Gratitude in and for Museums

I am thankful for dog parks...

Last year my niece and her children made the crescent rolls for Thanksgiving dinner. Our large family hungrily reached for the bowl of rolls while the buffet remained temporarily off limits. A few of us heard and registered the caution to break the rolls apart carefully. Some of us did so, unlayering the rolls, finding the edges of buttery paper and gingerly pulling them out. Others noticed and became curious about the fortune cookie-looking strips of paper. Readers rather than eaters, we scanned the rolled up gratitudes in each roll, silently at first and then for others to hear. With no names included on the strips of paper, it was natural to try and guess who wrote this one or that. Who was thankful for toys? (Harper) And who was thankful for CRUMBS? (Henry, the Lab) Who was grateful for “a niece and great niece who think of all these great little ideas that make our family closer at special times of the year”? (Tom)

Some were harder to decipher than others. A few syllables of gratitude had been eaten (and swallowed) before read. I bit the Wis of of "..consin Badgers and the S in "..allie Walker and Papa John" from the middle of Ian’s gratitude. In the spirit of gratitude, he forgave me. Family was mentioned often as was friendship, humor, health, patience, peanut butter, and chocolate. A thoughtfully provided master list provided clues to a few truly mysterious entries and corrections for some mismatches. 

What has stayed with me over the year besides memories of a full heart and insights into family members (who knew my millwright brother was so sentimental?) is a growing awareness of the many ways and places that gratitude is expressed. Not limited to Hallmark cards, I notice displays of gratitude in ordinary moments and extraordinary ways. With the amount of time I spend in, with, and for museums, feeling gratitude for them, for staff and friends, and for their place in society–all year through–is not difficult at all . My thankfulness for museums begins with an appreciation of them as welcoming places, empathetic and compassionate places, and as places of joy.

1.     Museums opening to more and larger parts of the community through free and reduced admission, access and inclusion strategies. National programs like Blue Star Families at more than 2,000 museums; field-wide programs such as Museums for All; pay-as-you-will policies; and hours and events that accommodate audience groups with special needs and abilities at more and more museums express an intention to lower, if not eliminate, barriers to visiting and enjoying museums.  

 

2.     Staff and volunteers prepared and ready with just-in-time support and understanding. Reuniting a separated child and parent, greeting visitors in the parking lot, giving helpful directions to a nearby restaurant, offering suggestions for must-see exhibits, or making a simple repair to an exhibit, museum staff–especially front-line staff–make the complex choreography of a visit to the museums work smoothly and with patience, kindness and a smile.

3.     Museums as refuge from storms–meteorological and metaphorical. Relief from rain, snow, hail, heat, and cold draws families, couples, friends, and individuals into museums to wander, pass time, connect, visit, or find solitude. In any weather, stepping into a museum can offer a reprieve from pressing duties and sorrows and a moment of time-out-of-time with the possibility of renewal.

4.     Colleagues compelled to experiment, push boundaries, and take risks. The curious, the friendly provocateurs, those who challenge complacency and easy assumptions create waves that move us all forward. Thanks to their appetite for authenticity, penchant for "what if?", and straightforward questions, my thinking is inspired and challenged as are others in the museum field.

5.     Museums reaching out to help one another. Museums are a far-flung community well acquainted with ways to help and support. They step forward to help after events such as Hurricane Katrina, Super Storm Sandy, 9/11, and the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Strong and caring connections among museum colleagues are expressed in mentoring younger colleagues, offering support through difficult professional transitions, easing times of organizational uncertainty, and softening personal loss.

6.     The privilege of glimpsing visitors’ thinking and ideas. Listening to, observing, and being attentive to children and adults, their language, gestures, interactions, and creations open up and give clues about what is fascinating to them, what they know and are figuring out, what they imagine and hope for, and all they can do with their strengths and resourcefulness.

7.     Wholehearted expressions of joy. Years ago, I watched a family hurry into the Jump To Japan exhibition at Seattle Children’s Museum and towards the grinning CatBus from the animated film, My Neighbor Totoro. In great delight, they recited dialogue, gestured and assumed poses, bringing the film to life as a family. Joy is also expressed in a family reading together, all piled on dad; sisters seeing themselves in a Degas painting; and 5 year old practicing her new found skipping skills, leading her family to the admissions desk.



8.     Uncontained expressions of the human spirit. Museums hold and share art, beauty, ingenuity, natural wonders, and discoveries from around the world and across time through which we are able to experience the wondrous, the truly awesome, the sublime, and the extraordinary in the ordinary. In these moments and masterpieces we find  inspiration for new possibilities.

9.     The promise of more to come. More museums to visit and learn about; generous colleagues to learn from and be inspired by; new ones to connect with; and museums’ potential to favor the friendly exchange of curiosity and creativity.

Strategic Planning Notes

Recently I responded to a query on ChildMus about strategic planning and suggested a link or two from past Museum Notes posts. Scrolling through the list of posts a dozen seemed relevant and I forwarded them. A few days later I thought this same set of posts might also be helpful to other museums setting out on strategic planning. Below are those posts, grouped into typical strategic planning steps.

Preparation: Preplanning gives a solid boost to the process; it helps right-size the scope, gets the necessary players in place, and removes some of the bumps that are inevitable in planning. Start with:

• Planning to Plan

Community Context All planning takes place in a larger context. In strategic planning, awareness of the community context is critical for understanding relevant environmental forces, how the museum might respond, and the role it might play in the community.

• Unpacking Nice + Necessary

• Public Value

Vision Statements: My approach to vision statements is decidedly externally oriented rather than internally oriented. The promise of this approach just keeps getting stronger as I see how it works with more museums, including ones of differing sizes and at various stages of development.

• Revisioning Vision Statements

• Vision and Impact

Mission and Values: Museums are guided by a shared sense of a deeper purpose that is made explicit in mission statements and expressed in the beliefs that guide behavior and work of the organization. If a museum is able to capture its distinctive value in its mission, other parts of strategic planning–and its work–will be easier.

• Mission Check 

• Missions That Matter

• Values as Commitments

Stakeholders: Internal and external stakeholders are the people likely to affect or be affected by the museum, its plans, and projects. Audience is a key stakeholder groups, central to a museum’s aspirations and its reason for being.  A sound and shared understanding of stakeholders and audience will assist stratgeic planning.

• Stakeholder Mapping

• Audience, an Area of Enduring Focus

For Good Measure: At its best, strategic planning invites solid strategic thinking. But not everything that seems to be strategic actually is and not every strategic planning tool supports strategic thinking. Become familiar with the various meanings of strategic that your team might be bringing to the process and look critically at how to get better thinking out of a familiar planning exercise.

• Strategic, Not Strategic

• The Trouble With SWOTs 

                                       

Creativity and Museums

Rashad Alakbarov

Creativity is an area of significant interest and importance to museums and to the museum field. 

We view creativity as enhancing our quality of life and prosperity as individuals and as a society. Considered a critical human resource, creativity provides us with skills we need to navigate the present and adapt to the future. Everyday we are exposed to messages about how the next generation’s success hinges not only on what they know, but also on their ability to think and act creatively as global citizens.

Museums reflect this importance and give it visibility with creativity in their names, missions, and brands. Museum missions aspire to develop creativity in our citizens, nurture creative thinkers, and inspire creative thinking. The works of artists across many forms inspire exhibits. Artists themselves facilitate participants in exploring the creative process. Visitors celebrate their creativity with the projects they make. Position titles highlight staff responsibility for creativity and innovation in exhibits, education, and programs. Museums see creativity as a way of being relevant and attracting visitors.

An interest in creativity is also evident across our field. AAM’s Brookings Paper on Creativity in Museums invited papers that "describe examples of creativity in any aspect of museum operations, from collections, programs and exhibitions to finance, marketing and administration–or anything in between." Independent museum professionals, Linda Norris and Rainey Tisdale, are writing a book on creative practices in museums, sharing the process on their website and blog, Museums and Creative Practice.

Museums are exceptionally well positioned to cultivate creativity in visitors, learners, staff, volunteers, and even across their communities. They are rich in objects that often have emerged from the creative energies of artists, inventors, and innovators. Delightful and intriguing combinations of objects are presented in their innovative and compelling settings. Museum experiences allow learners to engage in open-ended and self-directed exploration of settings and exhibits based on personal choice and interests. In fact, museums regularly and often do creative things through the work of creative people.

Aligned for Creativity

The need, interest, and capacity for museums to be agents for creativity seem to be present and well aligned. Yet, in spite of this, I have found little evidence of the underlying work that provides the clarity and accountability for museums to promote themselves as centers for creativity or their offerings as cultivating creativity. What conceptual frameworks are providing the philosophical or research backdrop to support and guide a museum’s wholehearted commitment to creativity? Are museums with creativity in their names, missions and values also articulating the nature and extent of their interest in creativity, its value to their community, and connecting their response? Are museums with centers for creativity or programs that build creativity confidence or offer creativity resources for teachers guided by creativity frameworks grounded in research, that articulate their specific approach, describe what creativity looks like for their audiences, or identify their intended impact?

Where I am able to find evidence of this kind of background work, it is interesting and focused. Given the emphasis on creativity across so many museums–history, art, natural history, science, and children’s–including museums of creativity and innovation, however, the examples feel slim.

Since the early 1950’s creativity has been central to the pedagogy of the Municipal Infant-Toddler Centers and Preschools of Reggio Emilia (IT). Based in theory, reinterpreted through various perspectives, and alert to myths surrounding creativity, the schools value creativity as emerging from daily experience, a characteristic of thinking, knowing, and making choices. For more than 60 years, the schools have been following a set of ideas to understand how they might be revised and how they might be expressed through children’s creative thinking and creative behavior. These ideas, while evolving, are touchstones for significant work.

The Bay Area Discovery Museum (CA) has an expressed commitment to nurturing childhood creativity that is stated in its mission. The Museum’s rationale for focusing on childhood creativity, its definition of the creative process, perspective on creativity, and related research are posted prominently on its website. The relationship of creativity to other key ideas, including child-directed play and place-based learning, is clarified in the Museum’s Interpretive Framework and is woven throughout.

Addressing the question of clarity and accountability about creativity in another way, a group of researchers in the UK have been exploring the gap between the significant potential of exhibits to stimulate children’s creativity and an actual design methodology that fosters children's creativity.

Addressing Creativity

Museums are well positioned to be catalysts for creativity in the lives of their visitors and communities. Realizing those opportunities, however, rests on considerable work that integrates significant ideas into the life of the organization. An initial step is likely to be a set of lively conversations among staff and trustees and with partners about why creativity is valued and how it is integral to the museum’s mission, vision, and values. Informing these discussions and choices might be a literature review or a white paper on about creativity in informal learning settings. Before going very far, a museum is likely to find helpful a working definition of creativity and a shared vocabulary, even if they change with time. A museum seriously interested in advancing its interest in creativity might explore the following questions.

• How does creativity relate to other organizational priorities like science learning, art, nature, play, or natural history?
• What work on creativity is currently being done by local colleges or universities?
• What myths of creativity persist and might interfere with creativity in your museum?
• How does your museum currently encourage creativity?
• What does creativity look like in your museum–for different age groups and visitor groups (i.e. school, family, community)?
• How might staff interact with children and families around creativity?
• What partners could leverage and add value to your museum’s efforts in creativity?
• What could creativity look like as part of your museum’s everyday experience?
• What areas of intended impact around creativity are of greatest interest to your museum?
• What should a framework for creativity with related practices cover?
• How might a wholehearted commitment to creativity change your museum, its staff and culture?
• How deep is your museum’s commitment to stand for creativity?

Moving Ahead

In 2005, Chicago Children’s Museum completed a two-year study to develop Standards of Excellence in Early Learning: A Model for Chicago Children’s Museum. That process and the resulting document created significant changes at Chicago Children’s Museum by consolidating the Museum’s interests in early learning, grounding its work in research, and engaging important sectors of the local and national early childhood and children’s museum communities. Perhaps equally as significant, the project generated ripples of change in practices across children’s museums by setting an example of what articulating a deliberate focus on a community and museum priority requires.

Now, almost 10 years later, could this be the time for a similar project on creativity in museums?

Big Idea, Small Museum

To boldly go...       (Photo: Children's Museum of Tacoma)

 

A bold idea began taking shape at a Children’s Museum of Tacoma (CMT) board retreat in January 2010. In the thick of developing a strategic plan and in the midst of an expansion involving a move, Executive Director Tanya Andrews presented her board with seven big ideas. Big Idea #3 was going to a pay as you will, or no admission, fee.

To contextualize their decision-making, Tanya shared information from a community scan. Pierce County where Tacoma (WA) is located is one of the poorest counties in the state. In numerous areas within the city children experience multiple risk factors; two military installations, one of which is a mega-base are located in the County. Tanya asked, “If I told you that all you had to do is replace $50,000 in earned revenue and CMT could drop admission, what would you choose to do?”

It was, Tanya said, the quickest vote ever. The board decided to adopt a pay as you will plan.

Being Free

Being accessible to audiences regardless of economic, educational, and ethnic backgrounds, is something museums value and strive towards. Like the Children’s Museum of Tacoma, they also value and strive for financial stability. Balancing the two is a real challenge. Many museums have weekly free days and reduced admission for school or community groups. Blue Star Museums offer free admission to military families. Access programs with free memberships or free admission for low-income families are distributed through partner organizations.  Designated funds within the annual fund,  gala income, and sponsorships such as Target Foundation’s free days grants help address the financial stability side of increasing access.

Working with its funders, CMT had been offering Free Fridays, library pass, and free Market Play Days following the Farmer’s Market. About half CMT’s guests were visiting the museum for free or reduced fee. That, however, didn’t add up to access.

The idea of free museums has long been a topic of discussion. Elaine Gurian has championed dropping the charges. In her 2005 article, Free at Last: A Case for Museums Eliminating Admission Charges in Museums, in Museums, Gurian argued that, “…general admission charges are the single greatest impediment to making our museums truly and fully accessible.” Free admission, however, is not unknown. The Smithsonian Institution is free to visitors as are national museums in the UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Museums like the Minneapolis Institute of Arts that receive city tax revenue have free daily admission; government support helps make this possible.

In choosing to drop admission, in this case without government support, CMT committed itself to a bold idea, something Anne Ackerson recently wrote about on Leading by Design. In “The Powerful Force of a Big Idea,” she rightfully point out, “Big ideas are critical fuel for the nonprofit engine.” Children’s Museum of Tacoma is running with a big idea that is fueling its new future.

Seeing Things Differently

CMT is much larger in its ambition to be accessible to its audience than its physical footprint might suggest. From 1996 through 2011, CMT’s home was a 4,000 square feet storefront in Tacoma’s Theater District. In January 2012, CMT opened in a renovated 8,000 square feet (SF) facility with 6,000 SF of exhibits. The museum is now much more visible in the Museum District, an area the Mayor calls the “front porch of the community.” Located on Pacific Avenue, the downtown’s main drag with the University of Washington-Tacoma at the end of the block, the museum is steps away from a stop on the free light rail.

At its previous site CMT served 45,000 visitors annually; half paid reduced or no admission. Annual admission income was $50,000; this was part of CMT’s 30% earned/70% contributed income ratio that compared to the roughly 50/50 mix for many children’s museums. CMT has always struggled with earned revenue, Tanya says.

As part of its 2010 retreat, the board focused on finding a new way to balance the challenge of earned revenue, a goal of financial stability, and a commitment to serving low-income families. It interpreted the high rate of free admission as evidence of serving low-income families, rather than as low earned revenue. It identified barriers to access where the museum might have some control; cost was one.

The board also looked at opportunities presented by the capital campaign CMT was conducting for its expansion project. Building on the six million dollar capital campaign, the board decided to raise another million dollars to make up for the admission revenue the museum would forgo with Pay as You Will admission. After considering several scenarios, the board decided to pay a fixed monthly amount to cover the museum’s rent from its million-dollar fund, drawing it down over ten years.

Setting Things in Motion

Groundwork for this initiative included research and talking with funders. Tanya checked with Janet Rice Elman, Executive Director of the Association of Children’s Museum and with other museums to learn about free museums. She found some public museums that are free; CMT was the only private museum going free.

A conversation with a funder, Key Bank was critical in moving the plan forward. Key Bank had been funding the museum’s library pass program and was looking to have a greater impact. Over the course of two years and multiple conversations, Key Bank came on board with a gift of $250,000 towards the million-dollar goal.

Tanya honed a set of talking points merging mission, values, a sense of experimentation, and gut feeling. Although resistance to the idea was slight, she was prepared when a lead donor pushed back on the concept. He understood free days, but didn’t agree with museums giving things away for free. Why should he support this? Tanya explained, “When low-income families come on Fridays during free times, it further segregates our community. But when Mom A and Mom B are here and they share a love for their child, they have that in common. If any museum should be free, it should be children’s museums.” (The donor did give a large gift to the capital campaign which Tanya thinks he was going to do anyway.)

Equally bold as deciding on Pay as You Will admission, the museum decided to increase its earned revenue contribution from 30% to 70% of the budget. Contributing to that increase would be membership, more birthday parties and programs, and café revenue.

With Pay as You Will, CMT recognized membership needed to be attractive. In revising its membership program, the museum decided to appeal to two segments. Some families would purchase memberships from a philanthropic stance of wanting to help others.  Others would be interested in purchasing convenience and exclusivity. CMT enhanced membership benefits with member-only play times, free parking, and express entrance that bypassed orientation.

The museum works hard so visitors know about Pay as You Will admission. Callers hear about Pay As You Will on the recorded telephone message with hours and directions. Multiple screens explain, mention, and highlight CMT’s admission policy on the website. Yet, in spite of publicity generated by CMTs opening and free admission, many families still don’t know about it. Staff is prepared for a conversation when visitors arrive. Proud of being a free museum, all staff have their own story about Pay as You Will that might go something like, “Our museum is special; you can pay as much or as little as you want.”

Good Results and Counting

Across the board, indicators suggest the plan is working. Results from 10 weeks of Pay as You Will not only meet, but exceed CMT’s target, an intentionally conservative one. The museum had budgeted $10,000 from voluntary admission donations for the 20 weeks from January 14 to the end of its fiscal year, May 31. In half that time, the museum has received five-times as much–$50,000–in admission contributions. One-in-four general visitors (almost 90% of non-member visiting families) contribute an average of $11/family or $2.82/person.

Projected attendance for the first 12 months was set as a range from 100,000 to 125,000 visitors. Based on attendance so far, CMT is on track to serve 160,000 to 175,000 visitors in the first 12 months. Membership has almost doubled above projected.

Equally important, the museum says it is welcoming families from more ethnically and economically diverse backgrounds in the area. A zip code survey, now underway, will provide additional evidence of what neighborhoods are represented.

Every museum that opens or re-opens is challenged to estimate how long the initial benefit period will last. A combination of being new and being bigger-and-better typically generates greater attention. CMT must also distinguish between the effect of Pay as You Will and a new venue in a bigger facility in a more visible location. Donations, membership, attendance are likely to drop off; when is a question yet to be answered.

Every new or expanded museum also must work with all new benchmarks in planning its first budgets. CMT is doing so currently in developing its FY13 budget. January - May actuals provide real, but still anomalous figures in place of pre-opening projections. Museum leadership has the opportunity to decide how to allocate January-May surplus and project earned revenue for FY13.

Learning as You Go

Big ideas should be appreciated and monitored for their experimental spirit. Tanya views Pay as You Will as a work-in-progress. I consider CMT’s bold move a strategic experiment. Calling for or wanting free admission is one thing. Figuring out how to do it and making the transition to a completely new way to serve the community is quite different. Many things must align: values, getting board and staff to commit; funder understanding and support; a revised business model; and an implementation plan including marketing and staff training.

CMT’s commitment to Pay As You Will is five years, and hopefully 10. After five years, the board intends to review the broad initiative and decide whether and how to renew it and ramp up for the next five years.

I plan to check-in with Tanya in the coming year. I look forward to hearing about and sharing what CMT is learning, how donated admissions keep up, and how it allocates its contributed admissions. I invite you to come along.

Values as Commitments

 

Institutional values are typically described as the beliefs that guide the behaviors and work of an organization. I’ve written about them before here using that understanding and how values contribute to a museum's set of driving principles: vision, mission, and values.

Often I see values that are a list of words: respect, excellence, accessible. Assets like collections sometimes are listed as values; though of considerable value, collections are not values. Sometimes one museum’s set of values is virtually the same as another mueum’s. In the past year I was asked to be on a team to develop a master plan for an emerging museum. I was sent the RFP and was most surprised to see the values listed were identical, word-for-word, to those I helped develop at Minnesota Children’s Museum in the 1990’s.

Everyday a museum reaches out to and engages multiple stakeholders–sponsors, funders, partners, members, volunteers, and visitors in a wide range of activities. It holds objects in the public trust, develops intellectual property, and manages resources. A museum makes decisions about whether to take on issues that might be controversial. Museums, including smaller museums, are engaged in a constant brokering of priorities. More than five words, even powerful words or phrases, are needed to constantly balance mission and market in a dynamic external context.

Values themselves are complex. They are aligned with personal beliefs, fueled by passions, culturally defined, foundational, and enduring. How can a list of words or phrases stand for the accepted principles or standards of a couple dozen board members and staff? Guide a board in navigating complex, sometimes charged situations, edged with uncertainty? Or shape a robust organizational culture? Virtuous concepts, copied from others and briefly described are quite the opposite of what should be at the core of a museum and what it stands for. 

Values are expressed in various (and sometimes irrelevant) ways. 

• Words: Respect; Civic-mindedness; Integrity
• Statements: We value each person.
• Definitions: Excellence: we deliver the highest quality products and services in all endeavors, from research publications to exhibitions and educational programs.
• Word search: Partnerships, Learning, Ambition, Collections, Excellence, where the first letters of a museum's value together spell a word: PLACE, CHILDREN, etc.

In these sets of values, brevity and cleverness overwhelm the serious role that values play. The more I see values expressed this way, the more I think the current approach is inadequate. Occasionally I see values expressed more like a promise: We improve our ability to interpret the Western experience by collecting and researching associated art and artifacts. That’s more how I think values can be helpful.

Unfolding Values Across the Museum

In organizational and strategic planning and planning frameworks where articulating values is called for, commitment statements have the broad shoulders and great arms capable of doing a museum’s serious work. Commitment statements are what an organization, its board, staff need to explore trade-offs, use resources wisely, be operationally effective, be admired in the community, and stay on track to make a difference.

These statements are a museum’s core values as a sense of the obligation or responsibility to fulfill its mission and unfolded across areas of the museum. They are expressed in key relevant organizational and situational contexts in which they are likely to be evident. In place of a relatively basic community or valuing community, three, four, or five perspectives on valuing, honoring, or serving community are expressed. 

When being a good steward of museum resources is a value, commitment statements can consider the kind of resources a museum is stewarding–financial, collections, or human; to what end; and over what period of time. Adding such dimensions accommodate the nature of a value, illustrates how it’s inevitably expressed across many facets of a museum, and provides guidance to staff and board’s actions and decisions.

In planning the Early Learning Village (ELV) Louisiana Children’s Museum and its partners chose to develop a set of commitment statements. This approach supported the active collaboration among multiple partners and their ambitious vision to change life outcomes for children in the greater New Orleans area.

Guided by six commitments, ELV’s first value could have been expressed simply as valuing children. Instead the first statement expresses an overarching intention: We play an active and varied role around children in the greater New Orleans area, the Gulf Coast, and Louisiana. Four supporting statements express a view of children as strong and full of potential; reflect an understanding of the challenges facing too many children; an aim to serve children from every background; and priority areas such as healthy development, play and family learning where the ELV intends to be active. Their second commitment goes beyond a typical value about serving the community.  

Our work to understand, reach, and serve the community and our audience begins long before we see them at our door.

• Our commitment to being accessible to families begins with our location in City Park.
• We are willing to do the groundwork to learn about the children and families we hope to serve, their needs, interests, and expectations.
• We are responsive to considerations in reaching families facing multiple challenges and finding ways to remove transportation and cost barriers.
• We listen to parents and children to discover what attracts and interests them.

The ELV's other commitments articulate how it partners to bring resources to improving children's healthy development; integrates learning into all aspects of its work; focuses on essential experiences for children; and uses a long-term perspective to manage  financial, environmental, and human resources. These examples illustrate what commitment statements are able to accomplish that a brief list of values cannot. A set of commitments:

• Highlights the interplay of internal and external contexts–for instance, the community priorities on which a museum intends to focus;
• Acknowledges related responsibilities and precursor actions such as the groundwork needed to learn about the community;
• Recognizes the multiple meanings of a value, such as learning–learning for the audience, the organization, families;
• Allows a value, such as health, to be embedded in multiple commitments, like stewardship, strong communities, or children’s optimal growth and development; and
• Highlights supporting behaviors and actions that will be required such as considering future interests in allocating human, financial, and environmental resources.

Admittedly, developing a set of commitment statements is more demanding and time consuming than developing (or adopting another museum’s) values. Adopting another museum’s values, while unintentional, truly misses the value of values. It sidesteps discussion, deliberation, and making hard choices. An exchange among board members and staff, hopefully lively and sometimes heated, pushes at the museum’s understanding of the values it is committing to. This is what builds a museum's capacity and prepares it to truly live by them.

If values are to be authentic and effective, effort, tested beliefs, and even sacrifice are required. That doesn’t seem to be too much to expect of the beliefs for a museum that wants to matter or, perhaps, to be indispensable.

Relationships As a Museum Value

Some familiar ways relationships play out at museums–here at OMSI

It may seem I’m stating the obvious in saying relationships are at the heart of museums and why they matter.

We often refer to the powerful relationship between people and objects that distinguish museums from other settings. We talk about relationships with funders. Museums have significant educational and community partnerships. Various types of social media help museums stay in touch with their visitors.

On the other hand, relationships may not really be at the heart of museums so much as a part of serving visitors, members, volunteers, and vendors. Few museums include relationships among their guiding principles or organizational values along with, for instance, respect, inclusiveness, cooperation, or quality. Were relationships an explicit value, a museum would be engaged in thoughtful and on-going cultivation, nourishing and sustaining relationships with internal and external stakeholders and with the community. Valuing strong relationships would guide decisions and individual and organizational behavior at every level. There would be a degree of accountability around recognized and valued relationships and the supporting practices for pursuing them.

Recognizing Relationships

My own relationships with museums–working with many museums and with some museums over many years–have increased my appreciation of the value and potential of relationships. Observing in museums, developing strategic and education plans, and hearing staff and board talk about their museum’s strengths, strong relationships are at the core of a museum’s mission, sustainability, and recognized community value. Relationships operate at every scale from strategic to daily operations and span every museum function. They are expressed in countless ways.

•            Several years ago, I walked through Discovery Center Museum (Rockford, IL) with Executive Director Sarah Wolfe; she greeted–and was greeted by–a dozen parents and children by name, remembering camp projects and asking about family members.

•            I have watched as Stepping Stones Children’s Museum (Norwalk, CT) has evolved from having many programmatic partners, to having long-term committed partnerships, to conducting an audit on the impact of these partnerships on engaging low-income residents.

•            Strong and established relationships with foundations were a critical source of guidance and support for three museums I worked with as each went through extended leadership transitions.

•            Rochester Museum and Science Center (NY) enjoys third generation enrollees in its preschool.

•            For 20 years, a group of children’s museums has been collaborating to develop interactive exhibits to travel to member museums. YMEC (Youth Museum Exhibit Collaborative) shares a model similar to the SMEC (Science Museum Exhibit Collaborative) and TEAMS  (Traveling Exhibits at Museums of Science) Collaborative.

•            Madison Children’s Museum (WI) built on existing relationships with local artists, architects, designers, and fabricators to create artwork or exhibit elements for its new 56,000 square foot museum.

•            Cultivating Relationships is a program strategy for The Bakken Museum (Minneapolis, MN) that recognizes that “relationships are at the heart of learning and at the core of The Bakken’s strategic interest in serving the community.”

•            One museum has been thoughtful and deliberate in cultivating wonderful friends, building awareness, community connections, goodwill, and advocacy around the convergence of public policy and museum priorities.

These examples may sound like anecdotes, and, in a way, they are. But for several of the museums mentioned here, I chose only one of several examples of significant relationships for that museum. For  museums where relationships are a priority, managing them well is also a priority. Within those museums there is a shared understanding about cultivating and supporting relationships that is not unlike a systematic and strategic approach to stakeholders.

An Expanded View of Relationships

Less apparent, but essential to museums’ value, are ways in which relationships–social, physical, and experiential–are deeply embedded in learning. Learning involves others, people with whom we are in relationship. Our earliest learning relies on personal bonds with caregivers and within the family. Of course, the social context of learning with family and friends continues throughout the life cycle and across every type of learning setting, formal and informal, including museums, zoos, and nature centers.

Julian explores relationships at ¡Explora!

Understanding and meaning depends on the flow of talking, pointing, interrupting, sharing ideas, and negotiating with family members, peers, museum staff, and volunteer. We are also constructing, testing, reconstructing, and elaborating on ideas that connect our previous experiences with experiences afforded by exhibits and programs. This might be at an interactive exhibit component, an activity on toddler Tuesdays, standing before a painting, or stepping back in time in an historic home. In fact, museums invest a great deal of creativity, problem solving, evaluation, staff training, and fabrication in shaping the kind of social encounters in exhibits and programs to encourage remembering, shared hunches, elaborating on ideas among families, community groups, and other social groups.

I’ve also learned a lot about relationships from the Municipal Schools in Reggio Emilia (Italy) where relationships are at the very core of a remarkable and hardworking educational experience over the last 60 years. The concept of relationships is captured incisively and expansively by Loris Malaguzzi, the guiding light of Reggio practice: 

“Relationship is the primary connecting dimension of our system, however, understood not merely as a warm, protective envelope, but rather as a dynamic conjunction of forces and elements interacting towards a common purpose.” 

 Relationships interact: people, objects, parts. (Argyle Design, Inc.)

In the Reggio approach, children are considered in relation with the family, other children, the community, and the wider society. Relationships–exchanges among children, cooperation at all levels of the school, and sustained exploration in projects–enrich learning. Not only are relationships important among children, parents, and teachers in these schools, but connections between the schools, the wider community, and the city are also critical. The school and the child are integrated into the broader civic and cultural context, contributing actively to the life of the city, to its vibrancy and resilience. This takes many forms, from children being out in the community, to studying the city, to being viewed as active citizens in the city, citizens of today who will also live in the future.

Relationship Value

A more expansive view of relationships has real potential for museums. Relationships have an easy fit with the multi-faceted and complex nature of museums, capable of straddling both mission and margin, tangible and intangible benefits. They lend themselves to the multiple, dynamic connections and interactions a museum has daily, weekly, monthly and throughout the year with a wide range of stakeholders having varied perspectives and interests.

Relationships at play at Heureka

An organizational value of relationships supports the quality, variety, and relevance of learning and customer experiences expected of a museum and necessary to its recognition as a respected community resource. Through successive interactions and exchanges among people and groups of people, a museum’s relationships evolve, just like the dynamic external context in which it operates and the community where it lives. A museum’s interactions and relationships offer a prime opportunity to learn from and about visitors and members of the community. This is a boon to museums that might otherwise ease towards complacency or rest in comfortable in isolation.

Relationships can also be a way for a museum to be nimble in its work, serving internal and external audiences and accomplishing its strategic and financial goals. A focus on sustained relationships encourages a longer-term perspective, an investment of time and attention that considers a museum’s interests and resources and those of its stakeholders, supporters, and partners. A shared organizational understanding of the potential of relationships, supported by compatible practices, systems and structures are necessary elements for staff and trustees to live this, or any, organizational value.

Committing to relationships as an organizational value places a museum in a rich ecology of interconnections and exchanges with visitors, learners, and supporters; with other organizations and museums; and in a shared life with its community.