Positioning Your Museum as a Critical Community Asset

A Practical Guide

Robert P. Connolly, Elizabeth A. Bollwerk

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781442275713
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Museum Administration
• Index: Business

In this how-to guide, practitioners at cultural heritage venues share their experiences in building sustainable relationships with their geographic and demographic communities. The volume includes practical discussions of activity types that museums can employ to build relationships with their communities including education, advocacy, co-creative, while serving as a community asset and resource. Case studies include direct application of successes and lessons learned with an emphasis on small to medium sized institutions with limited staff and budgets.

Highlights include:
Thematic discussions on topics such as building an advocacy network between the museum and community; developing cultural heritage institutions as critical and essential components of educational systems; museum response to community expressed needs through a co-creative approach; the varied means for developing community members as cultural heritage stakeholders; and positioning the cultural heritage institution as an integral community asset.Twenty case studies directly apply the thematic discussions in small to medium-sized museum contexts. Extensive list of resources including digital links to forms, workbooks, and guides produced in the case studies.A list of national organizations and an extensive bibliography on community museum engagement.
Specifically addressed to smaller institutions with limited budgets and limited or no full-time staff, the volume includes cost-effective projects that can be completed for $1,500 or less.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Communities Making Meaning in Museum Education
• Case Study 1: Developing High School Curriculum
• Case Study 2: Creating a Museum in a School
• Case Study 3: Meeting Teacher Needs
• Case Study 4: Using Postcard Collections as a Primary Resource in the Classroom
• Case Study 5: Words, Stone, Earth, and Paint
• Part II: The Value of Open(ing) Authority and Participatory Frameworks for Museums
• Case Study 1: Oral History for, about, and by a Local Community
• Case Study 2: Working with a Private Collector to Strengthen Women’s History
• Case Study 3: Reconnecting a University Museum Collection with Hopi Farmers through an Undergraduate Class
• Case Study 4: Our Stories, Our Places
• Part III: Advocacy for Heritage Professionals during the Crisis and the Calm
• Case Study 1: Making Advocacy Everyone’s Priority
• Case Study 2: Impact Statements—Demonstrating a Museum’s Public Value
• Case Study 3: Small Fish, Big Pond
• Part IV: Museums Engaging with People as a Community Resource
• Case Study 1: Taking Steps to Make a Museum Special-Needs Friendly
• Case Study 2: Incorporating Descendant Community Voices
• Case Study 3: How Community Input Can Shape a Mission
• Case Study 4: Building a Community History at theUniversity of theWest Indies Museum
• Case Study 5: Telling Our Town’s Story
• Case Study 6: Working to Address Community Needs
• Part V: Engaging User Audiences in the Digital Landscape
• Case Study 1: Creating a Digital Library for Community Access
• Case Study 2: Separating the Glitz from the Practical in Social Media at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
• Case Study 3: How a Simple, Inexpensive Podcast Engaged an Entire Community
• Case Study 4: Recording the Neglected Sports Stories fromthe Backside
• Case Study 5: Small Museum Website Creation with a Limited Staff and Budget
• Part VI: Resource Guide
• Works Cited
• About the Contributors