Can human rights work in museums serve as a pathway to decolonization?

Armando Perla
Chief Curator
Toronto History Museums, City of Toronto

Armando Perla, Photo Credit: James Recine 

Having been trained as a lawyer, I started my professional journey working with refugees and asylum seekers in Canada. After graduating from law school, I worked with Haitian migrant workers in the Dominican Republic during my time in Washington D.C., children in Central America who were trafficked and sexually exploited, and children’s rights advocates from the global south in Sweden. After several years abroad, I returned to Canada to be part of the team developing the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR). It was at the CMHR that I met Métis curator and scholar Tricia Logan and began a journey of self-discovery that completely transformed the way I understood and practiced human rights. When I started working at the CMHR, over a decade had passed since my arrival in Canada as an asylum seeker. I had attended  the University of Winnipeg, where I studied political sciences, and had also completed a Bachelor of Laws at Laval University in Quebec City and a Master of Laws at Lund University in Sweden. However, I had not learned about residential schools or Indigenous history. Learning from Logan that human rights were a Western construct that had often left out Indigenous perspectives was also unsettling for me. My Canadian and European legal training had never focused on looking critically at human rights.

Why Museums?

Breanna Suk, President 

Alberta Museums Association Board of Directors

I have been asked a lot in my life, “Why museums?” Why choose to go to school to study history with plans to work in a museum? Why decide to focus on collections and exhibits in museums as a career path? Why stay in museums given the current economy and uncertainty? The question is always, “Why museums?” But let me ask you a few questions and see if the answer becomes clearer.

Taking the Time: A Student’s Perspective on Collections Management

by Laura Rose Iocca 
Fourth Year Museum and Heritage Studies Student 
University of Calgary

During my time as a practicum student working at the University of Calgary Nickle Galleries, I was given the opportunity to work with one of the largest academic antique coin collections in Alberta. Through this experience, I was able to grasp the essence of what is involved in collections management, and the importance of this role relating to museum and heritage studies.

The Nickle collection consists of a variety of coins from various eras from Europe to Asia Minor. With the guidance of Marina Fischer, the Numismatic Specialist for the Nickle, I had the privilege of performing tasks that are vital to collections management: large scale inventory and cataloguing of the artifacts, researching locations on ancient maps, and ensuring descriptions and information about the artifacts were inputted correctly. As well, I cultivated vital handling techniques and storage practices for antique numismatics.

Sustainability through Communities of Practice

The Critical Contributions of Regular Peer Connection among Museum Professionals

by Tara Beck and Isabella Borrelli

The journey towards this blog entry began in February 2020 when two colleagues sat down to consider how their experience with communities of practice might contribute to the AMA Conference about museums and organizational sustainability. At the time, conversations primarily revolved around the value of communities of practice in combatting the institutional and professional silos common across Edmonton’s museum landscape (Edmonton Heritage Council’s Comprehensive Museum Strategy Report, 2012). Knowing the difficulty in a major city, one can only assume that our counterparts in rural Alberta face similar challenges.

A lot has happened since February which has encouraged us to broaden our considerations of the ways communities of practice can serve us in our work. Museums are at a pivotal point in their history. The Covid-19 pandemic has forced many of them to shrink dramatically, and in some cases close. The unmasking of deep rooted institutional systemic racism has called on museums to meaningfully address their histories and make changes for their futures.

Addressing Large-Scale Challenges: Part 1

Defining a Path Forward: Narrowing Down a Complex Problem

by Kristen Cousineau and Christine Moreland

The world we live and work in is rapidly changing, and while this is nothing new, the current crisis highlights the need for cultural institutions to be flexible, resilient, and creative in our approaches to these changes. But what happens when the changes are coming at us so quickly and the scope of them seems so overwhelming that they become paralyzing? How can we take the first step towards problem solving, sustainability, and continued relevance?
 

Addressing Large-Scale Challenges: Part 2

Ideate: Go Big and Wide. Get Creative!

by Kristen Cousineau and Christine Moreland

Congratulations! You have a ‘How Might We’ statement (HMW) that narrows down the big, unwieldy problem, to a manageable question that includes constraints and insights. Now, let’s talk about how to start answering that question: ideation.

Just joining us? Read Part 1 to discover how to create your guiding question, a ‘How Might We’ statement.

Ideating is often used as a synonym to brainstorming. However, brainstorming is traditionally spontaneous, and with ideating, we’re talking about a concrete, planned approach to creating new ideas. (We also prefer saying ideation because it differentiates our process from the negative experiences you may have had brainstorming in the past.) Ideation takes you a big step forward in solving your problem.

Giving Tuesday: Making It Work for You

by Corrie Fortner, Senior Consultant

Global Philanthropic

What is Giving Tuesday? It is a global movement for giving and volunteering, a day that calls for charities, individuals, and companies to rally for a cause which “unites communities by sharing our capacity to care for and empower one another.” The eighth annual Giving Tuesday is December 1, 2020.

Before you start planning activities, it makes sense to ask a key question: what outcome do you hope to achieve by participating in Giving Tuesday? This will help guide both your strategy and the resources you will invest. Take into consideration a number of factors, including: 

• What else is happening in your organization right now? 
• What else is happening in your community for Giving Tuesday? 
• Do you have a presence on social media that will help drive donations to your cause? 
• Is this part of your annual campaign? 
• Is this a strategy you can leverage to attain your goals? 

Those are a few starting points for your reflection or discussion about whether this day warrants your focus and energy. 

Chartering New Territory Using the Theory of Flight

For over two decades, the Alberta Aviation Museum (AAM)’s most popular program has been Theory of Flight (TOF). It’s the museum’s longest running and only formal education program based on the Alberta Grade 6 curriculum. It was originally developed and continues to be largely facilitated by volunteers. The program has grown so much in popularity that most years it has been booked solid. Its success is evident by the number of visiting youth and young adults who remember and mention their TOF field trip. 

Despite the program’s continuing success, a major update was long overdue. While there were attempts to update TOF, including the addition of flight simulators two years ago, mixed reviews for the simulators made it clear that we couldn’t continue to make only minor updates to TOF. We needed to completely rethink our education program.

There were several factors that made the existing TOF program unsustainable, as it did not meet all teachers’ needs and was difficult to facilitate. The existing program was too densely packed with content that was specific to only a few units of one grade level. It was also too long, and lecture-based.

Our goals for the redevelopment were to make the program:

• Interactive;
• Flexible to better meet the needs of individual classes;
• More diverse in curriculum content; and 
• Structured to expand for more grades.

Coming Together to Share #MyCanadianMoment

by Vanessa Puczko 
Social Media Community Manager, Summer Intern
Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame

If there was ever a need for the country to come together, the time is now.  

A time for inspiration. 

A time for hope.

During this unprecedented time, Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame is aiming, as always, to unite Canada through sport. We know that sport has the power to bring people together, and Canada has no shortage of incredible sporting moments! But as we faced cancellations, we needed a different way to connect with Canadians.

 

Flood and Fire: A Story of Resilience at Heritage Village and Heritage Shipyard

by Roseann Davidson

Executive Director, Heritage Village and Heritage Shipyard

Natural disasters hit our city and our museums not once, but twice. This is our story.

The Hangingstone River Flood of June 2013 devastated Heritage Village (formerly Heritage Park) and we wondered how we would ever function as a museum again. The damage to our buildings, infrastructure, collections, and archives was beyond our comprehension. 

Yet four years later, through the tireless work of our staff, Board of Directors, volunteers, and external partners, we began a new chapter. Our new beginning placed us in a position to become bigger and better than we could ever have imagined. We affectionately grew to call this time as our “flood of opportunity.”

The Hangingstone River Flood leaves Heritage Village (then Heritage Park) under water.
All images courtesy of Roseann Davidson