Abstract
Building trust with excluded communities is critical to museums’ futures, and requires a commitment to equity and accountability that is integrated throughout museum work. This poster details the learnings, challenges and opportunities of integrating community-focused initiatives into existing institutional norms at a regional history museum. This work requires consideration from high level visioning to the specifics of contract language, planning timelines and marketing approaches. Drawing from one museum founded by white colonizers that has been working to not only address past exclusions but to become a place of community trust, this poster shares insights from a 10 year journey of change. This poster is developed from the perspective of a current staff member who began working with this museum as a community partner, and who now leads museum-wide approaches to community engagement. Topics that will be explored include, Equity in the Details (naming specific logistics that are often overlooked in equitable collaborations), Time for Change (exploring the tensions of institutional timelines and community needs for flexibility and responsiveness) and Internal Advocacy (addressing the need to navigate internal policies, processes and hierarchies on behalf of community partners). Guiding principles of mutual benefit, transparency, relationship-tending and racial equity are all critical elements in building long-term trust, and are detailed in how they apply to the work of the museum generally, and in expanding equitable community engagement specifically. These conclusions are drawn from personal experience within an analytical framework shaped by queer, Black, and Chicana feminist activists and theorists.
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
KEYWORDS
Community, Engagement, Equity, Inclusion, Diversity, Museum, Practice, Institution, Feminist
