Resilience: What Do We Mean?

Sculpture by Michal Trbak

MUSEUM NOTES

Jeanne Vergeront

Vergeront Museum Planning

Among the buzzwords brought to us by COVID-19–pivot, unprecedented, agile, and pandemic–is the near-ubiquitous word, resilience. Throughout the pandemic, resilience seems to have been everywhere, in headlines, blog topics, articles, and conference themes. 

When I asked two colleagues what they mean by resilience, one said, “keep going in spite of all sorts of things that have happened and continue to happen.” The other said, “optimism and hope that what you’re working towards is going to get you to a better place.” One website recommended museum workers develop resilience by taking a break and allowing time for self-care. Other views of resilience in a museum context are set in long-term, large-scale challenges such as Louisiana Children’s Museum’s resilience framework developed in response to Hurricane Katrina. 

And that’s resilience only in the museum context. 

My introduction to resilience was in the mid 1990’s by Ann S. Masten, then a Minnesota Children’s Museum board member, professor of Child Development at the University of Minnesota, and researcher on resilience in children. In that context, resilience refers to children’s ability to pull through or bounce back from challenges and stress with the help of a set of protective factors provided by positive experiences, individuals, the family, and the community. 

So, when someone refers to resilience, I can’t help but wonder what they mean. Are they referring to individuals—children, youth, museum staff, or leaders? Maybe they mean groups such as families, museums or schools. Or cities and communities. Might they be viewing resilience as mental health, child development, family strength, organizational health, or climate change? Are they thinking resilience is surviving, recovering, or thriving? While any, or even all, of these meanings are possible, they are not always clear or applicable. 

Resilience, also referred to as resiliency, is understandably of great interest to museums especially after our long pandemic year, economic slowdown, and social unrest. The pandemic, however, was not the first upheaval for some museums; nor will it be the last. In the wake of hurricanes Katrina (2005) and Sandy (2012), museums coped with environmental disruption, endured related trauma, and struggled to survive. Going forward, all museums will encounter change including large-scale disruption. External circumstances intersect with museum missions, community responsibility, resources, and long-term viability. They always have, but we are acutely aware of it now. 

An attractive, timely construct, resilience is much more than bouncing back which is precisely what makes it so valuable. 

Unpacking Resilience 

Over the last 40 years, multiple theories, frameworks, models, and studies on resilience have developed across disciplines, from human development to epidemiology to educational administration to social sciences. Although terms and definitions vary among disciplines, models, and researchers, resilience is applied at the level of the individual, family, organization, community, and environment. Frameworks and models are not interchangeable, but they do share some underlying elements related to good outcomes in the face of challenge, adversity, and misfortune. 

In general, resilience is an asset-based, not a deficit-based, construct. Rather than focusing on the negative consequences of exposure to adversity, resilience centers on the positive variables, or protective factors, that individuals and organizations possess to deal with stressors and to moderate exposure to risk and trauma. Not a single, static trait located in a particular place or person, resilience is more like a capacity distributed across people, organizations, places, and relationships dealing with personal loss, natural disaster, or a pandemic. Interconnections occur not only among individuals, organizations, and other systems, but also among multiple internal and external factors. Internal factors include skills, hardiness, support, and optimism while external and environmental factors include supportive resources, relationships, and robust systems. There appear to be parallel resilience factors such as close relationships, active coping, hope and optimism, and a positive view of self or community that work at multiple levels. 

Across various stages of adversity and challenge, individuals, organizations, and community respond by surviving, recovering, or even thriving. 

• Surviving involves continuing to function but at an impaired rate. 
• Recovering points to a return over time to where the individual or organization was previously in spite of stressful experiences. 
• Thriving is going beyond the original level of functioning as a result of experiencing setbacks as a growth opportunity. 

These shared features across models and scales, from individuals to groups like families and organizations, to cities and regions are a helpful context to museums thinking about and growing their capacity for resilience. 

Resiliency Frameworks 

Much more than reacting to events thrust upon us or our museums or those of our own doing, resilience is how families, museums, and communities prepare for, respond to, and adapt to change and challenge. Since every museum will at some time meet with upheaval as will its leaders, staff, community, and visitors, museums want–and need–to be prepared for the next disruptive event whether it is economic, social, ecological, or medical. 

As many museums have learned over the last 18 months, how they weathered the pandemic was a function of multiple factors, some within their control and others beyond their control. It was not only the nature of the pandemic itself, but how the museum was prepared and how it responded that made a difference in the pandemic's impact. 

To minimize setbacks and adapt successfully to disturbances, museums need to anticipate and prepare for both incremental change and major disruptions before the next crisis. One step in preparing is developing a resiliency framework that identifies risks, develops protective factors, and increases readiness to adapt. 

Each museum’s resiliency framework will be, and should be, different. The specific steps taken, questions explored, and participants involved will also vary by museum. The following sets of questions are intended to help launch discussions and reflections on how the museum has fared over the pandemic, consolidate lessons learned, clarify local resilience challenges, and identify protective factors and opportunities. 

Build a deeper, shared understanding of resilience. Think about: 

• How does the museum view resilience in its context? 
• Where is the museum’s greatest interest, or need, in growing resilience? Is it in its staff, leadership, the organization, its audience? 

Ground the framework in the current situation and its particular resiliency challenge. Think about: 

• In what areas–health and well-being; equity; cohesive and connected communities; resources; environmental–is the museum most likely to face challenges? 
• What might the nature of these challenges, or disruptions, be? 
• What are alternative ways to view the greatest challenges, or view a challenge as an asset? 
• Over which external factors does it have greater and lesser control over? 

Examine the museum’s internal capacity and challenges. Think about: 

• What protective factors does the museum, leadership, staff, children and youth in the community or the city currently enjoy? 
• How can the museum intentionally build on this capacity to better meet disruptions? 
• In what areas could additional capabilities enhance the museum’s resilience? 
• What does the museum have control over that can promote resilience? 

Look ahead, prepare for what’s next. Think about: 

• What does surviving, recovering, and thriving look like in the face of disruptions? 
• Where is the museum under-investing in its capacity? 
• What additional strategies must it develop? 
• Where does the museum start in growing and organizing resources for resilience? 
• What will keep the museum flexible and nimble? 

Developing a resilience framework won't stop a pandemic or natural disaster in its tracks, but it will help soften the blow, assist the museum in adapting, help it bounce back, and, ultimately, flourish in the face of change. 

Resilience Across Contexts and Scales

• Resilient Cities Work being supported by the Rockefeller Foundation 
• The Resilience Playbook, Ann W. Ackerson, Gail Anderson, and Dina Bailey 
• Resilience Theory and Research on Children and Families: Past, Present, and Promise by Ann S. Masten 
• Multisystem Resilience for Children and Youth in Disaster: Reflections in the Context of COVID-19 by Ann S. Masten and Frosso Motti-Stefanidi 
• Conceptual Frameworks and Research Models on Resilience in Leadership by Janet Ledesma

In Partnership with Children: Experience Planning

MUSEUM NOTES

Jeanne Vergeront

Vergeront Museum Planning

With a strong interest in welcoming, focusing on, and serving visitors, museums describe themselves as visitor centered. Children’s museums also focus on their visitors. In particular, they give particular attention to children whose well-being and learning are at the center of these museums’ own long-term, strategic interests. Children, rather than content, are the reason for children’s museums. In fact, they are both the core audience and the primary explorers of the experiences children’s museums create. 

Centering on children is also evident in children’s museums’ visions, missions, and values. Vision statements often envision a promising future with expanding opportunities for children. Missions focus on the critical role of play in children’s development, sparking a delight in learning, and nurturing their unfolding creative potential. Values such as the critical role of play and childhood, early learners becoming lifelong learners, and the supportive relationships of parents and caregivers guide these museums. 

Intentions are not achievement, however. While a strong and aligned set of beliefs and aspirations is critical, it is only a start in keeping children at the center of a museum’s work. Centering is not guaranteed; competition for an organization’s time, attention, and resources is constant. Everything wants to be at the center: safety; subject matter; play; resilience; sustainability; architecture. If the priority is keeping children at the heart of the museum, we must think often, hard, and in new ways about how to do it. 

Project:
Minnesota Children's Museum

How can children’s museums act on their visions and values to create remarkable experiences of enduring value for children and become recognized anchors in their communities across generations? 

They can work in partnership with children. 

In Partnership with Children 

A long-term, active, and respectful relationship between a museum, its staff, trustees, and volunteers, and children connects beliefs with behaviors. Actually a mindset, being in partnership with children permeates how we view children, work in new ways, and see ourselves as learners. 

Typically, museums form partnerships with organizations around relatively near-term objectives for a project, to extend audience reach, or access expertise. While children do participate in museum projects as an invited audience group, their participation is typically short-term and structured around a specific activity. They are unlikely to be viewed as long-term partners or having relevant expertise for the experiences created for them. 

Generally, children’s participation in developing the exhibits and programs we produce for them is limited. When considered at all, their involvement is often a single activity or workshop, something a team schedules and carries out to gather children’s input on preferences, what they like, or icons of popular culture they recognize. Planning team members ask some questions, check the core curriculum, and move through the established experience-planning process, prototyping along the way, ticking off steps, and tucking bits gleaned from children into the final design. 

This is neither a partnership nor an expression of great respect for children’s capabilities to contribute to the opportunities we create for them, in fact, the very opportunities we want them to enjoy at our museums. Consequently, we don’t benefit from children’s insights, expertise, and ideas for shaping varied experiences and opportunities we offer them, their families, caregivers, and teachers. We simply don’t ask them. Ironically, while our goal is to engage children in learning experiences in finished exhibits and galleries, we keep them from the learning opportunities in planning: telling us about themselves, what is fascinating to them, what they wonder about, where they see connections between ideas. 

While we may say we plan with children in mind, 

we fail to add the critical perspective of the

Project: Explore & More Children's Museum
Buffalo, NY

end user. Without children’s first-hand information, we create experiences grounded in adult assumptions and expectations about them. Understanding what children like, how they construct knowledge, or what is humorous to them comes through an adult lens, if it comes through at all. 

Seeing Children 

Whether we are parents, caregivers, teachers, or museum staff, we each carry an image of the child which invisibly directs us as we approach, talk to, listen to, and design for them. At the core of our partnership with children is our view of them. Is it the capable child or the needy child? If we see children as needing help and we focus on what they can’t (yet) do, we overlook their competence and what they are capable of contributing to our understanding and to their exhibit experience. If, on the other hand, we see them as resourceful, capable of making choices using many modalities to express their ideas, children become co-constructors of experiences with us. 

Shifting to a mindset of the child as rich in ideas and potential, strong in spirit, and an active agent in their own learning moves our thinking and informs our work. We begin to assume children have something valuable to contribute which, in turn, suggests questions to explore, ways to engage them, and generates new insights. 

When children are valued partners, competent and full of potential, we view them as actors and active agents with us. They are subjects who think and create, not objects to be studied, managed, or directed to do what we already had in mind. Children are, in fact, sources of information and expertise that is otherwise unavailable to us. Together with them we can investigate our questions and theirs about how they understand a corner of the world in an exhibit in ways that help expand opportunities for them to explore, discover, and learn. 

Project: Hands On Discovery Center
Johnson City, TN

We ask different questions of children when we have a strong, positive image of them. We interact differently with them. Rather than asking, do you like this or that, making up a sorting exercise, or evaluating their knowledge, we shape questions to deepen our understanding of what children wonder about and care about. We follow what they notice and where that noticing takes them. We look into what they think is happening when waves crash, bubbles burst, or fish sleep. At the same time, they are having real-world experiences, exploring, sharing, and understanding their interests, choices, and identities. 

Working in New Ways 

After decades of planning experiences for children rather than with them, bringing them into an established experience planning process seems challenging. In fact, partnering with children builds on existing processes and practices. It engages with a museum-led process to create museum-identified experiences such as an exhibit, placemaking, an initiative, or even a building. Grounded in a practice of inquiry, partnering with children adds their points of view to the diverse perspectives of educators, developers, designers, researchers and evaluators thinking together. From preplanning to opening, every phase of the process includes children in meaningful ways that build on their strengths. Using varied strategies, such as drawing, writing, materials exploration, and discussion, children become co-researchers with designers, developers, and educators in creating an exhibit. 

What this approach adds to a typical exhibit planning process is an on-going dialogue between the museum’s team and the children it wants to serve, sometimes involving and learning from parents as well. The team follows its charge from the museum to explore a topic or question and develop an exhibit. It is not looking to children to decide the direction, content, or design. 

Team interest in and curiosity about children’s 

thinking and ideas, along with a spirit of

Source: American University

openness informs how it involves them in a question-powered process supported by inquiry, reflection, documentation; by interpreting and revisiting their words, drawings, and constructions. And finding new meaning there. 

Team-created openings bring children into the process to help shape the exhibit, its approach, context, experiences, and activities. Often framed around overarching questions, children’s involvement allows them to share what is interesting and important in their daily lives. 

Children's exploration of materials, conversations, choices, and expressions of their feelings allow the team to glimpse and appreciate their agency, curiosity, imagination, and funds of knowledge. 

Observation of children’s natural exploration and learning strategies along with their own spoken, written, and visual contributions gathered from conversations, workshops, and physical explorations inform and inspire the team throughout its work. A team may consider drawings, narratives, discussions, photos, asking what are we seeing here? what does this tell us about how children understand this? what is behind these words or inside this drawing? Every contribution, response, new question, and idea children offer in this exchange deserves thoughtful consideration, although not every idea must be used. 

The team selects the most intriguing and relevant traces of children to reflect on and to follow their connections in an effort to better understand them, expand its perspective, and further its own explorations. The team might find a new question, revisit and revise previous assumptions, or encounter possibilities it hadn’t thought of before. In the process, a team and its members begin to see alternative ways of working with children and folding in their views. Teams discover what children know about their world and how that might inform the exhibit context and activities. 

Source: Internet

Children’s drawings, words, photos, or constructions become part of the give-and-take of creating a new exhibit, gallery, or maker space. Their insights help push the team’s thinking and ideas beyond what it thinks it knows. That shove might push a team somewhere it hadn’t planned to go; drive new possibilities of experiences; surface a valuable starting point for a future project. Or simply make environments, exhibits, and experiences better. 

A partnership with children is about wanting to work with children to offer experiences that engage, support, and extend their capabilities. Over time, this work produces a set of supportive practices and resources that can be adapted to new questions, other projects, and different groups of children. Traces of children’s thinking and ideas emerging from a project help document the process and insights it generated. Project-by-project the museum grows a set of resources and builds new knowledge about children. In giving visibility to children’s skills, strategies and competence; to their play, exploration, and learning, it instills pride in children. Through its partnership with children, the museum is living its vision, mission, and values. 

Seeing Ourselves as Learners 

Not only does an active, respectful partnership with children change how we see them as thinkers and learners, but it also has the potential to change how we see ourselves as thinkers and learners. The varied work involved in creating environments, exhibits, and programs with children is capable of transforming work responsibilities and daily tasks into professional growth and development for exhibit developers, designers, program planners, researchers and evaluators. 

We all learn. We learn as individuals and as groups. Sometimes we are more intentional about learning than others. The rich, layered, interactive experience-planning process concerned with creating possibilities for play, exploration, and learning depends on multiple perspectives and varied sources of information. It brings together concept, content and context. Every step along the way is an opportunity for learning, both intentional and incidental. 

Through a steady practice of inquiry, observation, and reflection, teams investigate questions, find connections, and discover how to extend exploration. Teams and their members innovate, adapt, and learn, changing how they work over time. Typically, the nature and quality of questions change. Simple questions such as, what do children like? evolve into polished questions such as what moves children to a place of wonder? A single question is recast as a set of sub questions capable of guiding research, thinking, children’s contributions, and documentation. New ways to explore these questions emerge; new ways to glimpse meaning in children’s work surface. 

Along the way, the team develops a shared vocabulary of words, concepts, and practices. Focusing on children’s thinking and learning builds awareness of individuals’ own thinking and learning and moves the team’s thinking. Discussions become richer and more productive. 

In this territory, teams are often working at the nexus of theory and practice, between theoretical knowledge and what is understood from observing children in exhibits. While learning theories are not the usual background of designers and fabricators, how children and adults play, learn, and think is always at the core of the experiences children’s museum teams create for visitors. Over time, teams deepen and extend their understanding of the nature of learning by sharing and reading blogs, articles, journals, and books. 

 Project: Louisiana Children's Museum

Creating experiences with children represents a museum’s long-term value of and investment in people–children and staff. This on-going work represents an interest in creating opportunities that are responsive to and engage children’s capabilities and potentials as well as growing and supporting staff in their work. In the process the museum cultivates an organizational culture that is interested in, alert to, and nurtures its staff’s outstanding capacities. 

Related Posts 

• Becoming a Museum with a Strong Image of the Child 

• Listening to How Children See the World

• Making Children’s Learning Visible

• Museums as Learners

• A Deeper Model of Community Co-creation

Listening to How Children See their World

MUSEUM NOTES

Jeanne Vergeront

Vergeront Museum Planning

"We're camouflaged as a bench, Mom."

There’s a secret passageway from here to there. And I am the only one who knows about it. 6-year-old boy after crawling through a maze at Minnesota Children’s Museum (1991) 

I feel like a robot who never had a battery. 5-year-old-girl at Bed, Bath, and Beyond to her mother (12/2015) 

Barry, do you remember when our block used to be the whole world? 7-year-old Andy (1971) 

I collect children’s words and language. These are just 3 from the dozens of quotes that I have overheard as I have listened in on children’s conversations, questions, musings, and discoveries in museums, zoos, stores, airports, restaurants, and family gatherings. 

If we notice quotes and anecdotes like these at all, they might evoke a smile or chuckle. We might repeat them to someone else and for an instant, we might appreciate the fresh view of the world they offer. What these words really offer, however, doesn’t stop there. 

There are words behind words and meanings within meaning. When we observe children or hear their comments, we are enjoying privileged glimpses into how a child understands the world. This thinking out loud hints at what captures their attention; what is interesting and relevant to them; the promise they see in materials and objects; the capabilities they are proud of; and how they see themselves. Children’s words and language are a wide, open invitation for reflecting on their thinking and making sense of the world, sharing insights with others, and carrying forward new understandings and choices. 

When I reflect on children’s words and language, my mind moves over three questions. My 

Listening in on a conversation

intent in doing this is not to prove what I already think or to reinforce a particular theory. Rather, I hope to learn from children, to open new lines in my thinking, and consider fresh possibilities for engaging and supporting them. This approach can be helpful in learning from children’s words, as well as their drawings, play, movements, and constructions. 

What have I heard the child say? When possible, I write down what I overheard, in the child’s own words. I add relevant factors about the child including age, place, date, expressive qualities. These notes might include what else is happening: the child’s movements, others’ presence, interactions with objects or materials, and what preceded or followed this. 

What might be the deeper structure of these ideas? Starting with the basics of what I noticed about the child’s words, I consider: was it a question? a statement? What words did the child choose; which words stand out? how do they seem to relate to the context? What possible meanings might these words have for this child? What might this suggest about the child’s thinking, interests, self-management, or sense of agency? 

How might we return these ideas to children? As respectful stewards of children’s words and anecdotes, we must make good use of insights and possibilities on the child’s behalf. This means exploring new understandings of this particular child or for other children in a similar setting. We can bring new knowledge, explore a promising hunch, and try out some possible conditions to encourage more critical thinking; help the child move further into their encounter; or encourage new connections. And then, we watch, listen, reflect, and repeat. 

Don’t Step on the Green Dirt 

Several years ago, at a family gathering, 4-1/2-year-old Cyrus approached a group of aunts and uncles lounging about and informed us seriously, Don’t step on the green dirt. He paused and continued, Well, technically, it’s not green dirt. Cyrus had our attention. We agreed not to step on the green dirt. Uncle Andy and I commented to each other on the use of “technically” (pronounced tenknikly). Cyrus turned and sped back to the bushes where his cousins played. 

Since that day, this episode has flitted through my mind often and unbidden. If there was something special about green dirt, what was it? How did Cyrus understand the word technically? Was he inhabiting a moment of awareness about moving from inside the play frame—a material or non-material boundary that contains play episodes—to outside the play frame, from a place where green dirt is possible to where it doesn’t exist for others? 

When I revisit Cyrus’ conversation, I think of how the idea of a play frame might be relevant. How might we support play episodes that extend across days, weeks or months? How can we respect stepping through the play frame? This episode is striking in spotlighting how much play apparently takes place in the child’s mind, even though we so often think of play as hands on, physical, and social. Perhaps we should insist on blurring the domains in play. 

Moreover, we should recognize children as astute and constant observers. A familiar object that has been moved, novel surface materials, or graphic patterns intrigue children and demand investigation. The green dirt prompts thinking about other possible surface materials and finishes and how they may inspire play, exploration, and learning. Even a change in flooring or fluttering shadows launch fresh play scenarios. So, what unfamiliar materials and surfaces are fascinating? What unusual combinations of materials invite new story paths? How do they build children’s fluency with the material world? 

Real, Fake, and In Between 

Listening to Cyrus reminds me of several episodes of other children’s apparent interest in what is real, fake, or somewhere in between. At her 6th birthday party, Clara received a small potted flowering plant. After being told that it was a primrose, Clara carried the pot around to show each of her guests. In no uncertain terms, she directed each one’s attention to the plant, pointing emphatically to the primrose saying, This is a primrose. And it’s real. 

At the Mall of America LEGO Store, 7-year-old Ian had an important message for his sister about the brick constructions when he said, It looks like it’s fake, but it’s made of LEGO’s. This distinction continues to intrigue me. I wonder what quality was the obverse of fake for Ian. I also wonder how LEGOs fit into this distinction? Is it possible that Ian, and other children, entertain a third quality along with real and fake—our familiar adult dichotomy? Might real exist in more than one form for children? Might this third quality enrich children's state of play? 

"It looks like it's fake, but..."

This isn’t an idle exercise. Museums are settings where authenticity is often a goal; where real and fake are often intermixed; where many distinctions, imitation, pretense, genuine, etc. are applied to objects, artifacts, materials, environments. And children are aware of this. 

A real hollow log

At the dog park, I overheard a 6-year-old boy explain how to know if a hollow log is real. After crawling through a fallen, hollowed-out log he explained, If it’s too round, too shiny, and there’s no dirt, it’s not real. They can put moss on it, but it’s still not real. He contrasted this log with one he'd crawled through at a museum.

Based on this admittedly small sample of three children, all 6-7 years old, we can agree that children are concerned with, or interested in, what is real and what is fake. Even at a young age, they seem to be relatively astute connoisseurs of these important, but somewhat elusive, qualities. Real is a distinction that gives something additional value; at least Clara thinks so. The boy climbing through the log understands that things are not always as they seem to be. 

Clearly, this distinction is not a simple one and appears to be somewhat flexible with children seeming to occupy a world between real and pretend. Years ago, a 4-year-old boy was looking through binoculars from the mezzanine in Minnesota Children’s Museum’s Earth World gallery. When a boy standing nearby started to set off the thunder storm, the boy protested, You can’t make a thunderstorm! I am watching birds. 

Children are involved in making distinctions between real and fake and related qualities that we know too little about. It’s likely that making these distinctions varies among children of different ages and background experiences. We can imagine that these qualities are not firm in a child’s mind and are even changeable over a period of time. With only a handful of quotes, we may not be able to confidently answer larger questions about real and fake to guide us in shaping experiences for children. However, even this small sample tells us that these are important aspects of children’s worlds and how they engage with them— including their experiences at our museums. 

Children’s words and language tell us that they have thoughts and ideas about their world, on this and other topics. While there’s much we don’t know about children as thinkers, explorers, and doers, we can actively learn from them. By listening to them, reflecting on the deeper structure of their words and thoughts, and returning fresh insights to them as experiences, children can enjoy new possibilities and engage with a world rich in discovering. 

Museum Notes

• Listening to Children’s Thinking: https://museumnotes.blogspot.com/2011/09/listening-to-childrens-thinking.html 
• Observation: Seeing, Un-seeing, Re-seeing: https://museumnotes.blogspot.com/2017/10/observation-from-seeing-to-un-seeing-to.html

 

Making Marks, Making a Mark on the World

 MUSEUM NOTES 

Jeanne Vergeront 

Vergeront Museum Planning 

 

Atelié Carombola Escola de Eduçao Infantil
Mosaic Marks, an exhibit from the Municipal Schools of Reggio Emilia

There are phrases or terms that sound almost strange the first time we hear them. If they also sound intriguing, we might pay attention to them, think about them, and notice when we come across them a second, third, or fourth time. After a while, we aren’t able to imagine not having these once odd phrases to help us observe, wonder, think, and make connections. 

Mark making struck me that way at first. I think it was related to a project of the Municipal Schools of Reggio Emilia (IT). A favorable association for me, it connected with the idea of the 100 Languages of Children, a metaphor for the coexisting ways of investigating relationships, using information, and representing ideas through materials, movement, words, drawing, and sounds. 

Nevertheless, the term mark making seemed imprecise and vague. Reflecting on the phrase however, I gradually appreciated its lack of pretension. Mark making both recognizes that the marks children make with their fingers, markers, brushes, bodies, and imaginations are significant in many ways and yet it leaves open possible ways to understand those marks. 

The Extraordinary Ordinary 

That same tiny finger that points to the family pet or favorite toy indicating, “look” or, “I want that” is the same tiny finger that begins to make marks. An extended finger draws in the snow, pulls a line through the spilled food, drags a strand of spaghetti, and finds an uncapped marker great for marking on a book or a wall. 

Mark making starts early in a child’s life and is a building block to brain functions, literacy skills, self-expression, relationships, and communicating. When that finger, stick, brush, or pen encounters paper, clay, or stone and leaves a trace, a lot is happening. The hand, body, and mind are engaged and coordinated. Small motor skills and eye-hand coordination are developing. 

Often unnoticed by busy parents or older siblings or referred to as “scribbles,” this noteworthy effort emerges from the child’s observing others using materials, an interest in communicating, and the joy of authoring a visible trace. From watching others around them write, children become aware that marks have meaning and are intent on recreating that sense of meaning themselves. They pretend their marks represent something. In these first marks is the start of children’s writing and drawing. With time and more mark making, the child makes new marks and realizes they are capable of changing marks. Random swirls become circles, possibly a head, a sun, a world. 

Young children’s marks are created with intense focus. I recall that when, as a pre-kindergartener I worked hard to make a mark that I now know as a lowercase cursive “e,” I was delighted by creating a recognizable mark. At six years, writing my name was a gift to my mother. Writing names certainly is an accomplishment in children’s mark making and identity. Yet it’s only one milestone in a larger, life-long process from the first dots and dashes, to forming recognizable letters, drawing a scene, telling stories, writing poems, composing a life. 

And while a precursor to writing, mark making is not a brief, linear, or automatic progression. Learning to control any mark making tool, such as a pencil, pen or paintbrush, is hard; it takes time, and requires many skills. Opportunities with marking tools, various surfaces, and approached from different physical postures encourage children who are developing skills at their own pace. Some children want and need to spend more time in a particular mark-making world. 

Making marks is not just about writing and is not limited to paper and markers. It unfolds over time, recruiting new capabilities, expressing feelings of connection, and building on memories. In this sense, mark making emerges from the immediate context perhaps creating a moment of joint attention, responding to what the materials and surfaces at hand make possible, expressing delight. Marks are an opening to something new. Few or many marks, bold colors or fine black lines, snow and black dirt may represent something, cover large areas, or transform surfaces. 

A drawing can change with the addition of each mark, a new color, an act of play, or a spill. If

Photo credit: Interaction Imaginations

we are paying attention, children will tell us. They talk as they develop their idea; their words offer glimpses into their thinking; they give clues about what these marks mean to them. An arrangement of lines or shapes across a page might be a fledgling idea for a code, a diagram showing how a seed grows, or a lost island. The meanings of these marks are not fixed, but likely change as the child encounters them again and experiences them in a new way. A child may describe a drawing differently now and tomorrow telling a parent, caregiver, teacher, or friend about the marks on the page or in the clay. That spiral is a sleeping cat today; tomorrow it’s a windstorm; the next day it’s a new galaxy. 

Making Marks, Making Ourselves 

Museums are full of meaningful marks. Collections, exhibitions, and programs interpret the languages of lines, patterns, texture, shapes, and material properties as drips, splashes, brushstroke, and etchings on canvas, plaster, stone, walls, the world. Deciphering the marks created through movement and sound, museums tell stories, reveal beauty, challenge thinking, and inspire new questions. They deepen our awareness of ancient and modern makers and offer glimpses into how marks create community, follow our families, and express our individuality. Museums honor the functional, ornamental, and spiritual marks of letters, documents, and decrees that celebrate our survival, voice our aspirations, and record our struggles. 

Even more than all of the meaningful marks that museums hold, share, and interpret are the ways in which they can nourish the human desire to leave a mark. Each time they develop an exhibit, display an object, set a tinkering challenge, facilitate a program, shape camp activities, or lead a tour, museums have an opportunity to support and extend the powerful disposition to create connections and transform a small part of the world. 

Children's Museum of Pittsburgh

This work emerges from an expansive idea of mark making. Grounded in an optimism about the capabilities of all of us, even babies as mark makers, this view understands swoops, patterns, and gestures as an extension of the mind, thinking, exploration, communication, and play. This work is advanced by: 

• Focusing on the mark maker. 
• Exploring the conditions that encourage, support, and expand the possibilities of mark making. 
• Integrating mark making into a wide range of activities, experiences, and spaces across the museum. 

•  Focus on the mark maker. Whether novice or experienced, an individual’s interest in the world and what it offers, and finding a place in that world is the impetus for mark making. Mark making nurtures the individual’s voice, ideas, and thinking. 

- Situate mark makers at the center of an experience. Who are they? What are they curious about? Allow flexibility for how children encounter, explore, and engage. 

- Frame questions around developing an understanding of mark making. How do children fill a space with their marks? What are intriguing forms for them? 

- Observe children’s attention to their mark making. What are their initial marks? How do they elaborate on them? How do they use instruments to explore, transform surfaces? What brings them delight? 

- Listen to children narrate what they are doing. What words do they use to talk about their drawing or project? Does a story emerge from the gestures? How does their telling change? 

- Reflect on how children respond to and use materials, surfaces, words, and feelings. How do they work with them individually? Together? How might children’s images, symbols, ideas, and efforts be extended to other experiences? 

- Document in words and photos insights into children’s thinking about their mark making in a format that serves as a tool for creating new mark making experiences.

•  Explore the conditions that encourage, support, and expand the possibilities of mark making. A wider range and richer mix of materials invite a deeper exploration of mark making. Push the obvious limits to create new and wider openings for mark making; search beyond the art studio. Check the shed, shop, kitchen, or woods; look for both materials and ideas that prompt exploration. 

 - Think about all the conditions that encourage mark making: materials that modify color, texture, smell; tools, instruments, and media that shape and transform; surfaces that hold marks; ideas to explore; and time to engage and focus. 

- Select varied materials and objects: brushes, markers, pens; sticks, feathers, straws, yarn, cord, wire, fabric, torn paper; leaves, seeds, or petals; found objects; crayons, charcoal, chalk, paint, ink 

- Look around for tools, instruments, and media: an overhead projector, cameras, light, mirrors, circuits, hammers, saws, scrapers, and etchers. - Include surfaces for receiving marks may be textured, porous, or contoured: walls, rocks and stones, sand, the earth, mud, clay, bubble wrap, foil, fabric, sandpaper and wood planks. 

- Experiment. Some materials change with use or interact with other materials in various ways. Water evaporates, light creates shadows; creative accidents happen. Go big with rolls of paper. Add plant material. Select materials with special properties such as clear acetate; overlays invite children experimenting with backgrounds, foregrounds and combining drawings. 

- Above all, think how invitations to mark making that are a starting point for greater explorations. 

•  Integrate mark making into a wide range of activities, experiences, and spaces across the museum. More than lines and shapes on paper and more than an art activity, mark making is an act of a person having an impact on the world. Recognizing the importance of this powerful, natural disposition acknowledges individuals, makes children’s capabilities visible, and enriches the museum experience for others. 

- Extend mark making invitations into exhibits, programs, and social spaces to invite new ways of looking and thinking. Put sketch pads at the top of the climber; roll out great lengths of paper on the studio floor; add materials to a light table; invite map making at the water table or the city building area. Add a friendly provocative question to initiate exploration. 

 - Vary the context for mark making activities to provide inspiration, new perspectives, or introduce varied conditions. Take mark making outside; vary the scale; go to new heights; incorporate natural materials; add music; use the whole body. 

- Incorporate mark-making into materials exploration, investigating light, shadow, color; building gizmos; imaginative play, STEM play, and nature exploration. 

- Showcase children’s work, using their images and drawings to help interpret concepts and express the museum’s value of thinkers and doers. 

Louisiana Children's Museum
Photo credit: Jeanne Vergeront

Just as the very first marks emerge from a child’s powerful desire to leave a trace, mark making throughout life is a response to a compelling invitation. Museums can extend that invitation everyday. Photo: LCM: children’s drawings 

• A Traveling exhibit from Reggio Children, Mosaic of marks, words, materials will be in New Orleans in fall 2021. The exhibit is based on an investigation to gain a better understanding of the poetic interweaving between children’s drawings and words, in order to restore to drawing, to the instruments.

Foundational Experiences in Museums Deconstructed

This post, part 2, continues to focus on Foundational Experiences in Museums 

from November 17, 2020 

Jeanne Vergeront

Understanding that there are foundational experiences that contribute to a solid foundation for a good start in life for children, regardless of age, ability, or background is an important step in providing them. Pointing out that museums can have a role in supporting these experiences is promising. Recognizing where these experiences are embedded in museums—in the vision, mission and values, understanding the audience, and the possibilities and challenges facing a city, region, or community—is a start in museums making these experiences available. Considering characteristics of foundational experiences is also helpful in shaping them. But…

… What does a set of foundational experiences for a museum actually look like?

Answering that question involves a lot of other questions that I have heard over the years in working with staff at many museums to develop foundational experiences. It’s typical to want to know how many foundational experiences should a museum have? How does a museum know if it’s being unrealistic about what it can and can’t accomplish? How are foundational experiences expressed? How does a museum use foundational experiences in developing exhibits, environments, and experiences? 

Foundational Experiences: An Example and the Headlines

Using my work with museums and with learning frameworks, I have developed a set of foundational experiences to show a possible format, explore these questions, and give a helping nudge to this work. Something of a rough draft, museums are welcome to take this, work with it, and make it their own.

The set of 6 foundational experiences below are intended to establish where a museum believes it can make a positive difference for the children it serves. It might be helpful to think of these 6 statements as something like headlines for the 6 foundational experiences. 

All children, regardless of age, ability, or background should have opportunities to enjoy:

1. A sense of connection, acceptance and belonging

2. Growing capabilities, confidence, and independence

3. Engaging in making sense of the world 

4. A feeling of well-being

5.     Exploring and understanding feelings, ideas and perspectives, one's own and others’ 

6. Finding their place in the world

Some relevant features of the headline experiences, how they are described, what
they cover, and how many a museum might have are highlighted below. 

• These experiences reflect an understanding that healthy development occurs across domains (social, emotional, sensorimotor, language-cognitive) and across all ages. While domains should be reflected in the foundational experiences, domains themselves are not foundational experiences.
• The 6 headline experiences define important areas in which children should enjoy many varied and positive moments, interactions, and opportunities over the years. For each of the experiences, there are many ways a museum might support them with “building-block experiences” which are covered below. 
• There’s no right number of foundational experiences, just as there’s no right number of goals for a strategic plan. Having too many, too few, ones that are too broad or too specific can be difficult to manage. To focus, a museum might consider where it has expertise, a track record, and likely opportunities it can offer: outdoors, play, relationships, cultural competence, etc.
• The short answer to how many foundational areas a museum might select is  5-7. 

Adding Building-block Experiences

Each of the 6 headline experiences focus on the essence of something critical for a child’s good start in life and on-going healthy development. While providing focus, they also represent many experiences and opportunities that can be enjoyed again and again and that contribute to a child’s development each time, but not in the same way every time. 

These more specific types of experiences can be thought of as building-block experiences; they add support, supply variety, and point to how museums might begin to operationalize these experiences. Some of the ways building-block experiences support a headline experience such as A feeling of well-being (#4 below) might be: children have a shared and safe place to be part of something larger, have frequent and positive experiences with nature, enjoy opportunities to rest and reflect and others.                                                                                                                                                                         The headline and building-block experiences below represent a possible set of foundational experiences. Together they help address typical questions covered in the comments that follow: how foundational experiences are framed or expressed; how a museum knows it’s not being overly ambitious about what it can and can’t accomplish; and how building block experiences begin to connect with museum experiences.

1. Children feel a sense of connection, acceptance, and belonging, when they:

• Feel valued for who they are

• Enjoy supportive relationships with peers and caring adults

• Enjoy positive interactions including rewarding contact with staff and volunteers

• Participate in activities at home, school, and communities

• Care about and help others

• Make memories with their family

2. Children experience growing capabilities, confidence and independence, when they:

• Develop a sense of agency, a belief that they can have an impact on their world

• Practice emerging skills and capabilities 

• Assess abilities and risks realistically

• Experience and see their impact, both big and small, on the world around them

• Discover and follow their interests

• Make choices and follow their implications 

3. Children engage in making sense of the world, when they:

• Notice, ask questions, and look for answers

• Have access to varied opportunities to explore, interact, and engage

• Collaborate with others and work as a team to accomplish something greater 

• Find relevant, meaningful connections with their everyday life

• Have varied opportunities to explore, interact, and engage

4. Children experience a feeling of well-being, when they:

• Have a shared and safe space to be a part of a community

• Find wonder, joy and delight in themselves and their experiences

• Have frequent and positive experiences with nature

• Making healthy food, movement and activity choices

• Enjoy opportunities to rest and reflect

5. Children explore and understand feelings, ideas, and perspectives, their own and others’, when they:

• Share and talk about their experiences, ideas, and dreams with others

• Express their ideas in varied and creative ways

• Enjoy extended time playing and directing play

• Explore varied objects, materials, and rich environments

• Listen to others with different views or ideas

• Respect how others experience sight, sound, and touch in different ways

6. Children find their place in the world, when they:

• See themselves reflected and appreciated in big and small ways in the world around  them

• Have positive interactions with people of diverse backgrounds

• Explore their own and others’ cultures with increasing confidence

• Open up to the possibilities of and manage the uncertainty of an expanding world

• Can see a future for themselves 

Identifying building-block experiences gives further direction and insights into developing foundational experiences: how they are framed or expressed; how a museum knows it’s not being overly ambitious about what it can and can’t accomplish; and how building block experiences begin to connect with museum experiences. Some examples follow. 

• Foundational experiences are about opportunities children should have for optimal development. Focusing on the child reflects this. Saying children… explore, engage, feel, find, etc. not only places children as the subject, but the structure of the statement itself centers on how children benefit from the building-block experiences: Children enjoy a sense of connection, acceptance, and belonging, when they… feel valued, etc.
• It’s not unusual now-and-then for a building-block experience to fit in more than one area. When that happens, choose the best fit. 
• Foundational experiences express an aspiration, a goal. Building-block experiences are stated more like outcomes, or long-term impacts. They point to where a museum has some capacity to provide an experience for a child in its setting that supports development and contributes to positive changes. A museum can identify ways it can contribute to a child finding their way in the world (#6) such as seeing themselves reflected in museum staff and volunteers, in images of children like them and of diverse families, and in experiences personally relevant and meaningful to them. 
• Many small and large gestures across every dimension of the museum support the foundational experiences. Although not every foundational experience is present in every activity, gallery, or program, headline and building-block experiences do inform exhibit and program planning, shaping spaces, selecting amenities, and preparing staff and volunteers for interaction. With use, foundational experiences inspire activities, translate into criteria for planning, become part of the museum’s shared vocabulary, and focus evaluations. 
• To get to a final version of the experiences, a few test questions helpful: Do the experiences all use the same format? Are they parallel to one another, for instance, do they start with verbs? Are they in the museum’s own voice?

No Small Matter    Through foundational experiences a museum can focus, act, and matter to the families, children, learners, friends, and communities they serve; they have an opportunity to contribute to children getting a firmer toe-hold in life.                                                                                        The process starts with locating these experiences in the museum’s vision, mission, and values; its audience; its community; and its own strengths. The set of foundational experiences which emerges, includes headline experiences supported by building-block experiences, which, in turn, inform activity and design choices, and encourage children explore, play, learn, and grow.  

With time and practice, with discussion and shared reflection, by learning together, a museum creates opportunities and experiences intentionally, with impact. When museums create experiences that emphasize relationships and facilitate social interactions, and that allow them to collaborate with others and work as a team to accomplish something greater. Museum experiences in rich environments with remarkable objects and intriguing materials invite children to notice, ask questions, and look for answers. Experiences offered in a gallery, program, or special event provide relevant, meaningful connections to their everyday life and support children in making sense of the world (#3). 

Doing this for children now and for their future is no small matter.

Jeanne Vergeront

Vergeront Museum Planning

December 9, 2020