toward a small set of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)—with the help of volunteer employees from the Madison-based American Family Insurance’s Ignite team. Many of the key results (measurable goals) were focused on the visitor experience and our objective to “welcome visitors and wow them.”
To keep us on track toward that goal, we collected data through visitor surveys. The museum had shifted to advance ticketing during the pandemic, and a useful side effect was having every visitor’s email address. As a result, we can now send a post-visit “How was your visit?” survey to each day’s visitors. The regular stream of survey results has been highly useful.
We asked the classic Net Promoter Score question (“Would you recommend Madison Children’s Museum to a friend or family member?”), the gold standard for gauging customer satisfaction. Responses allow comparisons to other businesses and cultural institutions. Our scores are holding steady at around 83 percent (the average for science centers is around 71 percent, which is much higher than the average for most businesses). This number is one indicator that we’re on track—and it would sound an alarm if it were to drop suddenly.
Other questions assess visitors’ feelings about our mask policies (for the first few months, a museum-created policy required them for all visitors three and up; since September 10, a public health order mandates them for everyone two years and up). When mask-wearing was not mandated by law, it was helpful to know that visitors generally rated our mask policy as midway between too lax and too strict.
We also ask more open-ended questions about what visitors like best and what we could improve. We often correlate those comments with other data we collect. For example, we now count visitors in each area of the museum every hour. By correlating the timed admission numbers with the museum counts, we can estimate average time spent in the museum (about 1 hour and 40 minutes, a little shorter than we had guessed). Knowing how many people are in various areas, and when, helps us interpret visitor comments about crowding.
Perhaps most importantly, we have found new and improved ways to use data to guide operational decisions. Each week, our data and process specialist collects, analyzes, and presents data, combined with other factors we watch, such as changes in County health policies, weather for the week, and relevant news headlines. This short summary report provides the background for a weekly meeting in which we review the previous week’s operations and consider adjustments. The report informs decision-making around ticketing, capacity, and other COVID safety protocols.
Before the pandemic, most operational and policy decisions were made by directors. Now a more inclusive process—data collection through decision-making—involves staff at every level of the organization, fostering growth, development, and ownership for those involved.
Like everyone else, we look forward to putting the pandemic behind us, losing the masks and regaining full capacity. But a more data-driven cycle of decision-making and a more efficient organizational structure are positives we’ll take away from this challenging time.
Jonathan Zarov (he, him, his) is director of marketing & communications at the Madison Children’s Museum in Wisconsin.
| This article is part of the “Inside the Curve: Business as (Not Quite) Usual” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Beth Shea, Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge
When the COVID-19 pandemic began, the staff of the Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge (CMOR) did not know if their small institution, founded in 1973, would survive. But almost eighteen months later, not only has CMOR survived financially, but changes in practice forced by the pandemic helped the museum and its staff become stronger. This is a brief look at the good things that have come from the pandemic: things that have helped the museum not just survive, but thrive, in this challenging time.
In June 2020, after a nearly eleven-week closure, the museum reopened on a part-time basis. One year later the museum returned to a “full-time” schedule, but one that was not the same as its pre-pandemic version, which had longer hours (9 am – 5 pm) on weekdays and included being open on Mondays in the summer.
During the year of part-time operations, the museum was open on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday from 10-4, and later added Sunday afternoons from 1-4. On the two shortened weekdays the staff made good use of the two additional hours to clean, do repairs, and other behind-the-scenes work (fewer on-site weekend staff had no time to do those activities). It was an overwhelmingly positive change worth keeping. Looking at attendance data, the extra hour at the beginning and end of each museum weekday were never busy anyway, making it easy to economically justify this change. The same was true for the summer Mondays. Now the museum’s hours are the same on weekdays and Saturdays (10 am – 4 pm), and the schedule is the same all year round—no more summer Mondays. The good that came from the bad: the pandemic was the perfect time to examine, and change, the museum’s schedule.
The pandemic also forced staff to critically examine–and improve–the cleaning protocols for the museum’s exhibits and other public spaces. Reviewing cleaning products and schedules, the facility manager made changes where needed. Food service was now problematic. The honor system, self-serve snack bar and other areas where food and beverages had been allowed before the pandemic were closed, and drinking fountains were covered. New picnic tables had been purchased for the museum’s grounds before the pandemic began. At first, they were not used that much by visitors (the museum’s neighbors, however, loved them), but now they have a real purpose–visitors have somewhere to safely eat and drink outside. When the pandemic allows, the drinking fountains will be uncovered and indoor tables and chairs will return in the snack area, but a decision has not been made yet on whether or not to sell snacks at all again. The good that came from the bad: CMOR is a lot cleaner, and the picnic tables are more popular than ever with visitors.
Before the pandemic the museum’s staff met weekly in person, every Monday morning, for a briefing from the executive director. This gathering also offered opportunities for everyone to share what they were working on. When the museum closed, these weekly meetings continued online, using Duo, a free Google app that allows easy videoconferencing with no time limit. When it became apparent that the pandemic was going to continue, a WebEx subscription was obtained for the use of the executive director and board, but Duo remained the preferred tool for staff meetings. Duo is easy to use. It does not require you to find and click on a meeting link; you simply answer the incoming call either on a smart phone or computer. Using Duo also allows part-time employees to participate from home, saving time and fuel. Regular Monday meetings on Duo is a pandemic-forced change that will continue.
While CMOR has a small staff, the museum building is large— 54,000 square feet to be exact. With offices located far apart in different wings of the facility, building a spirit of camaraderie was not always easy. COVID-19 changed that. The museum’s small staff had to band together on many new tasks, such as identifying which items needed to be removed from an exhibit because they could not be safely cleaned, or taking turns doing a new, mid-day disinfection of high touch/high traffic areas that was beyond the scope of what the part-time janitors could do. The good from the bad: COVID-19 was an extreme team building exercise. It showed that the museum’s staff could be flexible and it also instilled a sense of pride–that this small group of people was able to quickly change gears and run the museum, safely and successfully, in a pandemic. The good from the bad: a stronger, closer staff.
The pandemic forced the executive director and board to review the museum’s 2019-2021 strategic plan with a new focus in mind: which goals and objectives were being impacted by the pandemic, and how could we correct things midstream? Some aspects of the strategic plan, especially those related to increased programming and building the museum’s volunteer and internship programs, have been slowed by the pandemic, so it was decided to extend the plan by one year. The plan’s goals and objectives were not updated; a review will take place in the fall of 2022 when work begins on the next strategic plan. Waiting a year to make any major, long-term decisions will allow for some perspective as the museum is still very much in “pandemic mode.” The good from the bad: the pandemic forced the museum to pay closer attention to the strategic plan and critically evaluate what was still feasible, and what had to be postponed.
At the beginning of the pandemic, before the special COVID-19 grants and stimulus programs were created, CMOR’s future was uncertain. The museum had a history of lean budgets with no safety cushion. During the museum’s temporary closure, donors were asked to give generously to help make up the loss of admissions revenue. Donors cared and wanted to see the museum survive. Years of relationship building meant their support was strong. COVID-19 also forced the museum to find and apply for new sources of support, such as special COVID-19 grants from the Tennessee Arts Commission and the East Tennessee Foundation. Another lifeline was the Small Business Administration (SBA). Two forgivable Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans and a long-term, low interest Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) put the museum’s finances in good shape. Like a mortgage, the EIDL’s repayment plan is $600 a month for a thirty years— affordable terms for the museum.
Currently, the museum is in a financial holding pattern. Except for some much needed building repairs that have long been on the back burner due to budget limitations, spending remains very conservative in order to keep as much COVID funding in reserves as possible. In 2022, as the museum’s fundraising committee reviews and revamps the fundraising plan, the end of the COVID-19 money will be factored in as we continue to include a diverse revenue stream. The good from the bad: donors came to the rescue of their beloved museum; a long-term, low interest loan; and a new connection with the Small Business Administration.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been quite a roller coaster ride—ever changing, and at times exhausting—for the small staff of the Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge. With hard work and support, the museum is weathering the pandemic, improving its operations, and looking ahead to its 50th anniversary in 2023.
Beth Shea has served as executive director of the Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge (Tennessee) since 2016.
| This article is part of the “Inside the Curve: Business as (Not Quite) Usual” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Mary Maher, ED
“If it’s currency, it can be donated,” concluded Adam Woodworth, executive director of The Children’s Museum in Oak Lawn, Illinois. In June 2021, the museum became the first children’s museum in the US known to accept cryptocurrency, such Bitcoin, as a donation.
Facing the severe budget shortfalls caused by an extended pandemic closure (Illinois was among the last states to allow children’s museums to reopen), Woodworth wanted to ensure anyone who wanted to contribute could do so in any way. Although Woodworth was not aware of a particularly robust use of this international, non-place-based currency in the Chicago area, he took what he had learned from his own personal exploration of the crypto world and set up a process through which the museum could accept this type of donation.
Investing in crypto currency is a vast trade network, similar in some ways to the stock market—except that it is intentionally unregulated, incredibly complex, and highly volatile. The stock market fluctuates daily but closes at 5:00 p.m.; the cryptocurrency market operates 24/7 and fluctuates second by second. But, in its basic form, cryptocurrency can simply be used like money.
The museum wanted to be able to accept a $100 cryptocurrency donation, for example, and not hold onto it as an investment, but immediately convert it to cash. In order to do that, the museum contracts with Engiven, one of many outside vendor platforms that enable nonprofits to safely and securely receive crypto donations and quickly convert them to “flat currency.” Cryptocurrency donations are accepted on the CMOak Lawn’s website using a dedicated Engiven-based portal. They are converted to cash for a transaction fee (4%), similar to a credit card fee, which shows up within a day or two in the museum’s checking account. According to Woodworth, unlike other platforms, there are no set-up costs and, so far, the process has been smooth and swift.
Relatively new, cryptocurrency donations are similar to stock donations, and subject to similar tax advantages, although the government is trying to catch up with the rapidly evolving world of cryptocurrency.
At this writing, the museum has received about ten cryptocurrency donations, but in Woodworth’s thinking they are donations they might not have gotten otherwise. The pool of cryptocurrency donors tends to be age-based—younger—rather than region-based. But its popularity is growing: banks, businesses, even PayPal, accept it now.
While the number of cryptocurrency donations so far has been relatively low, the attention it has brought the museum is high. Google “Children’s Museum in Oak Lawn + cryptocurrency” and more than a dozen stories pop up. The story has been very popular among crypto-bloggers. In contrast, perhaps, to the cryptocurrency world’s darker side which has occasionally been linked to stories of money laundering, cybercrime ransoms, and other mysterious transactions dependent on its untraceability. Banks keeps ledgers, once paper, now digital; cryptocurrency keeps its codes in blockchain. But the museum’s story, widely circulated even outside the field, has characterized the museum as a trailblazer, looking to the future. Woodworth says, “For as complicated as understanding cryptocurrency can be, accepting it and converting it to fiat currency (i.e., currency established as legal tender by a government) is very simple and low risk if using a service like Engiven or Every.org.
Would the museum have jumped on the cryptocurrency bandwagon without the COVID-induced financial pressures? Probably at some point. Woodworth is all about diversifying the museum’s revenue streams. He says, “Crypto is here to stay. It might look different fifteen years from now, but serving families will still be what we do and that is going to require funding both now and fifteen years from now.”
The latest issue of Hand to Hand, “Inside the Curve: Business as (Not Quite) Usual” is now available! Read each article here on the ACM blog, and find the full issue PDF in the Hand to Hand Community on ACM Groupsite.
This issue presents stories of what museums have learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. Pieces delve into new ideas and strategies around staffing, audiences, programs, and more, and how this information is impacting current operations and future planning.
Read the issue!
Inside the Curve: Business as (Not Quite) Usual
Stand Back: Watching and Learning from Returning Families
Pam Hillestad
Glazer Children’s Museum is leveraging lessons learned during the pandemic to inform their playwork practices and help families build deep connections through play.
Gardens Grow, and So Do We
Q&A with Liz Rosenberg
Let’s Grow Together, a visitor-created art exhibit, celebrated Chicago Children’s Museum’s reopening to the public in June 2021.
Welcome Back: Our People Have Missed You
Kerrie Vilhauer
Children’s Museum of South Dakota’s reopening communications plan reintroduced visitors to the people behind the work—and the play—at the museum.
Think Big, Act Small: Innovation Principles and Process for Organizations in Recovery
Krishna Kabra
The CEO of San Diego Children’s Discovery Museum shares fundamental principles for successful innovation to generate creative solutions.
Building the Plane as We Learn to Fly It
Hilary Van Alsburg
In navigating reopening, the Children’s Museum Tucson | Oro Valley found opportunities to work across the organization to support frontline staff.
Intention and Resolve: Moving to a New Better
Kari Ross Nelson and Stephen Ashton, PhD
Thanksgiving Point researchers share results from an analysis of data collected through ACM’s Museums Mobilize initiative, which highlighted museum programming in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Necessity: The Mother of Invention
Jonathan Zarov
In responding to the pandemic, Madison Children’s Museum has instituted a data-driven cycle of decision-making and a more efficient organizational structure.
The Good from the Bad: Pandemic Silver Linings
Beth Shea
From scheduling improvements to a stronger, closer staff, the Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge has found silver linings amidst the challenges of the pandemic.
Centering DEAI in Staff Recruitment and Hiring
Angela Henderson
The last year and a half has changed how The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis recruits, nurtures, and retains staff, interns, and volunteers while making sure they create and maintain a culture that is inclusive.
Support Our Mission: Donate Crypto
Mary Maher
The Children’s Museum in Oak Lawn is diversifying its revenue streams as the first children’s museum in the U.S. known to accept cryptocurrency donations.
Hand to Hand is the quarterly publication of the Associations of Children’s Museums (ACM). ACM champions children’s museums worldwide. Follow ACM on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
| This article is part of the “Inside the Curve: Business as (Not Quite) Usual” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Angela Henderson, The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis
Like many cultural institutions and recreational venues across the country, the pandemic forced The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis to close its doors to the public in March 2020. What started out as a two-week closure became three and a half months. Institutional priority shifted to the safety and well-being of our staff, volunteers, interns, and visitors. Although the museum was closed to visitors, our need to act as a community anchor became more important than ever before. Museum staff worked hard to provide virtual experiences for online visitors that were both engaging and worthwhile. With the support of our board of trustees, we also were able to continue paying all staff during the entire closure without any furloughs. Because of these efforts, the museum continued to operate with a full staff throughout the closure.
In July 2020, the museum reopened to the public at 25 percent capacity with mask mandates and additional cleaning and safety protocols in place. Visitors were encouraged to purchase tickets online prior to their visit. Because on-site staff members were included in the museum’s capacity figure, those staff members who could work remotely were strongly encouraged to do so. Staff members working on-site were required to conduct daily self-health screenings and temperature checks upon entry. We also tracked daily staff, volunteer, and interns’ comings and goings in order to be prepared to perform any contract tracing, if necessary.
In fall 2020, as a result of decreased visitors and revenue, the museum made the tough decision to reduce the number of staff members by 5 percent. During this same time, the museum took a long hard look at staffing, visitation, and revenue projections for 2021. Fortunately, spring 2021 saw an increase in museum visitation, necessitating the recruiting and hiring of key positions across the organization. When we began the process of hiring again, we had rededicated ourselves to ensuring that our hiring practices were purposeful, inclusive, and equitable, to ensure we sourced and selected diverse candidates.
In the midst of challenges presented by the pandemic, the civil unrest during spring and summer 2020 also created opportunities for the museum to reexamine how we source, recruit, select, nurture, and retain staff members, especially people of color.
The injustices suffered by George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and other African-Americans sparked difficult listening sessions and conversations both in our museum and throughout the country. To help with this very important work, in fall 2020, the museum engaged the expertise of Decide Diversity, a training and consultant firm that fills the gaps that traditional diversity and inclusion programs unintentionally create. These gaps are often seen in an organization’s lack of access and equity in practices; representation in exhibits, marketing materials, partnerships; inclusion of diverse people in leadership positions, and inclusive decision making.
The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis originally opened in 1925. Keeping in mind that it took nearly 100 years for our institutional culture to become what it is today, taking things to the next level and changing the perceptions of the community, our staff and volunteers, and our visitors will not happen overnight. The work we have begun with Decide Diversity is the first step to recreating our work environment and culture, and ensuring it is diverse and inclusive for all staff and volunteers.
Concurrent with the museum’s work with Decide Diversity, museum leaders decided to rethink and restructure the talent acquisition manager’s role with a strong emphasis on diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI). As DEAI talent acquisitions manager, I am responsible for the sourcing and recruitment of job applicants, as well as working closely with each department and its designated hiring managers—who, along with other duties, are responsible for staffing their particular departments—to further establish and maintain a work environment that is diverse, equitable, accessible, and inclusive for all. I previously worked in the museum’s community initiatives department, and before then held positions with Dayton Public Schools and the Indianapolis Public Schools Innovation School Network, where I saw firsthand how the lack of equity in education affects our youngest citizens. To my professional experience, I add my own personal history, as a mom of Black children and the daughter of two working class parents. This role supports my passion for working to combat and unravel systems that have been stacked heavily against communities of color.
Creating a diverse hiring pool of candidates that represent various cultures and backgrounds while remaining true to the work-related tasks required of various positions is directly connected to where and how candidates are informed about available jobs.
Although the museum has historically tracked recruiting and sourcing information, we are being much more purposeful in our efforts to determine where candidates are coming from. We have increased our scrutiny of established sourcing activities, including career sites and job fairs, to see how many applicants they pull in and how many are hired. We have also begun to identify missed opportunities to reach a more diverse candidate pool through community and neighborhood engagement. We work with various community partners, including the museum’s own Community Initiatives department, Fathers and Families, Inc., Dress for Success, and several college and university partners. We now post open positions to new or under-utilized talent recruitment networks, such as Ascend Indiana, which allows employers to create organizational profiles where they can post open positions. Ascend Indiana also suggests candidates from their pool of job seekers, allowing our hiring managers to send personal invitations to these qualified candidates.
As we incorporate these additions and tweak other recruitment and sourcing activities, we are challenging ourselves as a division and an organization to track data that we can use to move the museum in a direction that not only shows that we are the “biggest and best children’s museum in the world” for our guests, but also for our staff, volunteers, and interns.
A large institution like The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis requires a large, talented staff. Our organization is made up of nearly twenty-four departments with more than 330 employees. More than eighty of these employees serve as “hiring managers” for their departments.
As DEAI talent acquisitions manager, I work closely with the hiring managers throughout the sourcing, recruitment, and hiring process. Together, we discuss the scope of the posted position as well as ways to ensure equity and diversity within the candidate pool, identify other sources for recruitment, and establish hiring timelines. We openly talk about how they plan to incorporate DEAI strategies in the hiring process and how they can address—or avoid—their own biases that may have an impact on who they hire.
The first step to sourcing a more diverse candidate pool is to have a clear understanding that biases exist in all of us. Working to address and correct these biases will help to minimize them in the recruitment, hiring, nurturing, and retaining of staff members. People are naturally inclined to want to socialize and work with people they feel they have something in common with or that they can relate to. For some departments, this proclivity extends to selecting candidates in the likeness of themselves. As we do the work to identify homogeneous groups, we note that this could signal that there are biases that need to be addressed and that tools and resources are needed to help correct them.
Creating a culture that emphasizes and places a high value on DEAI and its impact on our community requires purposeful action. For the recruitment and placement piece of our business, DEAI involves making sure we are equitably and consistently giving all under-represented groups an opportunity to be considered and hired for jobs at the museum. We want our hiring managers to know that being purposeful in our DEAI efforts is essential to achieving our ultimate goal of hiring the right people for the right jobs. Hiring a candidate who doesn’t meet the job requirements simply because of their race or gender does an enormous disservice to the individual and the organization.
The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis is changing the culture of the organization and developing an even more inclusive workplace and workforce. This work is not limited to HR; it is the work of everyone in the museum. We are expanding decision-making to include staff and volunteers at all levels of the organization and have established a DEAI task force. In pushing for change, the DEAI task force is looking at five key areas of museum business:
2020 brought about changes and hardships we could never have imagined, but it also brought about a tremendous opportunity for The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis to examine who we are and who we want to be. It has forced us to prioritize what matters most to us as an organization and in doing so has reminded us that we are about and for all children and families; we must do our part to look like and be a safe space for everyone.
Angela Henderson has served as the DEAI Talent Acquisition Manager at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis since April 2021. Previously, she served in a number of community educational support roles, and was a Community Activist Fellow for the Wayfinder Foundation.
The latest issue of Hand to Hand, “The Power of We: Local/Regional Support Networks Flourish” is now available! Read each article on the ACM blog, and find the full issue PDF in the Hand to Hand Community on ACM Groupsite.
This issue shares stories from local and regional museum groups, ranging from long-running networks to those formed in the past year, as well as local cross-sector groups serving children and families.
In addition to the universal issues facing our field, experiences can vary widely from location to location. The pandemic intensified our need for connection and collaboration—and local and regional networks came together to address local issues, pool resources, and share in community.
Read the issue to learn more about these inspiring networks!
The Power of We: Local/Regional Support Networks Flourish
Northwest Association of Youth Museums: Regional Network Powerhouse
Alissa Rupp, FAIA, FRAME | Integrative Design Strategies
The Northwest Association of Youth Museums has thrived since its start in 1989 by embracing collaboration over competition.
Guerilla Networking: Connecticut Children’s Museums Organize to Pursue State Funding
Jen Alexander, Kidcity Children’s Museum
Connecticut’s nine children’s museums came together to advocate for statewide funding in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Supporting Leaders | Building Healthy Organizations: An Interview with Darren Macfee, Museum Roundtable Facilitator
Interviewed by Mary Maher
For more than twenty years, the Museum Director Roundtables have been a model of supporting leaders as they navigate the ups and downs of the nonprofit world of children’s museums.
Hive Minds and Transient Networks
Sam Dean, Scott Family Amazeum
Located in Northwest Arkansas, the Scott Family Amazeum recognizes the value of collaboration across sectors, participating in networks with community leaders, business leaders, creatives, and more.
Collaborate to Advocate: The Power of Collective Voice
Michael McHorney, Children’s Museum of Eau Claire; Deb Gilpin, Madison Children’s Museum; Anne Snow, Children’s Museum of LaCrosse; Andrea Welsch, Children’s Museum of Fond du Lac
The state of Wisconsin has the most children’s museums per capita in the United States. As a state-wide museum network, Wisconsin Children’s Museums demonstrates the power of strategic solidarity to support each other and advocate for children and families.
Community Education Network Supports Children and Institutions during the Pandemic
Rachel Carpenter, Children’s Discovery Museum; Hannah Johnson & Candace Summers, McLean County Museum of History; Shannon Reedy, Miller Park Zoo; and Dr. Diane Wolf, Bloomington Public Schools District 87
Many organizations serving children in Bloomington/Normal have come together to leverage resources and better serve learners and educators in Central Illinois.
Kindred Spirits: Q&A among Seven Regional Museum Networks
Africa Play Network, NorCal Small Museum Cohort, Louisiana Children’s Museums, North Carolina Science Network, Ohio Children’s Museums, Small Museums Collaborative, Virginia Children’s Museums
Learn more about seven regional museum networks around the world, and what each is able to accomplish by working together and embracing collaboration.
Hand to Hand is the quarterly publication of the Associations of Children’s Museums (ACM). ACM champions children’s museums worldwide. Follow ACM on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
| This article is part of the “The Power of We: Local/Regional Support Networks Flourish” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Alissa Rupp, FAIA, FRAME | Integrative Design Strategies
The strength of the association is not that it encourages museums to converge or imitate each other. If anything, it has strengthened their individuality, as each museum team is encouraged to find and cultivate its own voice, and anchor itself in its surrounding community.
In 1989, a group of children’s museums in the Pacific Northwest came together to set a collegial standard that has persisted: they decided to collaborate, rather than compete, and to stake a regional claim on the emerging field of children’s museum professionals.
In Washington State, along the I-5 corridor, children’s museums in Everett, Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia joined the Oregon museums in Portland and Salem to anchor the newly formed Northwest Association of Youth Museums (NWAYM), a regional subset of the Association of Youth Museums (now ACM). At the time, due to considerable geographic distance, and with online communication its infant stages, there was a sense that the larger organization did not have as strong a connection to the Pacific Northwest museums as they did to members in other regions. Travel to national conferences, expensive and time-consuming, was limited to a handful of senior staff. There were also opportunities and challenges common to the museums of the Pacific Northwest, and it became clear that there was an advantage to sharing knowledge and resources locally.
NWAYM directors and senior staff held joint gatherings, rotating among member museums and sharing what they learned in their still-fledgling field. A larger number of museum staff gathered more easily and inexpensively at NWAYM regional meetings, catching up and comparing notes. They welcomed emerging museums and visited en masse when museums opened in Skagit County, Washington, or Medford, Oregon. Over time, more children’s museums sprouted in an ever-widening region. When children’s museums opened in Alaska and Idaho, they were invited to join.
Thirty-three years later, the group has grown and expanded its reach. It welcomes allied professionals as well—including designers, architects, and exhibit fabricators—and invites inspirational business and civic leaders to engage with the group. Today there are twenty children’s museums and science centers, of all shapes and sizes, established anywhere between one to seventy-five years ago, who work together in NWAYM to make each other—and the field—better.
In the last decade, NWAYM has become a more formal entity, providing several annual opportunities for cooperation among the region’s children’s museum and science center professionals. It holds an annual spring conference, generally trading off between Washington and Oregon locations. This allows large groups of staff and board members—sometimes 150-200 attendees—to gather for keynote presentations, themed discussions, and updates from each museum on programs, accomplishments, and initiatives. Each year, in the fall, ten to fifteen museum directors gather for transparent, honest, “cone of silence” conversations, acting as both colleagues and mentors to each other as their organizations face changes in growth, staffing, impact, advocacy, and community engagement.
The advantages of this regional cooperative are numerous. But perhaps the most intriguing, and least measurable, advantage is a region-wide contingent of children’s museum members who visit and support museums outside of their home towns. Each member museum has a unique, place-based personality, from Hands On Children’s Museum in Olympia, with 28,000 square feet and extensive outdoor exhibits, to the Victorian house and contemporary climbing structure at Gilbert House in Salem, to the museums in Skagit County and Boise whose staff have beautifully repurposed unused commercial space. The options for families and travelers are wide-ranging, and this cross-pollination is encouraged and appreciated by museum leaders. Members have increased attendance and awareness, and helped to open the region’s children’s museums to visitors from across the four states with a long-standing regional reciprocal visitation program. Members also increasingly utilize Museums for All, an access initiative for visitors presenting SNAP EBT cards, of the Institute of Museum and Library Services facilitated by the Association of Children’s Museums.
The museums that are part of NWAYM are quite different from each other. They each reflect their community: founders, board members, and staff have their own sense of what will resonate with the children and families they serve. Each museum has its own aesthetic sensibility, and each has developed a unique range of both on-site and outreach programs. The strength of the association is not that it encourages museums to converge or imitate each other. If anything, it has strengthened their individuality, as each museum team is encouraged to find and cultivate its own voice, and anchor itself in its surrounding community. Member museum staff are innovative and creative—sometimes borrowing ideas or techniques from each other, but usually putting their own twist on what initially inspired them. Museum staff and leadership are supportive and encouraging of their peers, and are deeply invested in each other’s success. Finally, as KidsQuest CEO Putter Bert said in a discussion for this article, “We all just really like each other!”
While this Pacific Northwest organization cultivates local/regional museums, NWAYM members have a national impact. Several children’s museum CEOs and executive directors have built and led multiple museums, served on the ACM board of directors, and brought decades of experience to not only regional but also national and global conversations. As many readers of this article will attest, these individuals are notoriously generous with their time and knowledge; they choose to share their hard-won expertise with each other and with their newer peers, growing the knowledge base and advancing the work of the field in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
NWAYM Loses One of Its Own: Portland Children’s MuseumNWAYM members supported staff and community members of the Portland Children’s Museum (PCM) when its board announced a sudden and permanent closure earlier this year. Front desk staff at children’s museums from Eugene, Oregon, to Burlington, Washington, got many questions from visitors. What happened, and would their own local children’s museum be in danger of closing, too? The group discussed ways in which it could welcome members from the now defunct museum, or at least communicate with PCM members to let them know that their reciprocal admission coupons would still be honored. Board members noticed as well, and worked with staff to understand and steer their museums clear of the dangers Portland had faced. Among NWAYM directors, a sense of grief and mourning ensued, as the doors closed on an important and influential museum that brought innovation and thought leadership to the field for seventy-five years. |
Across the country and around the world, the last eighteen months have presented a whole new set of challenges for everyone, including NWAYM members. The health concerns of the pandemic, the turmoil of the election and its aftermath, the heightened understanding of anti-racism and social justice practices, and the various economic crises resulting from shutdowns created unprecedented conditions for children’s museums. Throughout the Pacific Northwest region, museums closed to visitors, re-opened, and in some cases re-closed and re-opened again. Sadly, the Portland Children’s Museum, established more than seventy-five years ago, closed permanently. Significant projects were put on hold, while some capital campaigns emerged at full strength. Fundraisers were canceled, restructured, or moved online.
Through all this, NWAYM museums’ staff have continued to serve their communities in myriad ways— through online programming, kits, videos, and remote lessons, as well as diaper banks, food drives, internet hot spots, outdoor play spaces, and activities for kids at vaccination sites. They also worked diligently to create safe, clean, un-crowded spaces in their museums once visitors were welcomed back.
In April of 2020, NWAYM directors canceled their annual fall in-person gathering and began meeting on bi-weekly video conferences. At first, these calls were a place to commiserate and compare notes, but they soon became a crucial lifeline for rebuilding, recovery, and reality checks. NWAYM directors also attended weekly ACM Leadership Calls, and applied the information they gathered to their states, counties, and cities. When funding options varied from state to state and county to county, bookkeepers and CFOs compared notes. And while COVID regulations varied widely with the region, staff members shared information about PPE, PPP, COVID testing, and operating protocols. They offered each other moral support and practical coaching, with directors hearing each other’s concerns and asking, again and again, “How can we help?” The spirit of collaboration that had been nurtured over thirty-two years became a reliable and steadfast source of true cooperation. In a very real way, this association, which was already a helpful resource, saw its own transition from nice to necessary.
Several NWAYM museum directors have noted that the individual success of each museum improves the outcomes for all the museums: if they focused on competing with each other—for audience share, funding, board members, media attention or political visibility—they may miss opportunities to grow together and become stronger as a group. To their minds, it is in everyone’s best interest for children’s museums throughout the region to thrive, and to be seen as essential, valuable, and important parts of families’ daily lives.
The NWAYM-associated museums have shared members and visitors, as well as staff. Several museums are close enough for families to easily visit and maintain multiple memberships, and as staff moves around the region, they have found positions at sibling organizations. In general, NWAYM museums take a pragmatic approach: it is challenging for families with young children to drive more than forty-five minutes to visit a museum, and there is sufficient audience in each travel catchment area to support each city or region’s children’s museum. While direct participation levels have varied over time, it has become more and more clear that the advantages of collaboration outweigh the temptation to compete. The region’s kids, families, educators, and communities are all better for it.
Alissa Rupp, FAIA, LEED, is Principal, FRAME / Integrative Design Strategies. She is currently serving as acting director of the Seattle Children’s Museum as they move to their next stage.
| NWAYM: By the Numbers | |
| Established: | 1989 |
| Current members: | 21 |
| Cost of membership: | $50, $75 or $100 per museum, depending on annual budget |
| Admission discount: | 25% off admission for up to 4 people, with a peer museum membership |
| Size of the region: | Four states: OR, WA, ID, AK
Bellingham, WA to Medford, OR: 530 miles Seattle, WA to Boise, ID: 490 miles
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NWAYM-participating museums:
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| This article is part of the “The Power of We: Local/Regional Support Networks Flourish” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Jen Alexander, Kidcity Children’s Museum
Amid all the unknowns since March 2020, I held fast to one constant: a standing appointment on Wednesdays at 3:30 p.m. EST. The almost weekly ACM Leadership Call, with Association of Children’s Museums (ACM) staff and other children’s museum directors, became my North star, my therapy group, and—in the darkest days of the shut-down—my primary social outlet!
How do you run a children’s museum without visitors? How do you pay the bills without income? Where should we turn for help? Executive directors logged on from around from around the globe and took turns presenting whatever new tactics we were trying or commiserating about the layoffs we were implementing (sometimes our own). But mostly, my sibling museum directors and I would hang on every word during the Leadership Call’s weekly advocacy updates, shared by Jeannette Thomas, formerly ACM’s senior director of development and advocacy. She translated the mysterious world of Washington politics with the comforting assurances and sense of mischief of the best babysitter ever. She kept us in the loop, but more than that, she trained us how to help ourselves. “Reach out to your legislators,” she would say, over and over. “Tell them how you are doing, and then tell me how it went.”
As the first COVID spring crept into COVID summer, I listened every week, but it wasn’t until September 2020 that I finally picked up the phone. Thanks to Twitter, circa 2010, I remembered our U.S. Senator, Chris Murphy, had once played at our museum with his kids—and tweeted about it. I called his office and spoke to an aide. I told her how the crisis looked at our children’s museum and asked if the senator would keep us in mind when voting on funding that could help.
I’ll be honest: it was a brutal call. I’m not sure how “professional” I sounded when I described what it was like to walk through the empty museum—I may have cried a bit. There wasn’t much she could offer, but she was nice, and that helped. As the pandemic went on, I kept calling. I called the mayor, the Chamber of Commerce, and various state politicians. The outcome was sometimes, “I’ll look for any programs you might apply for,” or usually, “I’m so sorry.”
I told them all about how children’s museums are a hybrid of education, tourism, and the arts, and that it was going to take us a long time to recover. When the federal Shuttered Venue Operator Grants (SVOG) came out—tantalizing us with a possible award of 45 percent of our 2019 income, and then blocking us because we didn’t have a “fixed seating performance venue”—I added that to my spiel about how children’s museums were falling through the cracks and needed special help.
Then, in March 2021, I finally called my local state senator. “Wow, that sounds terrible,” he said. “We’ve got all this stimulus money coming in…let’s put a line in for your museum. How much do you need?”
You would think I’d be ready for that question! Um…$20,000? $40,000? $100,000?
He told me the state was developing a strategy on how to distribute much larger amounts. He said, “I could put in a line just for Kidcity, or maybe for all the children’s museums in the state together? How many are there? How many people do you all see, combined, in a year?”
Again, I was stumped. I explained that the Connecticut children’s museums were all very independent; we didn’t really know each other very well. I couldn’t even tell him how many there were. Even though I have children’s museum BFF’s around the country, staff from the local museums had only rarely been in touch with each other. That’s how it had been for the twenty-two years since Kidcity opened.
Then I thought of those Wednesday calls. I had seen a few Connecticut names on those screens. “Let me try,” I said.
“Great,” he said. “Get back to me by Friday with your ask.”
Over the next forty-eight hours, I was able to reach all the other children’s museum directors in the state. They told me how they were holding their organizations together, how they had made the decision to stay open or closed to visitors, and what it would mean if they had an infusion of funding. A couple of these conversations took place while directors were simultaneously running their museum’s front desk. One museum was on the verge of closing for good and jumped at the hope of using funds to build an outdoor experience to keep visitors coming safely. Others wrestled with the reality that having an in-museum preschool meant they couldn’t open their exhibits to the public at all, because of COVID restrictions. (The state’s office of early childhood wouldn’t even let the parents accompany their preschoolers into buildings, much less the visiting public into exhibits.) I heard about the deficits created by reduced attendance and higher operating costs, and capital projects delayed while raising everyday operating funds. And they listened to my particular woes: our museum needed funding to retain our exhibit artists, as we tried to make the best use of this shutdown time.
By the time I had finished all those calls and emails, I had the answer to my state senator’s question: there are nine children’s museums in Connecticut, and in 2019, we had 625,000 in-house visits at our museums. We were all eager to make this state funding request. We knew that without a direct, line-item ask, we would face the same old scrum of competing within the tourism/hospitality sector on one end, or against other education and arts organizations on the other. To date, we hadn’t fared well in those battles; a direct ask represented a breakthrough. But was it a pipe dream?
The first challenge was to figure out a fair and defensible request. I collected bits of data, thinking maybe the answer was there. How much PPP did each of us get? Maybe we should ask for two or three times that amount? Or maybe we should follow the federal SVOG formula, which determined grant amounts based on earned income?
The problem was, it’s hard to get an apples-to-apples comparison between any two children’s museums, much less an accurate picture of the whole group. In terms of annual attendance, the Connecticut museums range from 5,000 to 277,000 visits (Kidcity clocks in at 112,000). Four of the nine museums have preschools, two take care of animals, and one is aligned with a university. Since COVID started—and as of this writing—five of the museums had opened to limited numbers of visitors and four were still closed to the public, without an opening day in sight. My museum, Kidcity, is perhaps the oddest of the oddballs. We usually fund our operations and our exhibits from earned income, and haven’t tried to raise money since our early years…until now.
Eventually, it was clear that there was at least one thing we all had in common: a building which was closed or at reduced capacity, limiting our ability to earn income to sustain our museums.
Ultimately, we based our request on a formula of $4 per in-house visit from 2019. For each of the nine museums, that would be a truly significant grant, and in our case, similar to the size of an unattainable SVOG award. Together, the Connecticut children’s museums’ request added up to a $2.5 million—a small number compared to the federal aid the state was receiving, yet more than we were likely to receive in competitive grants from state agencies.
The next hurdle was advocacy. My state senator, as a member of the Appropriations Committee, pushed to include our request in the spending bill for the American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds, but we didn’t stop there. In a stroke of luck, one of our Connecticut children’s museum directors is also an elected state representative for her town. She gave us all a crash course in how the legislative process works in our state. Directors from each of the nine museums contacted their own elected state officials—and anyone else they thought could help. A few have become real champions of our ask.
This episode ends with a cliffhanger. Months later, we still don’t know if our effort will succeed. Even if we make it through appropriations, there are negotiations yet to come with the governor’s spending priorities. Our request could wind up on the cutting room floor, not from callousness on the part of Connecticut leaders, but just because obtaining money from the state is a complicated, multi-tiered process. (Note to Self: In the next pandemic, hire a lobbyist!)
Regardless of the outcome, those two whirlwind days in March 2021 have forged an alliance among our state’s children’s museums that did not exist before. Since then, we’ve been texting each other about grant opportunities, exhibit problems, and cheering each other on as we stretched to tell our story and make our ask. We may not get the stimulus funds we asked for, but I’m convinced that we have made our case and that Connecticut’s children’s museums will be seen in a new light because of our outreach.
There are lots of things from these months of pandemic that I’ll be happy to leave behind, and it’s even possible that someday, I won’t need the weekly ACM Leadership Call just to stay afloat. But Connecticut is known as the “Land of Steady Habits,” and now that we’ve started, I’m hoping we’ll keep the relationships among all levels of staff in our museums, even after these strange, strange times are in the past.
Jen Alexander is the founder and has served as the executive & creative director of Kidcity Children’s Museums for that past twenty-six years.
| Editor’s Note:
In mid-June, the Connecticut museums learned that their $2.5 million request was approved and doubled by the legislature, and they will receive the full grant for two consecutive years. |
| This article is part of the “The Power of We: Local/Regional Support Networks Flourish” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
Darren Macfee’s career began in fundraising as the director of development at a regional rehabilitation hospital. In 2006, he entered the museum field as the executive director of the Lincoln Children’s Museum (Nebraska). In 2012 he struck out on his own as an independent consultant, focusing on strategy, governance, and leadership. He assumed leadership of the Museum Director Roundtables from John and Anita Durel in 2018 when they retired.
The Museum Director Roundtables were started in 1999 by the Durels. Their format was based on that of groups of fitness club owners who, under the leadership of John Durel’s colleague and mentor Will Phillips, would get together and share best practices.
Each Roundtable is comprised of eight to ten executive directors or CEOs of geographically diverse museums of all types—children’s museums, history museums, science centers, and art museums. Pre-, and hopefully soon post-COVID, members convene three times a year in a chosen city where for three days they discuss topics central to effectively running a museum: leadership, management, governance, strategy and fundraising. Between meetings, groups meet virtually for updates on progress, friendly accountability check-ins, and problem-solving. Additionally, members commonly email their group with help for solving prickly issues.
For more than twenty years, this fee-based professional development group has been a model of supporting leaders as they navigate the ups and downs of the nonprofit world of children’s museums. In this past COVID year, Roundtable methods, resources, and open communications offered another lifeline to member museum directors as they wrestled with unprecedented challenges.
| When I initially met John Durel, he told me he was considering recruiting a group of museum directors to form a Roundtable—really, a think tank. I immediately said, “Count me in.” I had benefitted from a similar situation when I was a school board president working with a “board presidency consultant” and other school board presidents across the U.S. I learned so very much from the guidance of that group. Peer support and networking is a real motivator for leaders. Being part of the Roundtable was transformational for me.
—Julia Bland, Louisiana Children’s Museum |
Interviewed by Mary Maher, Editor
MAHER: The Durels began Museum Roundtable groups in 1999. You joined as a museum director in 2006, and became the facilitator in 2018. What perspective do you bring to today’s Roundtable groups?
MACFEE: The Durels are a tough act to follow, but I bring a slightly different perspective. John was far more knowledgeable than I in the technical side of museums such as collections management, curation, and programming; Anita was very focused on fundraising. I’m a big proponent of what writer Patrick Lencioni, author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, calls “team health.” He cites a difference between a “smart” organization and a “healthy” one. Smart organizations work on strategy, marketing, finance, technology. “Healthy” organizations do all of that and create an employee experience that minimizes politics and confusion and maximizes morale and productivity, leading to less staff turnover. Team health can and should be applied to boards as well.
MAHER: Were there differences in what museum leaders needed from a professional development group twenty years ago and what they need today?
MACFEE: I look at what’s the same as opposed to what’s different. But there are obvious external changes, like the growth of the internet. In the late 2000s at the children’s museum, we kept our wi-fi password a secret. We didn’t allow visitors network access because we wanted them to spend time with their kids with no distractions. That’s much less common these days.
There has been a lot of research in the past ten years on the “softer side” of organizational management. We know so much more about how brains work, how adults can reprogram their own neural networks and learn new things. Leaders can learn to change and modify the way they run their organizations creating a great environment in which staff can do great work.
MAHER: Tell us a little bit more about the softer side of organizational management.
MACFEE: Back in the ’90s, when I was in business school, business management was all about hard metrics, like the cost of materials and cash turnover. Employee engagement and job satisfaction, once viewed as “soft” measurements, are taken much more seriously now because we realize they actually matter a great deal.
For instance, to be successful, employees need to know their work has purpose, be able to measure whether or not they’re doing good work, and have autonomy over some part of the work. Purpose is easy. If you work in a children’s museum and you can’t get a sense of what the organization is trying to accomplish or how you’re contributing to a better world, then you’re probably in the wrong spot. Measurement is a little more difficult. For example, how do you know you’re doing a good job as a floor staff person? Is it keeping the museum exhibits clean? Interacting with guests? Facilitating play? Museum leaders have to define what constitutes a good job, and once an employee is clear on this, they should be given some autonomy to do it.
MAHER: When the Roundtables started, what needs were they fulfilling among members of the groups?
MACFEE: Museum leaders were looking for somebody who could appreciate the nuances of serving as a director of a nonprofit organization. They wanted a sounding board to talk about things like board issues or creating an environment where staff can be successful.
MAHER: What are today’s Roundtable groups like?
MACFEE: We purposely gather a broad cross-section of museums. Groups evolve. New people come in all the time, while some of the longest members have been in for over ten years. Some decide it isn’t for them and move on. The first Roundtable member was Julia Bland, executive director of the Louisiana Children’s Museum, and she remained a member for nineteen years.
MAHER: How do the Roundtable groups decide what to talk about? Is there a curriculum or a content plan?
MACFEE: We generally focus our discussions on the five critical competencies of a chief executive, which are: 1) good governance (everything about working with a board); 2) staff (organizational culture and engagement); 3) fundraising (a big focus for most museums); 4) community leadership (institutional visibility in the community); and recently, 5) DEAI (diversity, equity, access, inclusion). In addition, members suggest topics or things just come up at the meetings that members would like to talk or learn more about. So, between meetings I locate resources or prepare presentations to be on the agenda next time. Discussions are responsive to what the members say they need.
No topic is off limits. For example, one of the things people are talking about now is how to deal with burnout. People have been really stressed and challenged to keep things together, and now they need a respite in order to recover. But now, museums are reopening and trying to get back to normal, which requires fresh stores of energy. So, we’re talking about how to maintain energy and enthusiasm among an already burnt out staff.
MAHER: Do members bring nuts-and-bolts issues or thorny problems to hash out with the group?
MACFEE: Yes, the prepared topics mentioned above probably take up about two-thirds of the time at an in-person retreat. Then we reserve time for troubleshooting. You give people time in the hot seat where they say, “This is my challenge.” Then the group addresses it and gives them ideas for moving forward. The Roundtable meeting framework has been in place for more than twenty years, but once the pandemic hit, we devoted almost all of our time to rapid-response troubleshooting. Now, as we’re slowly re-emerging in 2021, there’s less attention on urgent problems and a return to thinking in bigger terms about ongoing professional development.
MAHER: Museum directors’ primary focus is usually on how to make their museums succeed. How much do museum leaders feel comfortable sharing and how much do they hold back? How do you deal with collaboration vs. competition among group members?
MACFEE: One difference between the Roundtable model and the other affinity groups discussed in this issue of Hand to Hand is how we bring new members into the group. When someone expresses an interest in joining, we look at the possibility of their museum being in competition with other group members. For example, including directors from two different art museums in the same city would not produce the optimal group mix. Competition for audience share or fundraising is not as big a concern as competition for board members, which can be fierce. The short list of people within a particular geographic region who make ideal board members often means that multiple organizations are competing for the same people. But once Roundtable groups are formed, trust takes over and there’s no holding back. We don’t aim to be matchmakers, but if collaborations emerge, that is frosting on the cake.
MAHER: How do people join a Roundtable?
MACFEE: They come through referrals from other members. This isn’t by design, we’re not trying to be exclusive, but broad-based, outbound marketing has not been effective at getting new members. It’s partly the nature of the business: people don’t usually reach out until something is wrong. Referrals come after somebody calls somebody they know for help. Maybe they remember a session presenter from InterActivity or recall a colleague’s story of how someone in the field helped them with a particular problem. So, they give them a call. And if this person has been a Roundtable member, during the course of the conversation, they might say, “Well, this is exactly the kind of thing I would take to my Roundtable.” And the caller’s response? “What’s a Roundtable?” That’s how new members come in. We want fresh thinking and new perspectives, but we haven’t had any luck inviting people who don’t have any connection to someone in the group who is known and trusted.
MAHER: Once someone has expressed interest in joining, what characteristics do you look for in assembling a compatible and productive group?
MACFEE: First, I get to know them through several in-depth phone calls. The first call is informational—what is the Roundtable and how does it work? After they’ve had a chance to think it over, the next call covers any questions and then confirms that we have a spot if they want to join. The third is an orientation call which focuses on the Roundtable’s core values, which are 1) listen to understand not to respond; 2) commit to growth, particularly uncomfortable growth; 3) engage in healthy conflict; and 4) full participation.
Listening is harder than it sounds. Directors are problem solvers, and sometimes jump in before they fully understand the issue. Growth is about stretching and challenging yourself. If you’re doing it right, you should feel uncomfortable. Healthy conflict takes place when somebody says something another member doesn’t agree with. Robust discussion and different points of view are encouraged, but we don’t want destructive conflict. Finally, if you come to a retreat and spend the whole time on your phone, that’s not helpful to anybody. Meetings are actively facilitated; everybody gets equal airtime. Nobody dominates the conversation, but nobody’s hiding in the corner either. This process helps establish trust.
MAHER: Successful affinity groups trust each other, and are not afraid to bring up any topic. What inhibits trust-building in a group?
MACFEE: People who would rather give all the advice and are not willing to hear or take any. Also people who aren’t willing to be open enough to share the real issues they face.
MAHER: Leaders are used to leading. People look to them for direction and answers. This role reversal must be hard for some people.
MACFEE: Yes, and some people never can get there. As an active facilitator, I try to balance answer-giving with answer-getting. Being unable to make this switch isn’t a bad thing—the Roundtable just might not be a good fit for them.
Every in-person retreat begins with what we call the Opening Ceremony where we revisit the core values of the group, and then participate in a sharing experience. It helps members shift out of “I have all the answers” mode into “I’d rather have people question my answers than answer my questions” Roundtable mode.
MAHER: In an earlier email, you described the health and vitality of a group in general as depending on a good balance of “advice givers and advice takers.”
MACFEE: People do things when they have an incentive. Somebody who wants advice or feels like they need help might have the incentive to start a group because they need a sounding board. Conversely, someone in the twilight of their career, who wants to give back, might be incentivized to keep a group together. Post-COVID will all these local/regional affinity groups stay together? Some will. As long as somebody has a strong incentive to keep a group together, they will do their best to make it happen. But if that incentive is weakened or lost, then groups kind of drift apart. People get busy with other things.
MAHER: Roundtable participation is fee-based; most local/regional groups are informally organized and free. There are some obvious differences between the two, but are there any commonalities?
MACFEE: When we’re in the nuts-and-bolts, problem-solving mode, the Roundtable group looks a lot like these other groups. Both models promote camaraderie and many result in the formation of deep friendships among members of the group.
But the fee and time commitment require me as a facilitator to elevate the Roundtable to another level. When I’m not actually engaged with my groups, I’m preparing for the next meeting, developing the curriculum and study guides so that when we all get together they will feel like it’s time and money well spent. With more informally organized affinity groups, attendance is less consistent. If nobody has any big questions or has prepared anything, it might not be the most productive session. Many people like that informality. Roundtable members do tell me they appreciate not having to plan anything. They don’t want one more thing to be in charge of.
The other big difference is that the Roundtables monitor accountability. Meetings are not episodic reports of issues, problems, solutions, and next time new problems, new solutions. We ask members to update us on progress made over the long term, because we’re interested in growth and solving the most challenging issues once and for all. We close each retreat by saying, “What are the two things that you absolutely want to make progress on before we gather together next time?” I write their responses down and email them to members afterwards. We start the next retreat with that list and the opening question is, “How did you do with ‘x’? Did you make progress?” If their answer is vague or evasive, I might say, “Okay, that was a nice bluff. Now tell us the real truth.” Sometimes it can be hard to get back into “Roundtable mode.” And sometimes there is hesitancy admitting they didn’t make progress. We want to tackle hard issues, so there isn’t any shame in it. But we can’t support a member if we don’t know what’s actually going on.
MAHER: In every local/regional group virtual meeting I attended, someone brought up a very specific problem. In about ten minutes, five or six directors just troubleshooted, came up with solutions the person was happy about, and they moved on to the next problem. I was amazed but also thought, “How did these directors solve problems quickly before COVID spawned regular group calls?”
MACFEE: How did people get advice like this in the past? Mentors. You invited an experienced director for coffee and picked their brain. Then if a cordial relationship emerged and later a crisis comes up, you could pick up the phone and ask them for specific advice. When I was the director of what was then considered a moderate-sized children’s museum (annual budget $1.5M), the people from smaller museums would ask me for advice. I, in turn, would seek advice from bigger museums. It’s like an ongoing food chain.
Also let’s not lose sight of the fact that before the pandemic, museum directors had fewer problems to solve. Life wasn’t perfect, of course, but compared to the past eighteen months, the wind was at their backs, the economy was good, donors were out there, and people were visiting and joining as members.
When the pandemic started, everybody suddenly had a lot of problems, some they had never even imagined before. So, they needed the active support of their peers to get through it. For our groups it was no different, but at the beginning of this year we started to see the light at the end of the tunnel. As museums reopened, directors’ interest shifted back toward longer-term thinking and organizational development.
MAHER: Do you think that what museum leaders have experienced in these stormy last eighteen months will fundamentally change the way they work together going forward?
MACFEE: My short-term prediction is we will return to the pre-pandemic way of doing things as much and as quickly as we can. However, the foundation has been laid for major changes over the coming decade. Now that we know that we can work from home, the link between where you live and where you work has been severed, probably forever. Museums will struggle with part of this because they are open to the public, so certain employees have to be there. But other employees might be able to work 90 percent remotely, coming in to the museum a couple of times a year. A marketing director, for example, could work for a museum in Lincoln, Nebraska, but live in Seattle, Washington. With enhanced communications, particularly now with Zoom, it is becoming increasingly accepted to conduct business from anywhere, so you’re no longer limited to the talent which lives close to you. Museum leaders already know the model of fractional work by hiring consultants for short duration specialized work. Where else can you deploy that model in your workforce?
MAHER: Among new people joining the Roundtables, do you see any changes in what they’re looking for in a support network now?
MACFEE: We actually brought on a couple new people during the pandemic. Judging by them, the focus for leaders remains the same: long-term organization development, good board relationships, good governance principles, strategic planning, working your plan, and building team health.
MAHER: Other affinity groups are wondering if their group should expand, what it would take to do that, and if there are trade-offs?
MACFEE: Expanding groups can be challenging. Even though the Roundtables grow by referral, I’m very structured and mindful of providing a proper orientation before the member attends their first meeting. This is as much to help them get the most out of it as it is to preserve the experience of the existing members. Everyone benefits from more brains at the table, but not if a new member is actively disrupting the culture we’ve established, even if inadvertently.
Even with all of this, I think the most effective groups should be capped at a dozen members. Google’s research about effective teams has shown that one key component is everyone has to have a chance to talk at each meeting. If you get too many people in the room, you run out of time pretty quickly for equal sharing.
MAHER: Before COVID—and perhaps again soon—many of these local/regional groups took field trips to each other’s museums. They supported each other professionally, but a real camaraderie developed through socializing. During the pandemic, maintaining virtual social contact with other people was a lifeline. What is the role of socializing in professional development networks?
MACFEE: Socializing is very important because that’s where you build trust. Pre-COVID, our groups work during the day and go to dinner together in the evening. Evening dinners are entirely social time—no work chatter—we talk about families and general interests. The more you know somebody, the more willing you are to share and bond as a group. During the pandemic Zoom calls, we were primarily business-focused and the group started to suffer a little bit. So, following an afternoon of professional development on Zoom, we adjourned and met up again at 7:00 p.m., uncorked some wine I had shipped to each of them ahead of time—and socialized. We were surprised at how much we needed that.
MAHER: What have you learned about people in your work with small groups?
MACFEE: People and organizations are much more alike than they are different. The same scenarios come up over and over, and everybody thinks that they’re the only one who has this challenge—particularly with governance. Having a board that understands what it is supposed to do, doesn’t micromanage or get “into the weeds,” and stays focused on the big picture is a common aspiration. Everybody feels like their board is the only one struggling with this, but I can tell you that most boards struggle with this.
Another learning is that inertia is strong. Someone once said that change only happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of changing. People will come to the Roundtable retreats with a problem. They want a plan for change. So, we give them suggestions to take back home but when they get there something else takes center stage and the plan gets tucked away. But it’s only a matter of time until the problem resurfaces, and when it does, it’s usually worse. At that point they really have to exert the effort and the resources to make the change.
Lastly, we all have pride. We don’t want to tell people what we struggle with the most. Museum directors sitting at their desks dealing with museum issues can get insular and myopic. But when they join a group, whether it’s a committed professional development, fee-based one or the many informal affinity groups that have sprung up all over the world, and build up trust, professional and personal breakthroughs can happen.
| This article is part of the “The Power of We: Local/Regional Support Networks Flourish” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Sam Dean, Scott Family Amazeum
As we enter into what we all hope are the later stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, I find myself looking back on the past fifteen months and thinking about lessons learned. Chief amongst those is my gratitude for the support we have given and received throughout the museum field —so many calls and so much information sharing! But also, as I think about how we’ve navigated the pandemic, I realize how much we’ve all needed to form new partnerships, ways of working, and transient networks to navigate all of the various pitfalls that have presented themselves over the year. Below are just a few networks that have been important to us here at the Scott Family Amazeum in Northwest Arkansas.
In the earliest days of the pandemic, so much of our work was driven by a lack of cohesive information or guidelines coming from the national public infrastructure. There was a lot we didn’t know about how to deal with COVID, and even more we didn’t know we didn’t know. In the absence of timely and consistent guidance from our civic sector, we found what we needed from our colleagues in the business community. With world-wide facilities, as business leaders prepared for what they needed to do for their businesses, they consulted world-class experts. Being able to tap into that expertise and foresight was crucial for the nonprofit community. On March 13, many Arkansas cultural institutions, in consultation with each other, decided to close to public visitation. A statewide mandate followed a couple of weeks later.
During the pandemic, an existing, informal information- and expertise-sharing structure has been a key anchor for us in new ways. Every Monday morning, a cross-section group of community leaders in the Bentonville, Arkansas, area meets to share what is happening in their particular sectors. This group includes the mayor, the county judge, the school superintendent, representatives from the visitor and convention bureau, Chamber of Commerce, downtown association, the largest local philanthropic foundation, our largest local employer, and the three larger cultural attractions in the city. The goal of these loosely structured meetings is to make sure each of us understands what everyone else is doing at any given time with our agencies and organizations. During the pandemic, the meetings became a critical communication pathway and tool for collective problem-solving. I don’t know how we could have survived without the chance to do regular scans across the different community sectors to put together so many pieces of a jigsaw puzzle when we didn’t even know what the final picture would look like.
As an example, the superintendent of the local school system needed to understand where the world of kids and families intersected with that of public health as the schools were placed under state emergency directives to offer an in-person schooling option by the fall of 2020. With much of the community still in lockdown, the school district was developing policies and making their meetings and minutes available via video conference. Being able to tap into their deliberations and assembled expertise provided the basis for many of our own decisions about our reopening plans. We were able to refine these plans in consultation with one of the school committee leaders, as well as three respected local physicians.
Interestingly enough, when looking for guidance on safety, the head of Bentonville’s Parks and Recreation Department became a key sounding board. In some ways, the Community Center they operate was one of the closest analogs to the interactive, hands-on environment of the museum in the region. Many other cultural institutions in the area are object- or performance-based, with different audiences and a very different style of interaction. As part of the city government, Parks & Rec had a close association with the Health Department. We learned what kinds of recommendations were being made, and what safety measures they determined were acceptable in a hands-on, activity-rich environment. I frequently spoke with the director as we navigated our decision-making, particularly in the first three months of the pandemic.
In the first months of the pandemic, procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE) and the materials needed to clean and sanitize our building was such a challenge that a strange new market for goods and supplies emerged. Some days the scene felt straight out of a back streets movie script. In one example, the head of the local Boys and Girls Club was able to procure a large quantity of disposable masks from a board member who was able to tap into his overseas factory chain to get a direct plane shipment. Fortunately, he was willing to share the masks with community organizations like ours. The larger regional chamber of commerce was able to secure a truckload of hand sanitizer, and hosted a pop-up sale to help distribute it to local businesses over a weekend. Distilleries, unable to entertain whiskey-loving visitors, used their equipment to create sanitizer to help make ends meet, while meeting the incredible demand for a scarce product. I can’t say how many conversations I had with people that started with, “So where are you on hand sanitizer?”
Existing cracks in local social services programs became even more pronounced, and new partnerships formed help fill widening gaps. With schools and other community children’s gathering centers closed, getting foods to families in critical need was a challenge. So a neighboring museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, put a team to work creating meal packs for thousands of families and organizations like ours created learning components to go into each box. Inspired by that work, Amazeum worked with a local food vendor and secured additional funding to continue providing food for a few thousand more families.
Finally, knowing the creative community was one of the hardest hit, the museum sponsored Lunch Tunes, hiring musicians to livestream over a series of lunch hours, providing paying gigs for musicians and opportunities for our team and the community to come together over lunch and listen to a little local music, even while remaining apart in their homes and offices.
With so many different needs to attend to in the museum, and decisions happening so quickly in the state house with regard to relief efforts, it proved challenging to be present on the state level to help committees understand the situation of cultural institutions like ours. Visit Bentonville, our Visitor and Convention Bureau, became one of the most vocal advocates for Amazeum down in the capital. It was critically important for the museum to be seen not just as a place to visit, but as a small business and economic generator for the community. With strong voices from the tourism advocacy groups leading the way, private, nonprofit museums became incorporated into key relief opportunities that helped pave the way for our sustainability, along with that of many others.
As we shift into this later stage of the pandemic, I see us reactivating some of these early connections to understand how we open up more fully, transitioning from some of our current, self-imposed restrictions, such as capacity limits and masking policies. What are the right next steps? What is being done around vaccination policy? How can relatively vague guidance from public health be shaped into safe workplace policy? Working to create consistent responses for our team, our audience, our business colleagues, and our community is an important step to help bring our organizations and region along with us during the recovery—and we have a long way yet to go. Moving forward, we hope to retain some of these transient, cross-sector network connections to keep building on— both for our everyday work, and to lay a more robust foundation ready to respond to future unknowns.
Most importantly, I am so grateful for the collective mindshare that was offered over the last fifteen months. More so than any other time, certainly in my career, it took a hive mind to create the timely solutions and support to get to where we are now. Thank you all—we are so grateful you synapsed with us!
Sam Dean is the founding executive director of the Scott Family Amazeum in Bentonville, Arkansas, where he has served for almost nine years.
| This article is part of the “The Power of We: Local/Regional Support Networks Flourish” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Michael McHorney, Children’s Museum of Eau Claire; Deb Gilpin, Madison Children’s Museum; Anne Snow, Children’s Museum of LaCrosse; Andrea Welsch, Children’s Museum of Fond du Lac
When hearing the name of our state, Wisconsin, non-residents typically associate our culture with beer and cheese. Yes, Wisconsin leads the nation in cheese production and often ranks at or near the top in per capita rankings for beer consumption. Wisconsin also ranks first nationally in the production of horseradish, ginseng, and cranberries and is known for producing butter, bratwursts, and corn. Wisconsin also leads the nation in something else: it has the most children’s museums per capita in the United States. Basically, you could say folks from Wisconsin live in a state of PLAY.
Children’s museums in Wisconsin have long been engaged in collaborative efforts. An annual gathering, which began in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, in 2009, has traveled the state ever since, increasing in participation and frequency. At these events, children’s museum professionals discuss thought-provoking ideas and share each other’s best practices. This collaboration, known as Wisconsin Children’s Museums (WICM) has resulted in greater quality for exhibits and programs and nearly doubled children’s museum traffic from just over 500,000 (2009) to nearly 1 million (2019). To assist in navigating the pandemic, WICM held virtual meetings almost weekly. Discussions concentrated on uncovering critical and necessary funding sources and sharing best practices around reopening.
In November 2020, after working together to research state funding opportunities, more than a dozen children’s museums shared a combined total of $650,000 in COVID relief funding from the Wisconsin Department of Administration. This modest portion of statewide funding, available to all arts and cultural organizations, helped some children’s museums in the state, but more support is needed. Recently, members of the group again put their heads together to create messages for their county executives, mayors/city managers, etc. A powerful letter, signed by the group, details how children’s museums play an essential role in healthy, thriving communities and asks for their support in allocating American Rescue Plan funds to keep museums alive. It is hoped that these latest joint communication efforts will lead to additional opportunities for Wisconsin children’s museums to collectively advance goals of the Department of Children and Families and Department of Education, as well as provide critical support for our community’s children as they are healing from the effects of the pandemic.
What started as a group meeting periodically to share best practices has evolved into a collaborative that meets bi-weekly to coordinate and discuss museum issues and trends. Our first statewide project in 2018 implemented the national initiative Prescription for Play (RX4P) through a state media campaign in cooperation with medical institutions and pediatricians.
Wisconsin children’s museums demonstrated how effective the statewide partnership can be in this campaign, which highlighted information released by the American Academy of Pediatrics about the importance of play to a child’s health and development. A plan created collaboratively by the Fond du Lac and Madison Children’s Museums was endorsed and supported by all thirteen children’s museums in the state. On a single day, the campaign reached more than 100,000 people through social media posts alone. In addition, approximately two dozen healthcare entities and local radio and television outlets joined forces to shed light on a topic that directly impacts social, emotional, physical, and intellectual development of children.
| Collaborating with colleagues from around the state allowed us to effectively and creatively develop a unique Wisconsin Prescription for Play logo and press release that each museum could customize, resulting in sweatshirts, stickers, signage, and opportunities to incorporate expertise from physicians in our own communities. Working smarter, not harder, we reached more people in a more impactful way. These efforts were acknowledged by the Association of Children’s Museums, who invited us to present the results of our awareness campaign in a national webinar.
—Andrea Welsch, Children’s Museum of Fond du Lac |
Wisconsin Children’s Museums have moved from intermittent to consistent advocacy of play, starting through relationship building at our annual Children’s Museum Day at the Capitol. This became the foundation for realizing outcomes for positioning children’s museums as major partners of state government. In January 2019, Madison Children’s Museum hosted the Governor Evers’ Madison Kid’s Gala, and Michael McHorney was appointed by Governor Evers to the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board. In 2020, all children’s museums were successful in receiving COVID funding relief. These three examples were direct results of that initial relationship building.
| Governor Evers leveraged our audience reach when he hosted three Inaugural Kid’s Galas across the state, in children’s sites, two of them children’s museums. In Madison, he funded a free Saturday at the museum, but he won us over when he held a press conference in the museum, but only took questions from kids. The press conference made it clear—the welfare of children would be front and center in his new administration.
—Deb Gilpin, Madison Children’s Museum |
Momentum has been building, but more work is needed. Moving forward, efforts will involve telling the story of children’s museums and how they are an essential part of a thriving community. And thriving communities mean a flourishing state of Wisconsin. The Wisconsin children’s museum group’s latest project involves a push to educate the citizens of Wisconsin on the inequities surrounding pandemic relief funding.
| Over the past twenty-five years in the field, I have witnessed children’s museums evolve from “a nice thing to have” to being an important resource, not only to families but also to communities. Some of our largest employers use the museum as a recruiting tool. They bring potential new hires to visit the museum when touring the city. Our statewide network of children’s museums makes the state a great place to work and live.
—Anne Snow, Children’s Museum of La Crosse |
The value of a regional or state children’s museum network cannot be over-estimated. Many function as key sounding boards and support groups for museum practitioners scattered around a broad area. They can also harness the expertise and reach of member museums to develop a more powerful collective voice, one that can be harder to escape the notice of local government leaders. There is indeed strength in numbers. State networks like the Wisconsin Children’s Museums are showing the potential of strategic solidarity to support each other and advocate for the children and families in the communities they serve.
Michael McHorney is executive director of the Children’s Museum of Eau Claire; Deb Gilpin is president and CEO of Madison Children’s Museum; Anne Snow is founder and executive director of the Children’s Museum of La Crosse; and Andrea Welsch is the executive director of the Children’s Museum of Fond du Lac. They are all located in Wisconsin.
| This article is part of the “The Power of We: Local/Regional Support Networks Flourish” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
Africa Play Network • NorCal Small Museum Cohort • Louisiana Children’s Museums • North Carolina Science Network • Ohio Children’s Museums • Small Museums Collaborative • Virginia Children’s Museums
AfricaPlayNetwork: We share 1) our love for all African children and the potential they represent; 2) our agreement that spaces—and in particular for Amowi, natural spaces—support and facilitate children’s development; 3) play-based, child-centered approaches to learning; 4) a deep and abiding mutual respect for how hard our work is, and 5) a commitment to deep laughter when we are at the point of tears!
The network has been a source of encouragement, support, and strength during tough times. There is a sense of solidarity because we really have nowhere else to look for a better understanding of the contexts we are working in.
NorCal: Camaraderie, shared experiences, these particular women, our need for mutual support through the pandemic, and Zoom technology making it possible.
Louisiana: We bond over the same goal: We want all children to have access to stimulating, hands-on and educational exhibits and programming that promote physical and mental development, curiosity, creativity, and exposes them to local culture.
NCScienceNetwork: A common purpose: to stimulate interest and excitement in STEM education, helping to promote science literacy throughout the state of North Carolina. Sharing best practices and addressing collective issues is beneficial to all.
Ohio: Mutual respect and having someone to talk to who understands exactly where you are coming from and the challenges you are facing. With only fourteen children’s museums in Ohio, the number of people who understand our plight during the past year is extremely small. Meeting regularly with colleagues has brought a sense of stability and calm to us all.
SmallMuseumCollaborative: Trusting in the friendship and collegiality we have built, we feel safe to be open and honest about our challenges and the issues. This diverse group always offers good suggestions, new tactics, or additional resources to pursue. The fact that we are all smaller museums in a specific region of the country leads to natural commonalities.
Virginia: Similar missions, wanting to learn, connect, and create best practices for post-COVID re-emerging.
AfricaPlayNetwork: Representing a range of African countries, we are working to evolve a continental vision of new frontiers in play and learning which would be much harder to do as individual organizations. We are building a collective and specific expertise to inform and invigorate global exchanges in the world of children’s experiential learning environments.
NorCal: We have shared many resources that no one of us could compile on their own. We have a Google Drive folder containing opening procedures, policy statements from other museums, etc.
To raise awareness of the impact of the pandemic closures on children’s museums, Gina Moreland drafted an op-ed piece for the San Francisco Chronicle about our plight. Group members reviewed and edited it, and became signatories. It was published in December 2020. Recently, we have joined forces with southern California children’s museums and arts groups to claim some of the American Rescue Plan (ARP) federal dollars. We are considering pooling resources to hire a lobbyist to advocate in our very large state for children’s museum resources.
Louisiana: When everything shut down in March 2020, and remained closed for months, we all canceled annual fundraisers, programs, camps, etc. When our state started a slow, phased reopening, we saw that children’s museums would probably be one of the last types of businesses to reopen. We collectively came up with policies and procedures to ensure visitor and staff safety and presented them to local and state agencies. By working together and agreeing to adhere to the guidelines we produced, we were allowed to reopen sooner than expected.
Currently, our group is working on a state travel promotion to highlight regional children’s museums as tourist destinations and show the impact each one has on its community’s children. This effort also celebrates the variety of locales and different learning experiences offered by each museums. We want to encourage exploration and travel across the state of Louisiana as well as bring in families from surrounding states.
NCScienceNetwork: We look for opportunities to share exhibit and program resources, which many smaller museums may not have the funding to support. For example, the network offered a small traveling exhibit about Nano science to member institutions at no cost (other than inbound shipping). We are replicating that model with a new exhibit about space science. We continue to seek state funding in one form or another. Our collective voice is much stronger than multiple entreaties by individual members.
SmallMuseumCollaborative: Formed a year before the pandemic, we were just beginning to explore ways to partner. In our first year, each executive director would lead a discussion during the monthly call on a chosen topic, such as “fundraising ideas and special events,” “evaluating programs,” or “audience engagement.” Participants knew about the topics in advance and took turns sharing perspectives or strategies and asking questions.
We originally intended to broaden the collaborative to include other museum departments—educators talking to educators, for example—with like departments managing and leading their own group meetings. However, in 2020, the group coalesced around COVID-19. We did not simply commiserate but shared strategies and plans about closing and reopening our museums and keeping our visitors safe. We kept each other up to date about federal relief packages and resources from various museum associations. We often talked about how to help our staff manage stress and visitor interaction.
Virginia: This grassroots effort in a time of crisis arose from a need for on-the-ground thinking and support. Similar demographics help us relate easily to each other.
AfricaPlayNetwork: Based in entirely different countries, with diverse languages and cultures, we are not in competition with one another for audiences or staff. We also tend to get funds from different sources, often with a focus on African development. Our network is characterized by a supportive culture that is not based on a scarcity mindset, but rather trusting that there is an abundance of resources in the world to support our work. We inform one another of funding opportunities and look out for sources that could help the network as a whole.
Every one of our organizations is highly responsive to its own local context. But all of us are creating original programs, projects, exhibits, advocacy campaigns, and media content to champion children and their right to play and learn.
NorCal: Competition is not a problem. Our museums are relatively distant from each other and draw from different audiences and funding sources. We have shared exhibits, and even offer reciprocal admission discounts to museums in the group.
Louisiana: We are geographically far enough apart that this is not really an issue. We actually want families to museum-hop and visit all of the museums in the state. We do occasionally compete for state-level grant dollars, but not too often.
NCScienceNetwork: Generally speaking, geographical distance minimizes direct competition. We often collaborate on grant programs that include multiple institutions as partners.
Ohio: The issue of competition has not come up. We focus primarily on how to help each other deal with state requirements and how to operate during the pandemic.
SmallMuseumCollaborative: It’s a non-issue. We share and borrow ideas back and forth with no hesitation. We cheer each other on, celebrate successes and achievements, and offer that pat on the back that we all need at times. We have talked about working together on grants, exhibit fabrication, and program development, but we haven’t been able to pursue those ideas yet.
Virginia: We don’t have a ton of competition since we are all far enough apart that we don’t have much audience overlap. We all come together to learn, discover, and share.
AfricaPlayNetwork: While we advocate for increased access to play opportunities for children all over the continent, each organization and leader has a unique approach. A surprising benefit has been learning about work we have already been doing—networks created, lessons learned—increasing our respect for each other’s work and impact.
NorCal: I needed and have come to enjoy close contact with fellow executive directors, particularly ones nearby in similar circumstances! With most of us working from home, we had time to connect and set up a dedicated time to do so.
Louisiana: Nothing surprises us in Louisiana anymore, especially dealing with this past year’s pandemic and natural disasters. We really enjoy visiting with other on our Zoom calls.
NCScienceNetwork: I have been surprised (or at least heartened) that such a collaborative organization exists and has such a convivial and mutually supportive character. Having been a member of numerous museum-related organizations throughout my career, few seem to have such a high degree of collegiality and genuine recognition of the benefit of sharing rather than competing.
Ohio: Everyone thinks their museum is unique, but we have learned that we are much more alike. Our differences are very small in comparison to the overall needs of children’s museums during this pandemic.
SmallMuseumCollaborative: How quickly the group gelled once we started the monthly calls, which speaks to the need for more of these groups. Since we had been meeting for a year before COVID, we already had the support system in place when we needed it the most.
Virginia: We have all learned so much about the re-emerging processes going on in different communities and to hear how like-minded folks are solving similar challenges.
AfricaPlayNetwork: Over the years, we have developed a deep sense of deep trust and mutual respect. The group provides a confidential, mutually-supportive space to share our successes and challenges. We want to expand but have kept the executive group small, because we are all so constrained for time/money—we simply don’t have the resources to allocate to expansion. However, we would love to share knowledge and practice with others in this field working in various contexts across Africa. We are currently looking for partners to help us expand the network to include others across the continent who share a commitment to amplifying Africa-led initiatives to promote play and playful learning.
NorCal: Although we have extended the invitation broadly, the group has established an equilibrium among the regular attendees. But it’s not exclusive, and we would welcome more members who have time to participate. In fact, with the intense lobbying for funding/ARP relief going on, we are reaching out to others to join.
Louisiana: Our group is open to all children’s museum directors in Louisiana.
NCScienceNetwork: We are open to anyone who meets the membership criteria.
Ohio: We ask each institution to send a representative to the monthly meeting, but we let that representative be determined by the institution.
SmallMuseumCollaborative: Keeping the group small fosters relationship building and makes the monthly conversations manageable so all participants can have a voice. We aren’t intentionally limiting membership, but we aren’t actively looking for more members either.
Virginia: We include anyone who asks to be invited.
AfricaPlayNetwork: Working together more through digital media is one intriguing idea. COVID has exposed digital divides, but each of us has also seen how increasingly accessible technologies (e.g. smart phones with WhatsApp and other low-data apps), can be used to promote locally relevant content for children, parents, and educators.
Amowi: “I have been so deeply impressed with the way Play Africa Children’s Museum and Imagination Afrika used the virtual space to address the socio-emotional and physical wellbeing of children and parents through regular virtual African storytelling events, dance, and movement sessions and parenting guidance. The COVID period has simply amplified and validated existing practice—which has evolved organically—of attentive, active, and generous interaction online.”
NorCal: We haven’t gotten there yet, but we may share exhibits or other tangible resources, grant writers or other staff, and have discussed coordinating on a capacity-building grant that would benefit all of us.
NCScienceNetwork: The fact that we all faced some level of peril motivated us to seek support. We shared best practices regarding the health and safety of our visitors and staff, and sought funding to distribute among the member institutions. I hope that this sort of exchange and dialogue will continue into the future regarding non-COVID issues.
SmallMuseumCollaborative: Once all the museums in the group are operating sustainably, we intend to resume our plan to broaden the collaborative to other museum departments. This will build more working relationships among our organizations and provide professional development for staff, which is often unaffordable. We have discussed partnering on various projects, however, the group’s core purpose is to be an informal support system, which has been proven to be the most valuable part of the effort.
Virginia: Our conversations include all aspects of the museum field. We talk about how to solve problems in our own museums, as well as future collaborative grant efforts.
AfricaPlayNetwork: We share a fundamental integrity of purpose, mutual respect and a clear Africa-centered focus. It helps to know who you are and what you stand for right from the beginning. This is an amazing group of women, leaders and pioneers in any circumstances, even outside of the field.
NorCal: As with any well-functioning volunteer group, every member needs to be committed and consistent. Our commitment has grown over time because our biweekly meetings have provided real benefits, including social and emotional ones. The women in our group support each other—we are all going through the same crisis. But even when one museum is facing a unique challenge, the group listens, commiserates, and offers helpful ideas.
As leaders of institutions, we all have executive functioning skills, but we bring our people skills to our Zoom meetings as well—making sure everyone has a voice and time to share. Interestingly, none of us claims a leadership role. Our conversations and group work have been much more mutual and collaborative. Members express appreciation for each other regularly. That certainly builds connection and sustainability.
In our most recent meeting (June 10, 2021), even though most of us are now re-opening, we unanimously agreed to keep the group calls going. Everyone concurred: it’s the most fun meeting we have, and there will always be needs in the future that we need to talk about.
Louisiana: We have learned so much about our work, our memberships and families, our donors, our staff, and most importantly ourselves, and we have helped each other think outside of the box so many times this past year. Our tip to future groups? Use your collective strengths and passion for what you do to your advantage.
NCScienceNetwork: Be prepared to work. In the past, the network had a full-time director whose principle responsibilities included fundraising and administrative responsibilities. Now, those responsibilities are shared among the volunteer board of directors and other members. Diligence and consistency are required by all. It may help a new group to source start-up funds to ensure that necessary tasks can be accomplished, e.g. financial records and reporting, meeting scheduling and arranging, program development, etc.
Ohio: The group functions well out of mutual respect, a willingness to ask questions, and the openness of our members to share unconditionally their best advice.
SmallMuseumCollaborative: There are no attendance requirements, financial commitments, by-laws, or minutes. People join the call as their schedules allow. We have no plans to develop any kind of formal structure or association. Keeping the number of participants low ensures equal and active participation.
Virginia: We all come together openly, share a deep respect for each other, and appreciate the support.
1) AFRICA PLAY NETWORK
The Africa Play Network is an informal group of executive leaders of four pioneering organizations that promote children’s play and playful learning in their own contexts on the continent: two children’s museums (Play Africa and ImagiNation Afrika), a children’s park (Mmofra Park) and a creator of playgrounds and public spaces (The PlayHub).
They have been meeting since 2013, when Karima and Gretchen, founders of different children’s museums—6,000 miles apart—found each other and organized a Skype call to swap notes and share ideas. Due to the extreme distances (Amowi spends much of the year in Spokane, Washington) the group has met almost exclusively virtually—on Zoom and Skype. They communicate between calls with short messages on WhatsApp and actively support each other on social media such as Twitter.
—Gretchen Wilson-Prangley, Play Africa; Karima Grant, ImagiNation Afrika; Amowi Phillips, Mmofra Foundation; Julian Ingabire Kayibanda, The PlayHub
2) Nor Cal Small Museum Cohort
Children’s museums located in Northern California with budgets under $2 million
The cohort was organized in April 2020 by Collette Michaud (Children’s Museum of Sonoma County) who reached out to four other museum directors. Meeting primarily on Zoom, it soon evolved through word-of-mouth and mentions on the weekly ACM Leadership Calls.
—Gina Moreland, Habitot Children’s Museum
3) Louisiana Children’s Museums
Membership open
The group was organized in April 2020 by Julia Bland (Louisiana Children’s Museum) and is currently managed by Arianna Mace (Bayou Country Children’s Museum). All members contribute and actively participate through emails and monthly Zoom calls.
—Arianna Mace, Bayou Country Children’s Museum
4) NORTH CAROLINA SCIENCE NETWORK
Membership criteria:
This large group has forty-four members, including:
In the mid-1980s, eight North Carolina science center directors gathered to discuss issues including the possibilitiy for state funding. In 2000, the group formed the NC Grassroots Science Museums Collaborative, an independent 501(c)(3) organization with advocacy for state funding as a key purpose.
That same year, the collaborative received a $1 million grant from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund to create an endowment, which continues to support it. By the late 2000s, membership had grown to thirty-four institutions. In 2016, the state funding model changed from direct grants to museums to a competitive program based partly on regional economic need. Working in collaboration with the membership to determine the future of the organization, in 2018 it was rechristened as the NC Science Network. The network connects, unifies, strengthens, and champions museums and allied organizations throughout the state to enrich the lives of its citizens by engaging with science.
—J. Willard Whitson, KidSenses Children’s INTERACTIVE Museum
5) Ohio Children’s Museum Directors Meeting
Membership open to any children’s museum in Ohio
The first meeting came out of a conversation between Fred Boll, executive director at Little Buckeye Children’s Museum, and Johnna McEntee, executive director of the Ohio Museum Association. Johnna is the current group organizer. In June 2020, the group began monthly Zoom meetings.
—Fred Boll, Little Buckeye Children’s Museum
6) Small Museum Collaborative
Membership currently stable
Diane LaFollette, executive director of Mid-America Science Museum, wanted to create an informal collaborative group to share and address issues unique to smaller museums. The group started with seven museums in 2019; two more joined in 2020. Participating museums are located in states bordering Arkansas, in or near a population area of less than 200,000, with operating budgets of less than $3 million.
The group began meeting in-person or on group phone calls and later through monthly one-hour Zoom meetings. Initially planned and organized by LaFollette, meetings are now led by mutual agreement.
—Diane LaFollette, Mid-America Science Museum
7) Virginia Children’s Museums
Membership open
Organized in the spring of 2020 by Dawn Devine (Shenandoah Valley Discovery Museum). Meetings held primarily on Zoom.
—Dawn Devine, Shenandoah Valley Discovery Museum
| This article is part of the “The Power of We: Local/Regional Support Networks Flourish” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Rachel Carpenter, Children’s Discovery Museum; Hannah Johnson & Candace Summers, McLean County Museum of History; Shannon Reedy, Miller Park Zoo; and Dr. Diane Wolf, Bloomington Public Schools District 87
No one group or organization can do it all. The many organizations within the Bloomington/Normal, Illinois, community that serve the educational needs of children have created multiple and sometimes overlapping support groups. In addition to educators, members include psychologists, food workers, and marketing personnel, but we all work for organizations that are tied to formal or informal education in some way. Sharing a commitment to care for families, these professionals from different nonprofit organizations work together to identify needs and coordinate responses.
During the pandemic, different groups quickly realized that we all needed to maintain consistent and regular communication to meet three distinct levels of need: 1) the needs of children and families, 2) the needs of each organization serving them, and 3) the needs of individual professionals who participated in the meetings. The Central Illinois Community Educators (CICE) stepped up to become a support group and a virtual space where professionals could share ideas and issues among people doing similar work. United Way of McLean County facilitated the formation of even more new groups including one to connect schools, childcare, and youth programming centers. The Children’s Discovery Museum participated in both pools regularly; they were very important for the success of the museum during the pandemic.
In 2006, Dr. Diane Wolf of the Regional Office of Education (ROE) 17 wanted to help promote the variety of community resources available to public and private school students in the ROE 17 region. With this goal in mind, Dr. Wolf connected with informal educators and representatives from local institutions including the McLean County Museum of History, Children’s Discovery Museum, Livingston County War Museum, David Davis Mansion, Miller Park Zoo, Sugar Grove Nature Center, and others. Over time membership in this coalition of community educators expanded to the Bloomington and Normal public libraries, the Girl Scouts, institutions of higher education, including Illinois State University and Heartland Community College, and arts organizations including the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts and the McLean County Arts Center. The group primarily included organizations that directly served schools through onsite visits and outreach through off-site programs, loan kits, and other resources.
The group has evolved as more members have joined, but the mission largely remains the same—to inspire and support collaboration among community partners to leverage resources and better serve Central Illinois learners and educators. In the fall of 2017, an effort began to revitalize and, in some ways, reimagine the group’s form and function. Continuing to connect with like organizations within Bloomington/Normal, as well as throughout the Central Illinois region, the group was rebranded as the Central Illinois Community Educators (CICE) and effectively relaunched with a meeting of interested organizations in November of that year.
The November 2017 meeting expanded the variety of organizational members to include representatives from all forms of community education from museums, zoos/nature centers, art galleries, and cultural sites, to public libraries, afterschool programs, human service organizations, and more. Today, almost eighty individual educators representing more than fifty local educational institutions are invited to attend quarterly meetings. In addition, they receive regular information about the needs and services of participating organizations and their audiences.
Since 2017, CICE has utilized its quarterly meetings to collectively explore relevant themes including DEAI, marketing, youth development, behavioral health, census data and the human services sector, community collaboration/partnerships, and pandemic response. Participating organizations rotate host responsibilities. Themes and topics are determined based on the expertise of the host site, as well as the expressed needs and interests of the group. Hannah Johnson, director of youth & family education at the McLean County Museum of History, has facilitated CICE communication and collaboration among group members and host sites since 2017. She continues to aid in the coordination of monthly meetings among core members as an extension of the group’s initial COVID response.
When the pandemic began, CICE’s core membership of ten to twelve organizations focused on learning about each member’s capacity and identifying needs present in both our regular audiences and the larger community. Each organization is structured differently and has different sources of funding. Some were protected from many of the effects of public closures while others were not. Some organizations, like the Children’s Discovery Museum, had grant funds that needed to be reallocated appropriately. The museum was also partially supported by the town of Normal.
At each group meeting, held via Zoom beginning in April 2020, discussions focused on the current but quickly changing status of the pandemic, and the ever-evolving information released from the Illinois governor’s office and health department. We discussed the ethics of re-opening to the public and how and when to offer in-person or virtual programs. We talked about how to take programs off-site into both private and public spaces to meet community needs without being too swayed by community “wants” that were not safe for everyone. Balancing the critical need for organizational revenue against the possibility of being a site that could spread the virus was excruciating for all of us. Not everyone on the calls was a decision-maker for their organization, but we could all share information with those who held those roles.
Shannon Reedy, education specialist from Miller Park Zoo, found our discussions very useful. Even though the zoo wasn’t doing many programs during those first few months of the shut-down, she was inspired by hearing what other organizations were doing. She was eventually charged by zoo management with rolling out virtual programs, along with in-person programs that met COVID mandate standards. This was quite a challenge and required a different way of thinking about their program offerings. She was able to think through new methods, themes, and collaborations based on the stories her colleagues shared.
In our area, schools continued remote learning, but many businesses began to open. The United Way of McLean County recognized a need for childcare and youth programming and brought together organizations that were serving families in this way. Regular meetings of what became the Childcare and Youth Programming Coalition included discussions about issues the schools were seeing. For example, school counselors were particularly helpful in sharing observations on students’ mental health during the shutdown. The coalition also discussed current openings in traditional childcare programs in our area, and relevant program offerings from other informal education institutions. Rachel Carpenter, education manager from the Children’s Discovery Museum, acted as the liaison between the CICE and this new coalition, sharing the availability of all CICE partner organizations’ programming, but also their concerns about new and ongoing community needs and the funding required so that all institutions could continue to operate. As a result of many offshoot meetings, the local YMCA launched all-day programming in closed schools for students whose parents were working. The local school district also created a unique summer program in partnership with other area youth programming organizations.
The release of Cares Act funding to our local school districts enabled the creation of new summer programming. Dr. Diane Wolf, who now works for School District 87, recognized CICE as a resource to help the students in her district, which will host three weeks of summer programming for children in 2021. Diane connected with CICE members and found organizations that could adopt a grade level or group for each afternoon during the program. The Children’s Discovery Museum and the McLean County Museum of History, in conjunction with three other community partner organizations, will bring fun and playful learning experiences to the students.
This arrangement supports the museums as well. For example, as part of the Town of Normal, the Children’s Discovery Museum could not directly access federal funds targeted at learning loss. But the school districts that do are eager to partner with other learning organizations skilled at mitigating primary learning loss. The museum will replace its usual month of summer programs with this new one, guaranteeing the museum’s program income for this period.
All organizations are excited to bring their curriculum to students who may not typically be able to access their programming. These enriching learning experiences help build solid educational foundations for children as they return to school this fall.
The organizations that have chosen to work together here in Bloomington/Normal could all be considered competitors within a limited market. But we realized that by working together, we can amplify our shared goal of meeting the needs of our community to the best of our ability. By providing the best programming we can in our areas of expertise, and sharing our successes and failures, we can maximize impact and focus our time in ways we could not as siloed operations. All of our programming overlaps in different ways. Rather than viewing this as a problem, we see it as opportunity to share and better serve children by offering slots in one program when others get full or referring someone to a different program where their needs or interests may be better served. There are never enough resources available to do all the work that needs to be done, but together, we can do more with what we have.
Rachel Carpenter is the Education Manager at the Children’s Discovery Museum (Normal, IL); Hannah Johnson is the Director of Youth and Family Education and Candace Summers is the Director of Community Education at the McLean County Museum of History (Bloomington, IL); Shannon Reedy is the Education Specialist at the Miller Park Zoo (Bloomington, IL); and Dr. Diane Wolf is the Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction at Bloomington (IL) Public Schools District 87.
| This post was originally published as ACM Trends Report 4.12, the twelfth report in the fourth volume of ACM Trends Reports, produced in partnership between ACM and Knology. |
Since May 2020, the ACM Trends Report team has tracked the impacts of the pandemic on children’s museums and the field’s innovations during this time, through survey studies and data gathered through ACM’s Museums Mobilize initiative. ACM member museums completed surveys in spring 2020, fall 2020, and spring 2021, as well as participated in discussion and reflection on a regular basis.
This ACM Trends Report presents new data on museum personnel from 91 museums that participated in the spring 2021 survey, compared to previous data measuring changes in personnel throughout the pandemic. The pandemic has affected museum personnel of all types, from full-time and part-time workers to contractors and volunteers. In particular, the status of part-time workers dramatically changed over time. Museums estimated that, on average, about a quarter of part-time employees remained at their pre-pandemic capacity by spring 2021. Meanwhile, about half of full-time workers were at their normal capacity by that time. Children’s museums decreased volunteers and contractors’ work as well. As we’ve seen in previous reporting, museums and their teams creatively transformed personnel roles and responsibilities over the course of the pandemic.
There are signs that museums are beginning to rebuild their teams. About half reported they were in the process of rehiring both full-time and part-time staff. Rebuilding the workforce will be an important part of reimagining how children’s museums serve their communities.
Children’s museums are operated by a mix of personnel types. In a 2018 analysis, children’s museums’ teams were composed of an average of 8% full-time workers, 16% part-time staff, and 76% volunteers, in addition to contractors. However, each group worked very different hours, with full-time staff annually averaging about 2,000 hours, part-time staff about 1,000 hours, and volunteers about 150 hours (Flinner et al., 2016; Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017). The COVID-19 pandemic shifted the landscape for children’s museum personnel.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, children’s museums navigated financial shortfalls by laying off, furloughing, or reducing hours for their full-time and part-time workers. Over the course of the past year, institutions were more likely to keep full-time employees staffed at their normal capacity, compared to part-time staff’s typical levels.
During this period, retention rates for part-time staff were roughly half that of full-time workers.
Figure 1. Percentage of staff whose employment status remained normal during the pandemic, as estimated by museums.
Figure 1 illustrates the changes that took place in staffing at three points in time: spring 2020, fall 2020, and spring 2021. Let’s walk through how to read this chart, which visualizes statistics known as confidence intervals. The solid center marks indicate the average percentage of staff with no changes to their employment status at each point in time. These percentages were estimated by the museums and were not precise counts. Since not all ACM members participated in the survey, there is a degree of uncertainty in the averages. The chart indicates this uncertainty with the shaded boxes that surround the solid marks, also called ranges. We calculated that 95% of museums’ estimates on staffing would fall within the shaded boxes. The more museums that respond, the more accurate and tighter the ranges would be.
Let’s also discuss how to interpret the significance of the changes over time in Figure 1. A “significant change” means that the shift is not simply due to chance – in other words, there is a high probability that there is indeed a shift in the thing being measured. In this chart, we can detect significant changes by looking at a center mark at one point in time and comparing it to the range at another point in time. If there is overlap, the change might be due to chance. But if the center mark does not overlap with the range at another point in time, then the change is likely meaningful. In Figure 1, for instance, the change in estimates of full-time staff retention is not significant from spring 2020 to fall 2020, whereas it is from spring 2020 to spring 2021.
There are several things that likely influenced museums’ capacity to retain staff since the beginning of the pandemic. Most children’s museums received support from the first round of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP 1) offered by the Small Business Administration (SBA) in spring 2020. PPP 1 funds came with stringent requirements for staffing and payroll in spring 2020, but these conditions eased by the time of the second survey in fall 2020. Museums had to fulfill PPP 1 spending requirements by December 31, 2020.
The SBA was in the process of allocating the second round of PPP funding (PPP 2) at the time of the spring 2021 survey. Fewer children’s museums applied for PPP 2 funds, but success rates were still high. These funds have the same more relaxed requirements relating to staffing and payroll as were used in PPP 1. However, it seems museums continued to struggle to keep both full-time and part-time workers employed at their pre-pandemic levels.
There may be other factors affecting staffing and hiring. Museums increasingly opened their doors to in-person audiences when infection rates were falling and vaccination rates were rising across states. In early 2021, some states started to pull back unemployment benefits that had been expanded at the beginning of the pandemic. This shift may also have affected hiring for some children’s museums.
In 2016, Small and Medium museums worked with an average of 36 volunteers, and Large museums worked with an average of 380 volunteers (Flinner et al., 2018). By spring 2021, less than half of the 69 responding institutions reported working with volunteers. Before the pandemic, museums tended to recruit volunteers from all age groups, beginning with 15 to 17-year-olds through people age 55 and up. Those working with volunteers in spring 2021 continued to recruit from a wide range of age groups, except for ages 15 to 17.
Prior to the pandemic, volunteers served primarily by interacting with visitors. These visitor-facing roles consisted of facilitating exhibits, programs, and events. In the past year, museums have reduced volunteers’ work in this area, though it remains the most common task via virtual and online platforms. Nine museums reported reassigning volunteers to creating kits or packets for distribution to community members. Prior to the pandemic, volunteers also supported administration and operations, such as preparing materials, stocking supplies, cleaning, and maintaining collections. Museums reduced these types of volunteer tasks during the pandemic.
In spring 2020, nearly all museums working with contractors laid off some or all of these workers. By spring 2021, nearly all museums that staffed contractors before the pandemic had resumed working with this category of personnel. Eight museums that had not hired contractors before the pandemic reported doing so over the last year. These institutions primarily hired contractors for operations and administrative support.
Out of 69 museums that provided information about contractors, about two-thirds reported using contractors’ services both before and during the pandemic. Exhibits and programming was the most common area for contractors’ work before the pandemic, while operations and administrative support was the most common contractor role during the pandemic. There were fewer museums that continued to work with contractors on facility maintenance and exhibits and programming during the pandemic, compared to their pre-pandemic rates.
More museums reported working with IT and web services contractors during the pandemic compared to their pre-pandemic practices, though fewer than half of participating institutions did so.
Museums are in the early stages of rebuilding their teams through hiring. Sixty-nine museums specified their current status on hiring different types of staff. Half were rehiring
both full-time staff and part-time staff. Of these institutions, most looked to hire new employees, and about half also recruited from staff who had been furloughed or laid off during the pandemic. Some museums may also be bringing volunteers and contractors on board instead of or in addition to hiring part-time and full-time workers.
We anticipate that museums’ efforts to rebuild their teams will increase in the next few months. Institutions will continue to re-open for in-person activities and PPP 2 funds will be fully distributed. Vaccination rates may increase across the country, which will make the workplace safer. Meanwhile, states may continue to restrict unemployment benefits, which could encourage more people to return to work.
The past year has seen museums reimagine their operations and service to their communities. To continue on this path, children’s museums must also rebuild their personnel. What roles can be reshaped? Which skills might a team possess that the museum has not yet tapped into? How can the museum fill the gaps in skills and experience – through training, new hires, or learning with and from peer institutions? Many museums will need the support of funders and stakeholders to access the resources to rebuild teams. We can look to the 2018 Trends Report series on economic impact for guidance on how to articulate the value of children’s museums as economic engines in their communities. This research found that children’s museums supported 57,000 jobs in the US, of which 41% are outside of their walls. For every full-time position within a museum, the institution supported nearly 1½ external jobs through spending on vendors and employees’ spending. Museums’ spending supports specific industries, typically health and social services, retail, real estate, and hospitality, though there are differences across regions (Voiklis, Fraser, et al. 2018; Voiklis, Flinner, et al., 2018). Leaders can use these statistics, along with data from their own institution, to make the case for gaining support for their rebuilding process.
The data used in this report came from an online survey that ACM sent to US-based children’s museums. Overall, 91 museums responded to at least part of the survey. All participating museums were based in the US.
Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2017). American Time Use Survey – 2016 Results. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/atus.pdf. Accessed December 13, 2017.
Flinner, K. Fraser, J., & Voiklis, J. (2018). Making a Museum Sing: the Children’s Museums Workforce. ACM Trends 1(10). New York: Knology & Association of Children’s Museums.
Voiklis, J., Flinner, K., & Fraser, J. (2018). The Economic Impact of Children’s Museums: Our Jobs, Their Jobs, All Jobs. ACM Trends 2(2). New York: Knology & Association of Children’s Museums.
Voiklis, J., Fraser, J., & Flinner, K. (2018). The Economic Impact of Children’s Museums: The Ripple Effect of Spending. ACM Trends 2(1). New York: Knology & Association of Children’s Museums.
This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent those of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
The Associations of Children’s Museums (ACM) champions children’s museums worldwide. Follow ACM on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Knology produces practical social science for a better world. Follow Knology on Twitter.
| This post was originally published as ACM Trends Report 4.10, the tenth report in the fourth volume of ACM Trends Reports, produced in partnership between ACM and Knology. |
The ACM Trends Report team has continued to study the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on children’s museums. To understand these impacts, we conducted multiple surveys: the first in May 2020, the second from September 24 to October 18, 2020, and a third in spring 2021. The Museums in a Pandemic series of Trends Reports illustrates the ways children’s museums have adapted to the evolving national and local situations surrounding the pandemic.
In the fall 2020 survey, 81 museums reported starting new collaborations or expanding existing collaborations since the beginning of the pandemic. Meanwhile, 15 reported no new or expanded collaborations. Those with collaborations started an average of two or three collaborative activities during the pandemic. In this Trends Report, we will explore collaborations that children’s museums formed with other museums and different kinds of cultural institutions.
This is the second of three Trends Reports that tell the story of how children’s museums have undertaken collaborative work during a time of crisis. These three reports are also part of Museums Mobilize, an initiative of the Association of Children’s Museums that documents COVID-specific responses and innovations by children’s museums.
Figure 1. Goal of children’s museums’ collaborations with other museums and cultural institutions.
We asked museums whether they had expanded existing collaborations or initiated new collaborations with different types of organizations during the pandemic. Out of 96 museums, 52 museums or 54% reported collaborations with other museums and cultural institutions including aquariums, botanic gardens, libraries, and zoos. Participants were also asked about the goals for their expanded or new collaborations.
Partnerships with other museums and cultural institutions were most likely to focus on sharing resources and information and COVID-19 planning (Figure 1). This was followed by cross-institution promotion, with outreach as the third most common goal. Supporting students during the school year was the least common goal for children’s museums. In contrast, museums that formed partnerships around social and health services were most likely to focus on sharing resources and information.
What follows are short stories from two children’s museums about specific collaborations they have developed with other cultural organizations.
Building for Kids (BFK) Children’s Museum, located in Appleton, WI, is collaborating with the History Museum at the Castle, also in Appleton, on an initiative called Museums in Motion: Responsive Community Engagement Toolkits. The initiative is supported largely through funding from the City of Appleton’s Community Development Block CARES grant.
Through the program, the museums provide hands-on, non-virtual educational enrichment activities that can be done at home and are designed to support the educational and social needs of students in the community during the pandemic. Each kit contains materials and instructions for six projects. Three projects were developed by the History Museum, and three by BFK. Projects provide students with a chance to do things like learn about Harry Houdini, experiment with graphite circuits, and create mini robots. In its first wave, Museums in Motion is distributing 1,200 engagement toolkits to first graders and their
families in the Appleton Area School District. Kits will also be distributed to low-income households that have students in Kindergarten through second grade, with support from Pillars, a network of shelters for homeless persons, and Harbor House, which supports people in domestic abuse situations. Through this initiative, BFK is seeking to support the resiliency of students and their families during the pandemic and in the future.
BFK is also collaborating with Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra (FVSO) on the Be a Percussionist and Meet a Musician initiatives. These programs, offered on Facebook, provide live music education to children at home. In Be a Percussionist, audiences explore different musical concepts and learn about several kinds of percussion instruments. Meet a Musician features FVSO artists who discuss topics such as conducting, composition, and instrument families. The museum is also collaborating with FVSO and the Appleton Public Library (APL) on Symphony Storytime, which provides families with engaging and meaningful virtual programming. Under this initiative, FVSO musicians compose music to accompany stories read by librarians from APL. BFK provides puppets and other props that are used as part of story time.
Commenting on the value of the programming to the community, museum leadership noted the detrimental impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the education and development of children and families, and how cultural institutions can play a supportive role. “Families with early elementary school-age children are especially impacted. With schools closed and students learning virtually from home, parents become educators tasked with delivering formal schooling with children that typically rely heavily on engagement from their teachers and peers,” they said.
BFK’s leaders believe that museums can step in as valuable sources of out-of-school-time learning, engagement, and connection to the community: “While visits to museums are limited, these non-virtual, hands-on learning toolkits help equip families with tools to mitigate this learning loss. Without investment in mitigating the disproportionate impacts on economically disadvantaged children and families, our community will experience an imbalanced and unequitable recovery from this crisis.”
The museum’s virtual music programming is also intended to provide greater opportunities for families to continue to connect during the pandemic. One leader remarked, “BFK’s mission is to inspire discovery and build resilience through intergenerational, play-based learning and exploration of the arts, sciences, and humanities. We feel that offering this programming connects us to families and exposes them to different concepts in music and fulfills our mission as an organization.”
KidsQuest Children’s Museum, located in Bellevue, WA, is partnering with various organizations to offer families in its community multiple options for virtual learning. The first program, called Remote Learning Kits, is offered in partnership with Boys and Girls Club of Bellevue, King County Housing Authority, Jubilee Reach, King County Library, Bellevue School District, and Kindering. Best Starts for Kids, Schools Out Washington, Boeing, and Big Ideas Learning fund the program. These partnerships were formed through an initiative called the Eastside Pathways Collaborative. With Remote Learning Kits, KidsQuest provides a way for families at home to take part in their favorite museum activities. Kits contain materials that can be used multiple times and in various ways. The activities are designed for open-ended learning that can be completed at each child’s pace. They are intended to support developmental learning alongside regular schoolwork.
These kits are part of the museum’s school-age and preschool programming. The kits are generally designed for children in preschool up to 5th grade, and the museum has offered at least one kit, focused on science and art, for students up to 8th grade. Kits are circulated in two ways: as part of a free program in which the museum works with a local partner to distribute the kits, and as part of a fee-based program open to the general public. Available in both English and Spanish, the kits are typically dropped off at a site that families in the community use to access other kinds of services.
This particular partnership program existed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic but was offered only in person at partners’ spaces with museum educators. For the past three years, KidsQuest and its partners focused on supporting families that were experiencing homelessness. Following the emergence of the pandemic, museum leadership noted, “We have shifted from just students experiencing homelessness to any family who may be struggling. How do we make sure there are not gaps in service and new families are getting learning materials that they need while at home?”
A second KidsQuest initiative is the Love of Learning podcast. Each episode of the podcast features interviews with educators and community partners who share valuable resources and activities that help keep families connected through play. The museum has partnered with guests from other cultural institutions including a local library. Recent episodes have focused on various topics from STEAM areas including math, arts, and engineering. The podcast is designed for parents and caregivers with children ages 0-10 interested in encouraging and engaging in child-directed play, as well as fellow informal educators. All episodes are available on various platforms including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Commenting on the value of its educational programming for the children and families in its community, KidsQuest leadership remarked, “We are able to put the power of play and learning into more people’s hands. A couple of new institutions are using our kits as their learning tools during therapy or in-home visits.”
A third initiative called the Tri-Museum Collaborative involves three museums: KidsQuest, Children’s Museum of Tacoma – a program of Greentrike, and Imagine Children’s Museum in Everett, WA. This collaboration is funded in part by Boeing. The goal of the initiative is to promote play among children who do not have access to early learning opportunities. During the pandemic, this partnership was strengthened and used over and over again as the museums shifted to virtual programming. The partners share ideas, strategies, and resources on how best to deliver programming online to support early learning for children in underserved areas of their respective communities. KidsQuest leadership observed that being part of this collaborative effort “allows us to learn what has worked for different populations and how we can continue to adapt our programs to fit the families.”
The stories in this Trends Report showcase children’s museums that have collaborated with peer cultural institutions to combine resources, share insights for their practice, and develop new programming. The types of partner institutions vary widely, from other children’s museums, to history museums, to orchestras. The diversity of these collaborations points to an underlying opportunity for the museum field: joining forces with peers is often better than competing for funding and other resources. When institutions team up, they signal sophisticated organizing capacity and the promise of greater reach into their communities. Children’s museums can use this approach to not only deliver on their mission, but also to expand the ways they achieve their goals of supporting children and families.
Some of the data used in this report came from an online survey that ACM sent to US-based children’s museums. Overall, 96 museums responded to at least Some of the data used in this report came from an online survey that ACM sent to US-based children’s museums. Overall, 96 museums responded to at least part of the survey. A subset of museums that indicated they had new or expanded partnerships received an additional set of questions that asked for more information about collaborations with other museums and different cultural organizations that they formed during the pandemic.
This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent those of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
The Associations of Children’s Museums (ACM) champions children’s museums worldwide. Follow ACM on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Knology produces practical social science for a better world. Follow Knology on Twitter.
| This post was originally published as ACM Trends Report 4.11, the eleventh report in the fourth volume of ACM Trends Reports, produced in partnership between ACM and Knology. |
The ACM Trends Report team has continued to study the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on children’s museums. To understand these impacts, we conducted multiple surveys: the first in May 2020, the second from September 24 to October 18, 2020, and a third in spring 2021. The Museums in a Pandemic series of Trends Reports illustrates the ways children’s museums have adapted to the evolving national and local situations surrounding the pandemic. For this Trends Report, we also feature a story from an ACM member outside of the US.
In the fall 2020 survey, 81 museums reported starting new collaborations or expanding existing collaborations since the beginning of the pandemic, while 15 museums reported no new or expanded collaborations. Those with collaborations started an average of two or three collaborative activities during the pandemic. This Trends Report will focus on collaborations with schools and universities. This is the third of three Trends Reports that will tell the story of how children’s museums have undertaken collaborative work during a time of crisis. These three reports are also part of Museums Mobilize, an initiative of the Association of Children’s Museums that documents COVID-specific responses and innovations by children’s museums.
Figure 1. Goal of children’s museums’ collaborations with schools and universities.
We asked museums about whether they had expanded existing collaborations or initiated new collaborations with different types of organizations during the pandemic. Out of 96 museums, 55 museums (57%) reported collaborations with local K-12 schools or school districts, and universities or institutions of higher learning. We also asked participants about the goals for their expanded or new collaborations. Partnerships with schools and universities most likely focused on the goal of developing content and programs (Figure 1).
Unsurprisingly, that goal was followed by providing student support in the school year, as well as the objective of sharing resources and information. Cross-organization promotion and outreach was the next most common goal. Fundraising was the least common goal for museums in their collaborations with schools and universities.
What follows are short accounts from three children’s museums about specific collaborations they developed with schools and universities.
The DoSeum, located in San Antonio, TX, collaborated with Celebrate Dyslexia on Beautiful Minds: Dyslexia and the Creative Advantage, an exhibition initiative that celebrated different ways of learning. The collaboration was funded by Celebrate Dyslexia, the City of San Antonio Department of Arts & Culture, and the Elizabeth Huth Coates Charitable Foundation.
The museum’s presentation of the exhibition opened in October 2020 and ended in March 2021. The exhibition’s objective was to illustrate and celebrate the uniqueness of every learner, and to correct popular misconceptions about people who learn differently. It also honored and celebrated learners with diverse strengths. The exhibition offers a variety of spatial and word games, including an oversized tile spelling game, color block puzzles, and digital interactive educational games for children of all ages and their families. The goals of the collaboration, which began before the pandemic, remained the same throughout the project. But the partners adjusted conditions for the pandemic, particularly for the interactive aspects. Specifically, the team integrated motion sensor-enabled interactivity in activities that had traditionally relied solely on touch. To promote social distancing, the museum installed sound domes that feature stories of role models with dyslexia who live in the San Antonio region.
As part of the Beautiful Minds initiative, the museum unveiled an installation by its Artist-in-Residence, called The Reading Brain. This component was designed to immerse children and their families in the inner workings of the brain during reading, through a multi-sensory, data-driven interactive. In the gallery, a sensor detected the movements of guests, and then translated that movement to changing patterns and colors in LED orbs hanging from the ceiling. The installation vividly demonstrated how the brain responds to stimuli, in a way that also enabled guests to socially distance.
The museum reported that Beautiful Minds drew a great deal of interest from educators and caregivers. Teachers visited the exhibition as part of their professional development. As part of the exhibition, Celebrate Dyslexia led a training for participants in City Year, a local service-learning organization, on the experience of dyslexic learners. Other trainees and participants included educators from Southwest Independent School District in San Antonio. For children, the exhibition provided active experiences that both recognize and celebrate neurodiversity. Commenting on the importance of supporting the different ways that people learn, leaders from the museum noted, “With advancements in the learning sciences, it is important to adapt the ways we engage children, caregivers, and educators in public, interactive experiences of STEM, literacy, numeracy, and the arts. Informal learning environments like museums have unique potentials to involve others in emerging tools and models, to inspire and inform stakeholders, and ideally build confidence and curiosity to ultimately foster positive youth development.”
The Children’s Museum of Richmond, located in Richmond, VA, is collaborating with YMCA of Greater Richmond on the YMCA Success Center Enrichment Program. Funding for the partnership is provided in part by the YMCA of Greater Richmond.
The program, launched during the pandemic, provides enrichment to K-4 students participating in YMCA site support for virtual schooling. The program brings in different partners to provide virtual programming after the formal school day finishes for students attending school virtually from YMCA sites. This ensures that children are able to learn in an engaging and fun way in an out-of-school setting. From Monday through Thursday, museum educators provide various activities for two one-hour sessions each day that include movement, a mini-lesson with a literacy element, and a hands-on activity. These activities complement the learning that takes place during the school day. The museum specifically serves students in schools in the City of Richmond and Henrico County, VA. In addition, the YMCA also serves students in Goochland County, VA. Museum leadership called attention to the benefits of the program during the pandemic. Taking place in-person at the YMCA sites, children and their families had access to more interactive and responsive learning opportunities during a time when most education was provided virtually. “Our educators have learned to be nimble, adapt programming for different age groups, and respond to the changing group dynamics. This adaptive skillset is a boon as our education team learns new strategies and gains a deeper knowledge of student needs as they provide more intensive programming and revisit group sites over the school year.” Museum leaders also noted that the knowledge they have gained through this partnership will enhance their traditional program offerings.
Play Africa, a children’s museum located in Johannesburg, South Africa, is collaborating with schools and several early childhood development centers and community groups on an initiative called Heal and Connect. The program is supported by funding from the Government of Canada, through the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives.
Working with local schools and community groups, Play Africa brings parents together through virtual support groups with professional social workers. The museum also reaches out to families with one-on-one phone calls as “Psychological First Aid,” to offer encouragement, information, and links to services in emergency settings.
Through the program, families are supported with educational resources and play-based learning materials for their children. These materials free families to focus on healing, connecting, and cultivating resilience. At the time of reporting, the museum provided resources and information to 5,520 parents and caregivers through this program.
A total of 338 parents have received direct psychological first aid from Play Africa, and 667 children have received play parcels with a range of resources. A total of 680 parents have attended at least one of 15 in-person or virtual parent support groups hosted by Play Africa.
Discussing the value of the program, museum leadership highlighted the fact that since its launch, they have expanded their programming to support 46 schools, daycare centers, nursery schools, and community groups in new areas of Johannesburg and Soweto. These services support vulnerable children and families, including children with disabilities, children who are refugees, asylum seekers or recent immigrants and their families, and children experiencing housing insecurity.
Reflecting on their service audience strategy, the museum explained, “Play helps children make sense of the world, process complicated feelings, and build relationships with others. In this program, we focused on outreach to eight organizations representing children and parents that we felt would most likely be excluded from other crises responses.” Programs led by Play Africa and other children’s museums across the world are offering critical assistance to communities that have been hard hit by the pandemic.
Children’s museums’ partnerships with educational institutions are not unique to the COVID-19 pandemic. But the collaborative activities with schools that emerged in 2020 point to fresh and innovative conceptions of museums’ service to students, school communities, and the education field. As we’ve seen in this Trends Report, many of these partnerships are centered on developing new programs or rethinking projects already in place. In some of these cases, museums drew school audiences to their own facilities for learning experiences. Other institutions have gone to schools and out-of-school providers’ campuses to work with students and educators. Still others have invested in a mix of these approaches. Across all of these education support initiatives, children’s museums have proven to be adaptable and in tune with the needs of their communities. Importantly, museums have defined community broadly, with offerings designed for students, families and caretakers, and teachers. These projects have also extended to university students in training to be educators in child development. We saw an example of this in ACM Trends Report #4.8, which explored museums collaborating with social and health services.
Museum leaders should continue to ask and reflect on how they can support students, educators, and schools. What works well now will likely evolve as communities navigate the changing landscape of education models, public health protocols, and learning needs. In this context, new opportunities for partnerships may also become available.
Some of the data used in this report came from an online survey that ACM sent to US-based children’s museums. Overall, 96 museums responded to at least part of the survey. A subset of museums that indicated they had new or expanded partnerships received an additional set of questions that asked for more information about collaborations with schools and universities that they formed or expanded during the pandemic.
This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent those of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
The Associations of Children’s Museums (ACM) champions children’s museums worldwide. Follow ACM on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Knology produces practical social science for a better world. Follow Knology on Twitter.
| This post was originally published as ACM Trends Report 4.9, the ninth report in the fourth volume of ACM Trends Reports, produced in partnership between ACM and Knology. |
The ACM Trends Report team has studied the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the children’s museum field since May 2020, conducting multiple surveys of ACM member institutions. Eighty-nine museums participated in the most recent survey that took place from April 7 to May 11, 2021. Below are several initial findings from this survey:
This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent those of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
The Associations of Children’s Museums (ACM) champions children’s museums worldwide. Follow ACM on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Knology produces practical social science for a better world. Follow Knology on Twitter.
