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Transforming Museums: Looking for co-panelists(s)

  • 1.  Transforming Museums: Looking for co-panelists(s)

    Posted 08-08-2016 05:46 PM

    Our museum has greatly transformed itself in the recent years. Has your museum transformed its focus, too? 

    We are a small maritime museum with a history of struggling with relevancy. Now, with a creative take on the museum's place in the world (among other positive changes!) we are now hitting our stride in our service to the community.

    I would love to meet others who might have inspiration, suggestions, tools, and tricks to share at the upcoming AAM conference. Please reach out if this sounds like you!

    Thanks!

    Nomi Dayan

    ------------------------------
    Nomi Dayan
    Executive Director
    The Whaling Museum & Education Center
    Cold Spring Harbor NY
    ndayan@cshwhalingmuseum.org
    ------------------------------


  • 2.  RE: Transforming Museums: Looking for co-panelists(s)

    Posted 08-09-2016 09:41 AM
    Unfortunately I have a work conflict with next year's conference, but the topic I would love to see explored would be increasing visitorship - how to drive tourists and locals alike to small museums (and in particular historic house museums) if you have a limited advertising budget.  We are growing attendance year over year, but we have a long way to go and success stories would be great to know about.

    Rowena

    --
    Rowena Houghton Dasch, PhD
    Executive Director, Neill-Cochran House Museum
    2310 San Gabriel Street
    Austin, Texas 78705
    (512) 478-2335





  • 3.  RE: Transforming Museums: Looking for co-panelists(s)

    Posted 08-09-2016 11:24 AM

    I recently visited Cliveden of the National Trust (in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia) and they might fit the bill. They underwent a long process of consulting the community to find out how to make their interpretation more relevant, and they've implemented some great ideas.

    Might be worth reaching out! 

    Best,
    Cara

    ------------------------------
    Cara Scharf
    Program and Communications Manager
    Wagner Free Institute of Science
    Philadelphia PA



  • 4.  RE: Transforming Museums: Looking for co-panelists(s)

    Posted 08-09-2016 12:43 PM

    Our museum recently completed a Master Plan which helped us determine we needed to shift and hone our focus and exhibits to better fit our visitors and location. The Board just approved of the Master Plan and is currently working on the phasing for funding. The staff is looking at planning for the exhibits. While we haven't implemented it yet, it may be interesting to have a session which presents an institution that is at the start of a transformation and one or more that have successfully done it. I'd be happy to talk with you more about this.

    ------------------------------
    Veronica Kandl
    Curator of History and Collections
    Sacramento History Museum
    Sacramento, CA



  • 5.  RE: Transforming Museums: Looking for co-panelists(s)

    Posted 08-10-2016 10:52 AM

    HI

    I would be interested to see if we would be a good fit for this topic. Madison Children's Museum has been working to transform our culture internally to be more inclusive and equitable. We are looking at our policies and procedures as well as our programs and masterplanning for exhibits in this process. We are currently working on a full staff process to develop our Diversity and Inclusion statement that will reside along side of our Mission Vision and Values statements, along with initiatives that increase and support inclusion and equity throughout our whole organization both internally (hiring protocols, trainings etc..) as well as programs that address community need and designed and supported in community or what we call (not about me without me).

    Please let me know if this is of interest or relevance to this session stream. I am happy to be a part of panel.

    Sincerely,

    Sandra

    ------------------------------
    Sandra Bonnici-Hoecherl
    Associate Director of Education and Access Diversity and Inclusion
    Madison Children's Museum
    Madison WI



  • 6.  RE: Transforming Museums: Looking for co-panelists(s)

    Posted 08-10-2016 05:39 PM

    I would be interested in this group as well. We are making a left turn to embrace our mission in the area of education for the community in engineering, architecture, public health and social history. We have been seen as a venue for private events and we are working hard to create a new strategic plan and hire staff who will be on board with our mission. Please let me know Sandra and Nomi if you would like to have a conference call to discuss moving forward.

     

    Best Wishes,

    Barbara

     

    Barbara Elfman

    Executive Director

    Metropolitan Waterworks Museum

    617-277-0065

    2450 Beacon Street

    Boston, MA 02467

    Barbara.Elfman@waterworksmuseum.org

    @MetroWaterworks

     

     






  • 7.  RE: Transforming Museums: Looking for co-panelists(s)

    Posted 08-10-2016 05:16 PM

    This right up our alley and I would love to participate in a panel.  Our institution is in the final months of a 5 year strategic plan where transformation was not only a primary focus of the strategic plan is also guided and became the core part of our mission "transformative family learning".    The timing is perfect for talking about the ups and downs in the process.   We're a fairly large org with over 3 million visitor annually, 4 museums/gardens under one nonprofit.   Let me know how I can help be involved.   This is an extremely important subject for museums today.

    Cheers,

    Blake

    ------------------------------
    Blake Wigdahl
    VP - Design & Programming
    Thanksgiving Point Institute
    Lehi UT
    bwigdahl@thanksgivingpoint.org



  • 8.  RE: Transforming Museums: Looking for co-panelists(s)

    Posted 08-19-2016 11:31 AM

    I am interest in learning more about this discussion/panel as well. 

    Cool Culture is a NYC nonprofit whose mission is to empower families from diverse communities to harness the transformative learning and impact gained from cultural experiences.  Each year we partner with 90 cultural institutions and 400 schools to provide free admission to 50,000 marginalized families. We provide professional development to museum educators through and IMLS funded project focused on cultural competency, leadership and advocacy within the profession 

    ------------------------------
    Candice Anderson
    Executive Director
    Cool Culture
    Brooklyn NY



  • 9.  RE: Transforming Museums: Looking for co-panelists(s)

    Posted 08-10-2016 05:46 PM

    This is a great topic! I would recommend putting out a call on Twitter, too. I've heard this sentiment from many museum professionals I've had the pleasure of speaking with--even some fellow maritime museums. Mind if I spread the word?

    Kudos to you on this!

    ------------------------------
    Nicole Ivy
    Museum Futurist
    American Alliance of Museums
    Arlington VA



  • 10.  RE: Transforming Museums: Looking for co-panelists(s)

    Posted 08-17-2016 12:37 PM

    My museum went from a tradition small local history museum to something that is a bit of a hybrid between that and a children's museum. We have become much more welcoming as a result and our attendance has more than doubled over that last few years. We have a very diverse audience now and a large number of families who drop in on a regular basis. If this sounds like what you are looking for let me know.

    ------------------------------
    Karen Yaffe Lottes
    Program Coordinator
    Gaithersburg Community Museum



  • 11.  RE: Transforming Museums: Looking for co-panelists(s)

    Posted 08-18-2016 07:08 AM
      |   view attached

    This is a fantastic proposal for a session.

    On this side of the pond, a key issue remains persuading museums of the need to transform themselves. Your session will be a real driver for that.

    A colleague and I ran a small project which we called 'Innovation in Museum Displays', funded by Arts Council England, that explored this issue through working with eight institutions, varying from a small local volunteer heritage group to the UK National Trust. We produced a report on this, which I attach in case it is of interest.

    Best wishes and good luck for the session.

    Graham

    ------------------------------
    Graham Black PhD
    Professor
    Nottingham

    Attachment(s)



  • 12.  RE: Transforming Museums: Looking for co-panelists(s)

    Posted 08-19-2016 04:54 PM

    Open to including a digital developer on the panel? I work with a lot of museums looking to make transformative change, both with their tech offerings (we're helping to deploy things like beacons and VR) as well as with smart content strategy, social outreach, usability and storytelling. I regularly present on the power of disruption and how to prepare your organization to dive in rather than react. I'd be happy to serve as a panelist or as moderator since I have a lot of different museum clients I've worked with over the years!

    Layla

    ------------------------------
    Layla Masri
    President
    Bean Creative | Web, Mobile + Interactive Design
    Alexandria VA
    lmasri@beancreative.com
    (703) 684-5945 ext 201



  • 13.  RE: Transforming Museums: Looking for co-panelists(s)

    Posted 08-19-2016 05:26 PM

    We have grown from a "family home" museum with several hundred visitors per year to an educational destination. We will host 1500+ third graders this fall and 750 or more fifth graders in the spring in addition to community groups, Scouts, etc.  To make that happen, we created Institutes for teachers to provide them with  background knowledge about the City of Salinas, CA (third grade) and the Westward Movement (fifth grade), pedagogy for ways to incorporate history into language arts, math and English Language Development, and materials written at their students' reading levels with related lesson ideas.   If this is something that you might be interested in, please let us know. 

    ------------------------------
    Mary Randall
    Education Coordinator
    First Mayor's House of Salinas City
    Salinas CA