Giving Tuesday at the Kerry Wood Nature Centre and Historic Fort Normandeau

Tuesday, December 1^st is known as Giving Tuesday and is the opening day of the giving season; a time to celebrate and encourage activities that support charities and non-profits. This Giving Tuesday, we wanted to highlight some of the great work Alberta museums are doing in their communities, and to encourage support for these institutions through the Robert R. Janes Award for Social Responsibility. We spent the day in Red Deer getting to know the 2015 recipient of the Robert R. Janes Award for Social Responsibility: the KerryWood Nature Centre and Historic Fort Normandeau. 

A little background before we get into our adventures: The Robert R. Janes Award for Social Responsibility supports and furthers the work of museums that are solving community issues and promoting health and well-being through programs that affect real social and environmental change. Recipients are awarded $3000 to put towards investigating why their programs are so successful and modelling these successes for other museums in Alberta through a one-day workshop. As the third recipient of the Janes Award, Kerry Wood Nature Centre and Historic Fort Normandeau will host a workshop  in the spring of 2016 to share their experiences with other museum professionals.

Robert R Janes Award for Social Responsibility and Giving Tuesday

“Imagine a day dedicated to giving back … around the world, across Canada and in your own community! Just as Black Friday kicks off the holiday shopping season, Giving Tuesday is the opening day of the giving season.” givingtuesday.ca

This year, while museums across Alberta work with their communities to create programs that give back and promote social and environmental awareness, the Alberta Museums Association (AMA) will be participating in Giving Tuesday to raise awareness and support for the Robert R. Janes Award for Social Responsibility. The Robert R. Janes Award for Social Responsibility is an annual award that recognizes, supports, and furthers the work of museums that are solving community issues and promoting health and well-being. The Award was made possible through an initial donation from Dr. Janes, who continues to provide funding to the Award, and relies on additional community funding to continue directly supporting museums that are true contributors to the social, cultural, and educational fabric of Alberta. Award recipients are museums that do things differently and demonstrate leadership by building museums as true community spaces that affect our environmental and social landscapes.

Recipients of the Robert R. Janes Award for Social Responsibility receive $3,000 to investigate their drivers for success, scale up their activities, and host a workshop designed to model their lessons and successes for other institutions. The 2014 recipient, Fort Calgary, used the funds to examine the impact of their community garden on their neighbours in the inner city and demonstrate how the garden encourages stronger relationships with their community. Funds were also used to host a one-day workshop that explored what community engagement and social responsibility mean to the Fort and to their long standing partner, Suncor Energy Foundation.

The 2015 recipient, Historic Fort Normandeau and the Kerry Wood Nature Centre in Red Deer, will host a workshop in the spring of 2016 to share their environmental sustainability and socially responsible work. As part of the AMA’s Giving Tuesday initiative, AMA staff will spend Tuesday, December 1, 2015 at the Centre lending a hand with this work and learning how it is integrated into the day to day life of the Centre. Follow the AMA @AlbertaMuseums and through the #GivingTuesdayCA and #MuseumsEngage hashtags as we explore the Centre’s important work, and the impact it has on the Red Deer community.

Community Engagement Learning Opportunity

The Tamarack Institute for Community Engagement is hosting a three day workshop, Community Engagement: The Next Generation, on the latest tools, techniques, and technology for community engagement. A leading voice and practitioner of community engagement in Canada and internationally, the Tamarack Institute has worked closely with the AMA to develop and implement the Community Engagement Initiative.

How Did Our Garden Grow? Fort Calgary's Community Garden in 2015

Fort Calgary, the 2014 recipient of the Robert R. Janes Award for Social Responsibility, hosted a Modelling What Works workshop to share their experience connecting with their community through their Community Garden. Workshop participants came away with knowledge, plans, and enthusiasm to inform and encourage their own socially responsible work – and were able to get their hands dirty in the garden!

Gardening on the prairies is not for the faint of heart! Although Fort Calgary’s community garden was blessed with a warm spring and warm fall the summer can best described as a “challenge!”

AMA Conference 2015 Keynote Interview Part TWO: Mark Holmgren, CEO, Bissell Centre

Mark Holmgren, CEO of the Bissell Centre, will deliver the Saturday AMA Conference 2015 Keynote Address on Upside Down Thinking. This method of thinking utilizes unconventional propositions to force us to redefine how we think and how we see our organizations. In anticipation of his upcoming keynote presentation, David Ridley, Executive Director for the Edmonton Heritage Council, met with Mark to discuss his work with Upside Down Thinking. Click here to read Part One of this interview. 

DR: Some of these premises that have emerged from your thinking are provocative and intended to prod thinking. But there’s also a potentially demoralizing truth for those committed to the work. The museum sector, when we’re being honest about it, has its own counter-intuitive realizations that point to less than desirable results. How does one go about Upside Down Thinking without hitting a personal or organizational dead end?

MH: We have a lot of people in a lot of organizations that are already demoralized. It varies depending on what field you’re in, but all of the pressures of non-profit sector are no different: resources, talk about transformation, and the need to reinvent ourselves. A good number of people are already wondering - what is so wrong with what we are doing? For me, I am looking for tools to help people wrestle with that. A series of wicked questions would help other people develop dialogue strategies. Dialogue has a structure to it - it’s not just communicating. So I’m really into how to develop tools to help people have those difficult conversations. 

AMA Conference 2015 Keynote Interview Part TWO: Sharon Heal, Director, Museums Association of the United Kingdom

Sharon Heal, Director of the Museums Association of the United Kingdom, will deliver the Friday AMA Conference 2015 Keynote Address, Leading Change: Why Museums Can't Live in the Past. 

In anticipation of her upcoming talk, Lucie Heins, Assistant Curator for Western Canadian History at the Royal Alberta Museum, met with Sharon to discuss her work with “Museums Change Lives”. Click here to read Part One of this interview. 

Lucie Heins: Another principle of Museums Change Lives is “Justice is at the heart of the impact of museums.” Can you elaborate on this principle?

Sharon Heal: I think there are lots of ways this principle plays out. One example is equality of access to the public. This is not just about physical access, although that is very important, but also about intellectual access and emotional access. It’s about unlocking stories and giving people a voice, and making sure individual stories and community stories are respected and given room to breathe. It’s about access and public engagement, and museums are striving to reach out and be really inclusive spaces.

AMA Conference 2015 Saturday Keynote Interview Part One: Mark Holmgren, CEO, Bissell Centre

This year's Alberta Museums Association Conference, Nurturing Organizational Resiliency, focusses on exploring the ways museums nurture organizational health and community engagement on their path towards resiliency.  As museums move towards a sustainable future, it is more important than ever to have a strong sense of social purpose, and utilize intelligent visioning and strategic foresight when engaging with communities.

Mark Holmgren, CEO of the Bissell Centre, will deliver the Saturday AMA Conference 2015 Keynote Address, on Upside Down Thinking. This method of thinking utilizes unconventional propositions to force us to redefine how we think and how we see our organizations. In anticipation of his upcoming keynote presentation, David Ridley, Executive Director for the Edmonton Heritage Council, met with Mark to discuss his work with Upside Down Thinking.

David Ridley: How did you arrive at the idea of “Upside Down Thinking” in relation to your work and personal experience?

Mark Holmgren: I never really coined the term Upside Down Thinking until a couple of years ago, but I've always felt like I think a little differently than other people. Not better, just different. About three years ago, I became involved with Tamarack [Institute for Community Engagement] and really started to talk about wicked questions. I really like wicked questions, but they’re not really the same thing as how I saw a more radical way of getting at difficult questions.

AMA Conference 2015 Keynote Interview Part One: Sharon Heal, Director, Museums Association of the United Kingdom

This year's Alberta Museums Association Conference, Nurturing Organizational Resiliency, focusses on exploring the ways museums nurture organizational health and community engagement on their path towards resiliency.  As museums move towards a sustainable future, it is more important than ever to have a strong sense of social purpose, and utilize intelligent visioning and strategic foresight when engaging with communities.

Sharon Heal, Director of the Museums Association of the United Kingdom, will deliver the Friday AMA Conference 2015 Keynote Address, Leading Change: Why Museums Can't Live in the Past. Sharon’s presentation will explore the core purpose of museums as it relates to public need. How can museums broaden access to culture, and what impact can this have on both institutions and their communities?

In anticipation of her upcoming talk, Lucie Heins, Assistant Curator for Western Canadian History at the Royal Alberta Museum, met with Sharon to discuss her work with “Museums Change Lives”.

Lucie Heins: Sharon, your various roles prior to becoming the Director of the Museums Association (MA) of the United Kingdom were mostly program and audience-based. How has this assisted you in your directorship role? Can you tell us a bit about your journey to becoming the Director of the MA?  

Sharon Heal: My background is actually in journalism, in editing and writing. That’s where my training initially was and that’s where my career developed, but I also developed events and the conference at the Museums Association. For me, there is a lot of commonality and crossover in journalism and museums. Museums are all about people, about making connections between objects and stories. Journalism is about people because when you write and edit, you consider your audience. It’s about sharing ideas; it’s about sharing practice as a museums association. In the wider sense, in a campaigning role as an association, it’s about connecting people to museums and connecting politicians, stakeholders, and funders to those really pertinent stories of the impact that museums can have at an individual level.

Six Steps to Community Engagement

By Christine Moreland, Ontario Museum Association

The Ontario Museum Association has just released Engaging your Community: A Toolkit for Museums (EYC). This free toolkit outlines a six step process for museums to work with their communities to assess institutional relevance and create a plan to deepen the museum’s relationship with its community, in turn increasing the sustainability of the museum. The intended outcomes are to:

• Provide your museum with a process to deepen your understanding of what community engagement means to you; 
• Examine, evaluate, and articulate your current relationship with and role in your community; 
• Explore how community engagement can be part of planning and delivery, at all levels and in all aspects of the museum.

Community Engagement and Social Action

By Susan Burrows-Johnson, Galt Museum & Archives

As a museum worker, I have been confused and concerned about the entanglement of social issues and community engagement in museums. The current literature on the future of museums directs workers to participate in the community to seek remedies for injustice and troubles. Following this strategy is full of perceived risks such as mission-drift, loss of financial support, a threat to scholarship, and insulting activists while museums join an unsolvable civil society challenge. 

Tangling participation and social issues together as a strategy makes the prediction of the outcome feel difficult and dangerous. It seems easier to understand when the museums’ actions are described on two axis. A more explicit description of where a museum, exhibit, or program chooses to be can be plotted in relationship to the two choices.

Community engagement is on a continuum of “little interaction” to “a great deal of community two-way participation”. At one end, the museum is very self-contained. In the middle of the continuum, the museum seeks the community’s advice. The far end of the continuum has the museum in a two-way, power-sharing relationship with the community.

A social action continuum moves from "not being a change agent" to seeking "a particular change or justice" in the community. This museum continuum is, at one end, object-focus to the other end of social issues focus.

Demonstrating Resiliency to Maintain Relevancy

By Charleen Davidson, Operations Lead, Alberta Museums Association

At the 2015 Canadian Museums Association Conference: Public engagement… not a trend, but the future, Jack Lohman, CEO of the Royal British Columbia Museum, cautioned delegates in his keynote address that museums must engage with their increasingly diverse communities or risk becoming irrelevant. We must be flexible and adaptable in our efforts to connect with our communities, while ensuring museums continue to strive towards meeting their mandates and missions.  

Participatory Governance and Museums

By Catherine Cole, Principal Consultant, Catherine C. Cole & Associates.

As promised in the November / December 2014 issue of the Commonwealth Association of Museums (CAM) Bulletin, the report on Participatory Governance and Museums conducted by CAM in collaboration with the Galt Museum and Archives in Lethbridge, Alberta and the Musée Héritage Museum in St. Albert, Alberta is available on the CAM website at: maltwood.uvic.ca/cam/publications/new_releases.html. 

Stephen Weil noted that, “Museums have changed from organizations based on what they have to organizations defined by what they do [1].” And what they do is increasingly to address contemporary issues.

Modelling What Works: Changing the World… One Community at a Time

How can museums actively engage with their community and work towards making real change? As integrated community institutions, museums are uniquely positioned to help create vibrant and sustainable communities through a focus on programs that affect real social and environmental change. What are the first steps in planning, maintaining, and strengthening these programs and relationships?

Join us Wednesday, May 13, 2015, as we investigate these questions through a one day workshop at Fort Calgary. As the recipient of the 2014 Robert R. Janes Award for Social Responsibility, Fort Calgary provides a successful model for engaging, maintaining, and increasing corporate sponsorship, and methods for connecting with and serving at risk communities.

Museum Visitor Experience Program

The Museum Visitor Experience Program (MVEP) provides resources for museums to analyze their visitor experience, identify gaps or areas for improvement, and work towards developing and implementing innovative solutions.

MVEP combines bi-annual workshops with self-directed assessment modules that provide museums with a step-by-step approach to understanding what various visitor types look for in museums, and how to provide opportunities to engage with them.

Future Coalition Summit

The Alberta Museums Association would like to thank all of our delegates, speakers, and partners for making the Future Coalition Summit a success. It was an exhilarating day of spirited conversation, thought-provoking sessions, and new connections. Stay tuned for information about the Future Coalition’s ongoing work and the impact of the Community Engagement Initiative in Alberta’s communities.

Multi-Sector Engagement

By Paul Born, President, Tamarack,  An Institute for Community Engagement

Example:

A small regional museum reached out to their community to develop an exhibit and also a speaker series commemorating the year of the refugee. They engaged local agencies that supported refugees, business leaders who identified as coming to Canada as refugees, as well as politicians and bureaucrats. Most importantly, they engaged recent refugees to their community.

These individuals formed an advisory group of about 25 people. Together, they raised the money for the exhibit and gave input into the exhibit design. Many of them also donated their time and stories to the workshops held during the six month exhibit.

Engagements to Deepen Relationships

By Paul Born, President, Tamarack,  An Institute for Community Engagement

A museum has the ability to attract many visitors each year. Most of these visitors purchase a ticket, enjoy the museum collection, and leave.

What would it look like if we created a more robust approach, becoming more deliberate in deepening our client relationships?

Example:

Lucy shared with me the story of her museum. When the museum developed a loyalty program, everything changed. Not only were members recognized for their involvement, staff started to notice and think differently about those members who were most involved. The loyalty program made all those who were involved more loyal. Firs, members were recognized for the number of years they had been involved. Those that had been members for ten years or more were given a gold card. Members were also given credit for the number of visits they made each year, by simply placing a sticker on their seasons pas each time they came. Lastly the museum has an annual reception for those in the loyalty program, with awards and gifts. Deepening relationships is so often about doing the small things really well.

Museums: Engagement for Fundraising

By Paul Born, President, Tamarack,  An Institute for Community Engagement

A museum is a valuable community asset and deserves financial support. Good engagement strategies can make fundraising far more effective.

Example: 

Molly led a small regional museum promoting local history. The majority of her staff were volunteers. Molly raised most of their funds through applying for small grants and through special events fundraising like bake sales and their annual Mardi Gras night.

After taking a fundraising seminar Molly came to understand the process of identifying her prospects, engaging potential major donors, building relationships, and gradually building a case to support her position. It took some time but Molly slowly started to research the people already involved in her organization, and garnered the courage to ask them to identify others who might be interested in supporting their work. The volunteers were especially useful.

Molly had a big breakthrough when a regular museum visitor heard from one of the volunteers that they were raising money. After several visits together this person donated $10,000 to their campaign. It was a fine start and lifted the confidence of everyone involved.

Changing How We Work: The AMA Community Engagement Initiative and Cross Sector Engagement

By Jennifer Forsyth, Advancement Lead, Alberta Museums Association

For nearly three years, the Alberta Museums Association (AMA) has been undertaking an initiative focussed around community engagement. The Community Engagement Initiative (CEI) grew out of many conversations between the AMA and its stakeholders, the engaging work AMA members are doing within their communities, and an understanding about the importance of creating meaningful connections. Firmly rooted in the AMA’s Strategic Framework, this initiative was comprised of three goals: to foster a true understanding of community engagement; to build capacity for leadership opportunities; and to provide tools, resources, and connections to assist members in undertaking related projects.

As we set out to undertake the Community Engagement Initiative, the AMA connected with Tamarack Institute for Community Engagement’s  President, Paul Born. Paul’s work does not focus specifically on museums; his work is with organizations and communities. He guides groups in creating meaningful connections, so they may better address community issues. Through Paul’s mentorship, we began to develop a theory of change. We asked ourselves:

Who are we now?
What is our current state?
What kind of change do we want to happen?
How do we want that change to occur?

Future Coalition Summit Program Now Available

Program details for the Future Coalition Summit happening February 7, 2015 at Grant MacEwan University are now available at www.museums.ab.ca.  

Social Responsibility and Cross Sector Engagement

The Alberta Museums Association was pleased to have Doug Worts, Culture and Sustainability Specialist, WorldViews Consulting; Peter Faid, Principal, Community Services Consulting Ltd.; and Leah Best, Executive Director, Touchstones Nelson: Museum of Art and History as panel speakers at AMA Conference 2014: Accelerating Museum Impact. Click below to view recordings.

Social Responsibility and Cross Sector Engagement: Part 1 of 3

Doug Worts

Social Responsibility and Cross Sector Engagement: Part 2 of 3
Peter Faid

Social Responsibility and Cross Sector Engagement: Part 3 of 3
Leah Best

Presented at the Alberta Museums Association 2014 Conference: Accelerating Museum Impact, Calgary, AB, September 12, 2014.