Flavors of the Season

Center of Science and Industry (COSI), Columbus, Ohio
Information provided by Joshua Sarver, Senior Director of Experience Design and Production
Posted on 6/9/2011

Program Overview

The Center of Science and Industry (COSI) in Columbus, Ohio launched Flavors of the Season in December 2006.  COSI created this interactive family workshop to provide members with a yearly, holiday-themed museum experience.  Flavors of the Season’s format combined a cooking class with a science lab and taught families the biological, chemical and physical concepts used to make their favorite holiday foods.  During the program, families learned about cooking and the science of food in a nostalgic 1950s kitchen, where they watched demonstrations of science experiments that they could recreate in their own kitchens. As the primary activity, families worked together to construct and decorate gingerbread houses. Families also gathered around an outdoor fire to pop popcorn and drink hot chocolate and enjoyed COSI’s famous liquid nitrogen ice cream. After the program, COSI provided families with activities and crafts to extend their learning experience at home.

Program at a Glance

  • Date of Program: Early – mid December
  • Target age group: Families with children age 5 and older
  • Number of attendees: Approximately 30 per workshop
  • Cost to attendees: $30/Member; $40/Non-Member
  • One time program, repeated, or hope to repeat: The program began in 2006 and ran yearly until 2009.
  • Material costs: $14 for gingerbread houses for each family and $350 in other consumables
  • Non-material costs: $200 Staffing; $500 reusable equipment (fire pits, dutch ovens, etc.)
  • Number of Facilitators required:  2 staff members and  2 volunteers
  • Staff resources needed (hours) to develop: 40 hours

Tangible Takeaways

Program facilitators must have experience with food preparation. From cooking popcorn over an open fire to igniting a flambé, this workshop necessitated prior experience.

Always have a back-up plan. During the gingerbread house portion of the program, the icing was occasionally too warm to attach candy to it. Having glue guns available was always helpful.

Family members love to work together, but do not necessarily enjoy working with other families. Have a table specifically “reserved” for each family, which will increase their comfort level and make them feel appreciated.

http://www.cosi.org/

Posted in Semi-Regular | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Musical Explorations

The GRAMMY Museum; Los Angeles, CA
Information provided by Kait Stuebner, Education Manager
Posted on 3/31/2011

Program Overview

The GRAMMY Museum hosts quarterly programs for families designed to spark a love of music and an interest in different musical genres. These programs, titled “Musical Explorations”, offer the Museum’s younger audience a chance to enjoy a live performance as well as tour the Museum’s three floors of interactive exhibits. The series takes place on Saturday mornings in the Museum’s Clive Davis Theater and features artists like Ziggy Marley, Ozomatli and G. Love performing family friendly songs, encouraging families to get on their feet, dancing and singing along!

The Grammy Museum

Occasionally, the Museum also hosts “Make Your Own Instrument” craft hour after the program where families make shoe box guitars, coffee-can drums and paper plate tambourines. The activities and format of Musical Explorations are designed to expose younger audiences to live music from an early age.

Program at a Glance

The Grammy Museum

  • Date of Program: Ongoing, quarterly
  • Target age group: 1 – 100 (all ages)
  • Number of attendees: 200
  • Cost to attendees: $10 tickets that includes Museum admission, children 5 and under are free. Museum Members of Opening Act and higher (family memberships) are free.
  • One time program, repeated, or hope to repeat: Repeated quarterly, began in January 2009
  • Material costs: If hosting craft hour, $50 – $100
  • Non-material costs: Museum staff work the program and most artists donate their time.
  • Number of Facilitators required: Five Museum staff members
  • Staff resources needed (hours) to develop: Varies by program – approximately 10 hours prep over the course of a month.

Tangible Takeaways

Plan for attrition. The Museum’s theater seats 200; however, 230 to 240 RSVPs are always taken. Kids get sick and have meltdowns, not everyone will show up!

Start the program quickly. For the Museum’s other public programs, doors open a half hour before start time. Family programs, however, open roughly ten minutes before so families don’t get antsy.

www.grammymuseum.org

Posted in Festivals/Celebrations, Semi-Regular | Tagged , , , | Comments Off

Hotspots

Denver Art Museum; Denver, CO
Information provided by Heather Nielsen, Head of Community and Family Programs, Lara Writsel, Coordinator of Community and Family Programs, Lauren Abman, Family Programs Assistant, and Peggy Sell, Special Projects Assistant
Posted on 3/29/2011

Program Overview

The Denver Art Museum’s Hotspots are in-gallery, hands-on experiences designed to connect families to a particular artistic process, idea, or theme. While they began in their current form and under their current name around 2005-06, the program is a modified version of the Museum’s Art Stops, which began in 1995. The current emphasis is placed on engagement through conversation with a facilitator, as well as an interactive component. Hotspots take place on weekends and holiday weeks when families are most likely to be in the museum, and anywhere from 2-4 stations may be active on any given day.

A wide variety of subjects and techniques are covered by the program. The Navajo weaving experience, in which two full-size looms are set up in the gallery, allows families to card and spin wool, and to weave a few pieces of yarn using the loom. It is one of the oldest activities, dating back to the Art Stops program, but remains one of the most popular. Other Hotspots have a take-home component. In the Egyptian gallery, a mummy’s elaborate flowered collar is the inspiration for kids to decorate a pillow, which are then posted to the Museum’s Flickr site. Using foil, families can make their own “gold” jewelry based on the DAM’s collection of pre-Columbian metalwork. Alongside the art and activities, a facilitator fosters conversation between families and family members about the art and techniques used to create it. This conversation, in combination with the experiential component, is the basis of the Hotspots program.

Program at a Glance

  • Date of Program: Weekends (year-round) and during school holiday weeks
  • Target age group: Kids ages 6 and older and their families
  • Number of attendees: Approximately 13,000 adults and kids in 2010
  • Cost to attendees: Free with museum admission
  • One time program, repeated, or hope to repeat: Repeated weekly and for school holiday weeks—started in its current form around 2005-06, but has its roots in the Art Stops program, which began in 1995.
  • Material costs: A brand-new Hotspot from scratch costs about $1200 to develop and launch. To maintain the suite of Hotspots for the year is about $750.
  • Non-material costs: About six paid contract staff members maintain the program; their salaries total about $19,000/year.
  • Number of Facilitators required: There is usually one paid facilitator per Hotspot “station” (sometimes two on a busy day), with 2-4 Hotspots operating on any given day.
  • Staff resources needed (hours) to develop: About 3 months

Tangible Takeaways

Keep staff engaged and informed. Staff needs to be knowledgeable and passionate about the program offerings. They are the ones who are going to “sell” your program, and the way in which they lead and facilitate can make or break a family’s experience.

Live person matters. Facilitators are key to the Hotspot experience.  They help visitors use materials in the gallery that would not be allowed unfacilitated.  They are a friendly and welcoming face in the gallery.  And they provide visitors with information and answer questions about museum galleries and programs.

In gallery experience is always great. Letting families create among the art is an extremely valuable and inspiring experience. Children more readily connect the activity to the objects around them, while being able spend time with the art.

Bring the unexpected into the gallery through materials and processes. Creating activities that incorporate actual materials or techniques that artists use always draws in visitors, both young and old.  The project feels more substantial and participants are more likely to spend thoughtful time completing the task.

www.denverartmuseum.org/learn_and_play/families_and_kids

Posted in Semi-Regular | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off

Family Backpacks and Art Tubes

Denver Art Museum; Denver, CO
Information provided by Heather Nielsen, Head of Community and Family Programs, Lauren Abman, Family Programs Assistant, Lara Writsel, Coordinator of Community and Family Programs, and Peggy Sell, Special Projects Assistant
Posted on 3/29/2011

Program Overview

Family Backpacks and Art Tubes collectively form the “Family Checkout Program” at the Denver Art Museum. Designed specifically with visiting families in mind, the Tubes and Backpacks are each themed for use in a particular floor, area, or gallery. Family Backpacks include offerings for younger children ages three to five and are designed for a longer visit.  Art Tubes contain a single project and are suited for families on a limited time schedule. In exchange for a Tube or Backpack, an adult leaves a driver’s license, membership card, or other “valuable,” which is returned to them when they bring back the “checkout” material.

As stated above, the Backpacks and Art Tubes were founded on the same principle—to get families to engage with each other and with the art in the galleries. The Backpacks encourage families to settle and spread out in the galleries. Of the selection of activities available, one is a make-and-take art project, one gets families looking closely at a piece (or pieces) of art, and the rest are an array of looking and theme-based exercises. The Art Tube contains one make-and-take art project. The program is run when families are most likely to be in the museum together: on weekends, school breaks, and daily during the summer months.

Program at a Glance

  • Date of Program: Weekends, school breaks, daily during summers
  • Target age group: 3-12 (separate Backpacks for children 3-5 and 6-12, but there is considerable crossover)
  • Number of attendees: Approximately 10,000 kids and adults in 2010
  • Cost to attendees: Free with museum admission
  • One time program, repeated, or hope to repeat: Began in 1991 and is repeated on a daily or weekly basis, depending on the season.
  • Material costs: $5000 to create 4-5 identical copies of the same Backpack, and $2000 to maintain the suite of Backpacks throughout the year. It should be noted, however, that over the years the DAM’s backpacks have evolved to become top-of-the-line in terms of quality materials, explaining the high production cost. A backpack program at a smaller museum could conceivably be produced for much less.
  • Non-material costs: Two contract staff members maintain the program, working weekends and break weeks,  with their combined salaries totaling approximately $11,000.
  • Number of Facilitators required: Contract staff work the Family Activity Cart, but the Backpacks and Art Tubes themselves are visitor-led and facilitated.
  • Staff resources needed (hours) to develop: About 6 months to create a backpack.

Tangible Takeaways

Keep staff engaged and informed. Staff needs to be knowledgeable and passionate about the program offerings. They are the ones who are going to “sell” your program, and the way in which they lead and facilitate can make or break a family’s experience.

Develop activities that are intuitive. By using activity formats that both kids and parents know how to do, less time is spent explaining and more time is spent playing. Families can quickly lose interest if games are too complicated or didactic. Keeping it simple and using familiar game concepts contributes to the success of these packs.

Honor individual family dynamics. Each pack has a number of things to do, which gives families the option of completing all or just one of the activities and completing it on their own time schedule. Tubes are great for families with a little amount of time, while backpacks give visitors the chance to spend more time doing things in the galleries.

Make adult spaces more family-friendly. Gallery spaces can be intimidating.  Tubes and backpacks help families feel comfortable in the museum setting. These learning tools give families the opportunity to engage with the art on their own terms and using age appropriate materials.  Even the actual backpack, so familiar to kids, sends the message that you are welcome here.

A live person matters. The backpack attendant is a great way for families who are not familiar with the museum to ask questions and get oriented. This host suggests games that might be best suited for that particular family. Human interaction adds a valuable dimension to a family visit.

Signals that kids are welcome. By offering games that appeal to kids ages 3-12, we are indicating that the museum is a place where families are welcome. These packs, as well as our installed games, let families know that there are always things for families to do.

Design packs for the non-teaching parent. Unfortunately, we cannot assume parents will know how to or want to participate with their child when an activity is checked out. Embedding questions and including activities that a child can play alone makes parents feel more comfortable.

www.denverartmuseum.org/learn_and_play/families_and_kids

Posted in Semi-Regular | Tagged , , , | Comments Off

Tickle My Ears: Stories and Art at the Chrysler

Chrysler Museum of Art; Norfolk, VA
Information provided by Channon M. H. Dillard, Museum Educator for Children & Family Programs
Posted on 2/18/2011

Program Overview

Tickle My Ears: Stories and Art at the Chrysler is a monthly storytelling program for Pre-K children and their caregivers. Taking place in the galleries, Tickle My Ears is designed to familiarize children with the Museum’s environment and collections. Due to popular demand, the Museum now offers two sessions, one at 10:30 a.m. and another at 11:30 a.m., so that caregivers can pick the time that best suits them. Each month’s program is designed around a particular theme, and the gallery in which the program takes place changes regularly depending on the topic being explored. The stories, also based on the monthly theme, are read by a professional storyteller and accompanied by songs, dancing, and sign language activities. Some storytellers provide a list of books and related materials for families to seek out at their local library or from other sources.

Art at the Chrysler

While initially designed in conjunction with the local public library, the Chrysler Museum has, in recent years, found it more practical to run Tickle My Ears independently. The program is now advertised on the Museum’s website, its Facebook page, and in its bimonthly members’ magazine. In the future, Channon M. H. Dillard, Museum Educator for Children & Family Programs, hopes to be able to provide free books to participants to encourage early childhood literacy and engagement in a museum environment.

Program at a Glance

  • Date of Program: First Thursday of the month (two sessions, at 10:30 and 11:30)
  • Target age group: Children ages 1½-4 and their caregivers
  • Number of attendees: Average of 35 children and 12 adults per month
  • Cost to attendees: Free
  • One time program, repeated, or hope to repeat: Program began in April 2004, and is repeated monthly
  • Material costs: None
  • Non-material costs: $300-500 per month for the professional storyteller
  • Number of Facilitators required: 1 staff member
  • Staff resources needed (hours) to develop: About 4 hours per year (planning themes and making/maintaining contact with storytellers)

Tangible Takeaways

Engage children at a young age. Some staff members were initially wary of hosting an early childhood program in the galleries. However, the best way to create members and lifelong visitors is to make children feel as welcomed and comfortable in your museum as possible—this engagement can (and should!) begin as early as possible.

Provide structure. Many children—and even adults—may not be aware of proper “museum etiquette.” Furthermore, it is important not to disturb the experience of those visitors not participating in the program. The Chrysler Museum has taken these points into consideration, providing seating for parents and using painter’s tape on the floor to delineate program space. By providing this physical structure, both parents and children gain a greater respect for the museum, its staff and collections, and their fellow visitors.

www.chrysler.org

Posted in Semi-Regular | Tagged , , , | Comments Off

Saturday@The Museum

Museum of Texas Tech University; Lubbock, TX
Information provided by Brittany Chunn, Assistant Curator of Education
Posted on 1/31/2011

Program Overview

On the third Saturday of each month, the Museum of Texas Tech University offers Saturday@The Museum, a drop-in program for families of all ages, with each month highlighting one of the Museum’s exhibits. Families are encouraged to visit and explore the exhibit on their own, though museum staff are also on hand to facilitate and explain as necessary.

Museum of Texas Tech University

Saturday@The Museum began in January 2010. While participants during the early months had stumbled upon the program by chance, it has since built up a following of families who attend on a regular basis. In addition to visiting the exhibition, participants then do a related activity. Past themes have included “A No-Sew Quilting Bee,” “The Art of Origami,” “Turning Wood into Art,” “The Art of Printmaking,” “The Power of Polar Bears,” “Start with Art!,” “Body-building with Mark Sijan,” and “N.C. Wyeth and the Art of Illustration.” The Museum’s broad collections in the arts, humanities, and sciences, combined with a regularly changing exhibition schedule, ensure that a wide range of topics can be covered, providing consistently new material from month to month.

Program at a Glance

Museum of Texas Tech University

  • Date of Program: Third Saturday of every month
  • Target age group: All ages
  • Number of attendees: Varies from 30-100 per session
  • Cost to attendees: Free
  • One time program, repeated, or hope to repeat: Started in January 2010 and repeated monthly
  • Material costs: About $100-200 per month
  • Non-material costs: Staff
  • Number of Facilitators required: One staff member and 2-3 student assistants or volunteers
  • Staff resources needed (hours) to develop: 10-20 hours per month

Tangible Takeaways

Look for unserved audiences in your community. While Lubbock offers a variety of outdoor attractions, museum educators noticed that there weren’t many attractions that families with small children could visit regardless of weather or season. Saturday@The Museum caters to these families, offering indoor activities for young families.

www.museum.ttu.edu

Posted in Semi-Regular | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off

Egg Rolls and Egg Creams Festival

Museum at Eldridge Street; New York, NY
Information provided by Miriam Bader, Director of Education, and Hanna Griff Sleven, Director of Cultural Programs
Posted on 1/31/2011

Program Overview

Eldridge Street

Photo by Kate Milford

Located in the historic Jewish Lower East Side, which is today the heart of Chinatown, the Museum at Eldridge Street was interested in creating a program to connect with the local community and explore the connections between the past and present neighborhood. The result was the annual Egg Rolls and Egg Creams festival, voted New York City’s best block party.

Egg Rolls and Egg Creams is a cross-cultural celebration of the Jewish and Chinese communities of the Museum’s Lower East Side/Chinatown neighborhood. With the help of local folk artists, musicians, and businesses, the Museum offers a wide range of activities for visitors of all ages, including Chinese opera and acrobatics, klezmer music, Yiddish and Chinese language lessons, mah jongg, scribal arts, food and folk art demos, crafts, synagogue tours, and more.

Program at a Glance

  • Date of Program: Second Sunday in June
  • Target age group: All ages
  • Number of attendees: 8000
  • Cost to attendees: Free
  • One time program, repeated, or hope to repeat: Repeated annually
  • Material costs: $20,000 (includes performers, artists, tents, art making supplies, language interpreters)
  • Non-material costs: Staff time
  • Number of Facilitators required: 10 staff, 10 language interpreters, 20 performers, and 20 volunteers
  • Staff resources needed (hours) to develop: 50

Tangible Takeaways

Build upon and learn from the success of your existing programs. The Egg Creams and Egg Rolls Festival has become a signature MAES event and is a favorite with staff and visitors alike. Now in its 11th year, the Festival has allowed staff the valuable opportunity to build upon the success of the program each year and to continue to enhance it to better serve visitors.

www.eldridgestreet.org

Posted in Festivals/Celebrations | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off

Preservation Detectives

Museum at Eldridge Street; New York, NY
Information provided by Miriam Bader, Director of Education
Posted on 1/31/2011

Program Overview

Preservation Detectives is the Museum at Eldridge Street’s main family program.  Launched out of a desire to engage and grow its intergenerational audience population, Preservation Detectives has seen great success. Taking place on Sunday afternoons, the program encourages families to hunt for history in the 1887 Eldridge Street Synagogue. A short evaluation form, distributed to parents at the end of each program, allows for regular assessment and (if necessary) the opportunity to make improvements.

Eldridge Street

Photo by Kate Milford

Each month features a different theme that reveals the mysteries of architecture, history, and Jewish culture. With the help of a magnifying glass, binoculars and notepad, participants become Preservation Detectives, using ingenuity and imagination to sleuth their way through the synagogue—a historic landmark—and discover the past through activities and art making. At the conclusion of the program, families are invited to explore the Museum’s galleries and website to extend their visit.

Program at a Glance

Eldridge STreet

Photo by Ettie Lapp

  • Date of Program: Sundays at 1 p.m.
  • Target age group: Families with children ages 5-9
  • Number of attendees: Up to 20
  • Cost to attendees: $15 per family (registration is recommended but not required)
  • One time program, repeated, or hope to repeat: Repeat program, with a changing theme each month.
  • Material costs: $30 per program
  • Non-material costs: Staff time
  • Number of Facilitators required: 1-2 (1 paid and 1 volunteer)
  • Staff resources needed (hours) to develop: 2 hours

Tangible Takeaways

Building a new audience takes time. During the first year Preservation Detectives was offered, staff were quite disappointed by the lack of participants and many sessions were cancelled due to no attendance. However, after two years, almost every program fills up, many with repeat visitors, and staff are proud to note that the Museum is a place families know they can come to for a quality experience with their kids.

www.eldridgestreet.org

Posted in Semi-Regular | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off

Artissimo

National Gallery of Canada; Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Information provided by Megan Richardson (Chief, Education and Public Programs), Gary Goodacre (Family Programs Manager), Lexie Buchanan (Family Programs Educator)
Posted on 1/31/2011

Program Overview

The National Gallery of Canada, located in the capital of Ottawa, Ontario, has offered its Artissimo family program since 1998. Running on weekends, during the summers, and on holidays and school breaks, families explore works in the galleries through a variety of activities, then create artwork based on what they’ve seen and learned at activity kiosks in the Gallery’s Great Hall. A large magnetic wall, called the Artissimo Gallery, is located along the Concourse off the Great Hall; if they choose to do so, families may hang and display their artwork for future visitors. Uniquely, Artissimo emphasizes art looking and art making equally, seeking a balance of activities to create a more holistic experience.

National Gallery of Canada

The National Gallery of Canada has looked to different learning styles and to the senses as inspiration for its latest set of activity offerings. Art Buddies are a large collection of dolls created to look like people and animals found in paintings in the gallery; visitors can select a buddy, then search the galleries to find its counterpart. In Art from Above, families use pieces of fabric to create large-scale reproductions of various works, then are encouraged to view their progress from the Great Hall’s balcony. Feely Boxes each contain a set of objects (eyeglasses, a swathe of fabric, a toy animal, etc.) related to a specific artwork in the gallery; using only the hand holes cut into the box, visitors touch the objects, and based on what they feel, seek out the correct work. Two Family Self-Guides Guides highlight animals and children in the museum collections and allow intergenerational groups to explore the galleries on their own. Super Structures includes cards of architectural elements featured in the building and art works, as well as a set of wooden buildings blocks that families can use to create their own structures.  Children can play “dress-up” with costumes based on those worn by figures in gallery paintings, then search the galleries to find their match in Who Am I?. Finally, Sounds Like Art is an audio tour in which families create their own path through the galleries by making connections between recorded sounds and artworks.

To meet the challenge of its nationwide mission, the Gallery plans to expand Artissimo’s web presence, so that family audiences across Canada can engage with the museum’s holdings.

Program at a Glance

National Gallery of Canada

  • Date of Program: Weekends and statutory holidays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
  • Target age group: Families with children ages 3 and up (usually to about age 9-10)
  • Number of attendees: Anywhere from 25-200 per day, with about 11,500 total from 2009-10
  • Cost to attendees: Free with museum admission
  • One time program, repeated, or hope to repeat: Began in 1998 and repeated throughout the year on weekends, summers, and holidays/school breaks
  • Material costs: Annual budget of about $6000 (actual costs are often less)
  • Non-material costs: 2 paid staff members per day, creation and upkeep of dolls/costumes used in gallery activities, and construction of six custom-designed and built activity pods (the latter costing about $50-60,000)
  • Number of Facilitators required: 2 per day
  • Staff resources needed (hours) to develop: About three years at 2-3 hours per week to test, develop and produce activities; about 1-2 hours per week now that the program is up and running

Tangible Takeaways

Ask your visitors. In the process of developing activities, educators consulted visitors on everything from names to content. Participants were given a set of cards, each containing a prototyped activity, and asked to rank them. In planning the “dress-up” activity, children were shown images of artworks containing possible costumes to be worn and asked to select their favorites. Art Buddies were named because boys didn’t want to be involved with a “doll” activity, and the materials and format of the building block activity was changed to make it more appealing to girls.

Plan for heavy use. Especially for materials and components that will be used frequently, prepare to use heavy-duty materials or factor in costs and time for repair. After new activity pods were built in 2007, educators were surprised at how often elements initially broke or had to be replaced. Planning ahead for these circumstances can reduce unexpected costs.

Consider form as well as function. Previous iterations of the activity kiosks weren’t visually appealing—over time, as they program expanded, they came to look untidy, especially amidst the gorgeous architecture of the museum itself. Administrators and special events staff asked that the new pods be designed to look at home in the Gallery; this input that was taken into consideration and incorporated into the final design.

www.gallery.ca

Posted in Semi-Regular | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Neighborhood Arts Project

Harwood Museum of Art (of the University of New Mexico); Taos, NM
Information provided by Lucy Perera, Curator of Education and PR
Posted on 1/31/2011

Program Overview

Despite living in a community with a majority Latino population, as well as a considerable Native American presence, educators at the Harwood Museum of Art noticed that most participants in their family programs were along the lines of “traditional” museum audiences—middle and upper-middle class Anglos. While the Museum serves underprivileged students through outreach programs in the public schools, it sought to bring art to these students and their families during the summer months through a program called the Neighborhood Arts Project.

Hardwood Museum

Organizers worked with the local public school system to provide free lunches to participants and with local housing authorities (both public and private). These areas of low-income housing served as host sites for the program. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays during the summer months, museum teachers and volunteers set up tents at three sites and host art projects for residents, the vast majority of whom are Latino or Native American. Marketing is limited to fliers posted only within the selected neighborhoods and on bilingual sandwich board signs outside the tent area. The program—initially funded by a grant from New Mexico Arts—allows underserved and underprivileged families, many of whom cannot afford supplies, to experience artmaking together.

On any given day, the same projects are being performed at all three sites: one constant activity is a painting technique on paper that covers the tent walls. Two other activities based on a rotating theme (bookmaking, maskmaking, ceramics, painting, etc.) are also offered. The projects have some connection to the museum’s collection, and are made using recycled or everyday materials that participating families might be able to find at home, despite their economic circumstances. A free lunch is provided by the public school system, and each family receives a free pass to the Harwood Museum. In offering the Neighborhood Arts program, educators hope that families will become more engaged and comfortable with the Museum, encouraging visitation and participation in other programs.

Program at a Glance

Hardwood Museum

  • Date of Program: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays during the summer months, 12-2 p.m.
  • Target age group: All
  • Number of attendees: Average of about 40 per site
  • Cost to attendees: Free
  • One time program, repeated, or hope to repeat: Repeated every summer
  • Material costs: About $4000 (costs include tents and art supplies like scissors and brushes)
  • Non-material costs: One program coordinator ($18 per hour) and museum teachers ($14/hour)—about $6000 total for the summer
  • Number of Facilitators required: One (paid) coordinator, 2-3 (paid) museum teachers, and at least five volunteers each day
  • Staff resources needed (hours) to develop: About 80 hours

Tangible Takeaways

Get buy-in from off-site hosts. If hosting a program outside the walls of your museum, make sure that the host sites are well-informed of what to expect. The Harwood Museum initially went to the mayor of Taos to explain their plans for the Neighborhood Arts Project, and later worked extensively with both private and public housing authorities that would host the events.

Using the same staff builds familiarity. Educators noticed that staff and volunteers who worked consistently throughout the summer were more effective in building relationships and engaging repeat participants, leading to a more productive program.

A sensitive staff is important. The Neighborhood Arts Project took place in low-income neighborhoods, often outside the “comfort zone” of program leaders. Being familiar with, or at least prepared for, the community in which one is working working and sensitive to the social and economic circumstances of the program’s audience is key.

www.harwoodmuseum.org

Posted in Semi-Regular | Tagged , , | Comments Off