Museums Involving Communities

Authentic Connections

Margaret Kadoyama

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780815384595
• eBook ISBN: 9781351203975
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

Museums Involving Communities: Authentic Connections explores how museums can become more active and also considers how they might involve members of their local communities in their everyday work.

Examining the key components of the museum–community relationship, this book looks at both the impact of museums on the cultural and civic lives of local communities and the impact of local communities on the programs, collections, and organizational culture of museums. Advocating an accessible and inclusive approach to museum management, Kadoyama focuses on the role of museum leadership in fostering and deepening community relationships. The result offers insights into how relationships between communities and museums can be forged in practice, how museums can be involved in building healthier communities, and how community engagement strategies can be developed, implemented, and evaluated successfully.

Written by an experienced museum professional with extensive experience in community involvement and audience development, Museums Involving Communities is key reading for museum workers looking to make an impact, while building long-term relations with local communities, to the benefit of both museum and community. It should also be of great interest to students taking courses in museum and heritage studies.

PART I
Community

First, we need to define community in broad terms. These broad terms include the relevant theories, learnings from other sectors, and a knowledge of how the philanthropic community defines this work. We look at the critical components of building healthier communities and consider what it takes to connect museums with their communities.

Within one’s organization, as well as when one is connecting with community members, it is important to make sure that everyone agrees on terminology and expectations. Individuals may have different ways of thinking and talking about communities, and it is important to talk about and clarify what everyone means when they talk about “community.”

Chapter 1 focuses on defining relevant terms, Chapter 2 expands on and delves deeper into building healthier communities and community well-being, and Chapter 3 explores the theory behind many of these definitions. In Chapters 4 and 5, the lens shifts to looking at the recent history of community-focused work in museums, followed by a look at how other community-focused fields inform museum practice.

It is important to clarify at the outset that the premise of this book is on museums being involved with their communities, with the acknowledgment that community members may not be part of the museum’s current audiences. Community is very broadly defined in this book; it does not mean underserved community. Readers will be guided through a process of identifying the priority communities with whom they want a stronger relationship, where they can address strategic questions and articulate the reasons to focus on that specific community. When this process happens, priority community has a more specific definition.

Community involvement and community immersion are the preferred terms in this book. They capture the essence of the emotional impact of being involved. The sense of heartfelt connection is core to this work. When one is involved with something or someone, what does it feel like? How much time and energy does one spend thinking about that something that they are involved with? What would it be like if each museum leader and staff member committed time, energy, brainpower, and heart power to working in their community? What would it be like if community members committed time, energy, brainpower, and heart power to working with the organization? When one is involved, one is immersed.

1
DEFINING TERMS

There are many words and phrases used when describing community-focused work, and it is important to clarify what we mean when they are used.

Community

Belonging is a core aspect that will be explored throughout this book. When people come together and feel a sense of community, they feel included. That is at the core of community involvement. To understand the way community is used in the context of building healthier communities and connecting more fully with one’s community, it is useful to turn to authors, psychologists, and scholars who have considered and researched the key attributes. Peter Block, writing in Community: The Structure of Belonging, illuminates some of the core aspects of community:

Community as used here is about the experience of belonging. We are in community each time we find a place where we belong.

Block, 2008, p. xii

Mark K. Smith (n.d.), writing in the Encyclopedia of Informal Education, describes three ways of expressing community:

•Community as a place – a neighborhood, for instance, or some other geographic definer;

•Community of interest – people come together for some reason other than place, where they share a common interest, identity, etc.;

•Community as communion – the feeling of community, of people coming together, with a sense of belonging.

These three lenses through which to understand community – place, interest, and sense of belonging – will be in play throughout this book. Some of the stories and examples will illustrate community projects that are geographically centered or place based, and some will illustrate how a community of interest is the impetus for the work. In all the stories, the importance of connecting through relationships illustrates how people come together and create a sense of belonging.

Community Assets

Using an asset-based model is effective when one is considering communities. Communities already have assets and capacities that can be useful in addressing community concerns. This contrasts with a needs-based model, which considers communities to be in need and does not readily acknowledge the assets and capacities that already exist within a community. This aligns with the understandings and core values that underpin this book – that people and communities are worthy of respect; that they have capacity and value; that they already have great stores of knowledge and understanding; and that it is one’s responsibility to learn so one can better understand oneself, one’s organization, and one’s communities and work together to build healthier communities. Stories throughout this book illustrate several organizations and foundations that support and are engaged in this asset-based process. As John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight (1993) note in Building Communities From the Inside Out, “[Creative neighborhood leaders] are discovering that wherever there are effective community development efforts, those efforts are based upon an understanding, or map, of the community’s assets, capacities and abilities” (pp. 5–6).

Social Capital

Robert Putnam (2000), writing in Bowling Alone, brought the idea of social capital to the mainstream. Social capital refers to networks – people’s connections with one another – and how these connections have value. If one considers that physical capital is defined by physical objects and human capital is defined by the capacities individual people have, social capital is described as how people connect and their relationships with one another. Putnam has extensively researched people’s relationships and connections, and he identified two dimensions of social capital that have relevance to the work with museums and communities: bridging, or outward-looking connections, and bonding, or inward-looking connections. Bridging is what people do when they connect with others who are new to them, when they say, “We’re interested in having a stronger connection with the neighborhood right around us, and we currently don’t really serve them.” Bonding is when people say, “We’re interested in strengthening relationships with our members. They are already a part of what we do, but we want to make sure we serve their needs to the best of our ability.” Putnam notes that bridging is inclusive and bonding is exclusive, so it is important to understand the potential outcomes when each of these strategies is used. When a museum focuses on bridging, will current constituencies feel disregarded and not valued? When it focuses on bonding, will potential new relationships languish because the people feel that they don’t matter? These considerations will help inform museum practice as one moves forward.

Public Capital

Public capital is a concept related to social capital and was developed by the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation. The Harwood Group conducted extensive research and wrote many reports on growing community strength in the 1990s. Its research describes the structures and relationships needed for communities to thrive:

The Harwood Group’s research and projects in communities across America suggests that for a community to work effectively, there is a set of fundamental structures, relationships, networks and norms that need to be in place. Public Capital is what we call this rich, dynamic, complex system. There are mini factors that we have identified along with the conditions and characteristics that make each one work. By uncovering and gauging a community’s public capital, we can identify in which Stage of Community Life a community sits. And we can begin to think strategically about how to grow a community and what it will take.

The Harwood Group, 1999, p. 6

The Harwood Group has identified nine factors of public capital:

The tangible dimensions (an abundance of social gatherings, organized spaces for interaction, catalytic organizations, and safe havens for decision makers), the links between the tangible dimensions (strong, diverse leadership, informal networks and links, and conscious community discussion), and the underlying conditions of public capital (community norms for public life, and a shared purpose for the community).

The Harwood Group, 1999, p. 34

Associational Life

Communities are built and maintained by people doing things together. Kretzmann and McKnight (1993) describe associational life in their book Building Communities From the Inside Out. An association is a group of people working together in formal or informal ways, some with elected officers and paid members, and some very loosely organized. In their words, “Associations, together with the capacities of individuals, are the basic community-building tools of local neighborhoods” (pp. 109-–110).

Community Engagement

Community engagement has various meanings. According to the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), the Community Engagement Assessment:

Assesses the museum’s understanding of and relationship with its various communities and the communities’ perception of and experience with the museum. It helps museums gather better input from their constituents, develop a more nuanced view about the community’s demographics and needs, respond to the changing nature of its audiences and incorporate these findings into planning and operational decisions.

AAM, n.d.

Kelly Ann Beavers and Kimberley Hodgson, writing for the American Planning Association, note in Arts and Culture Briefing Paper 04, published in 2011, “Community engagement is the process of public participation and involvement that promotes relationship building through learning, action, and the expression of needs and values.”

Other community engagement definitions include the following from Americans for the Arts:

The arts community has tended to use community engagement to mean the deliberate and active ways arts organizations engage constituents and publics in order to align organizational goals, programs, and services with community interests and needs. Another meaning of community engagement relates to locating programs in community settings and collaborating with community partners to foster participation of targeted community members in arts and cultural programs and activities.

Animating Democracy, n.d.a

With so many varying definitions, museum leadership and staff need to clarify what they mean and what community engagement looks like at their museum. Chapter 6 explores internal questions such as these more thoroughly.

Community Stakeholder

The term community stakeholder is often used to refer to community members who care about, have a strong interest in, are affected by, or have an effect on a project. Stakeholders are anyone who will be impacted by anything that goes on in a community. They could be individuals, community organizations, infor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I Community
• Part II Creating a Community Involvement Action Plan
• Part III Challenges, Outcomes, Impacts, and Accountability
• Appendix A Sample Forms, Letters, and Worksheets
• Appendix B Activities: Working Together
• Index