Guest Post: Community and Civic Engagement in Museum Programs

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Stacey Marie Garcia came to the MAH first as a graduate intern in the summer of 2011. Since then, Stacey has become an indispensable member of our staff, leading our community programs and inspiring us to think in new ways about how we can build social capital in our community. I learn a ton from her every day and wanted to share her thinking--and her graduate thesis--with you.

Visitors bond and bridge through participatory experiences at MAH.

Writing my masters thesis for Gothenburg University’sInternational Museum Studies program while also working four days a week as theDirector of Community Programs at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & Historythis spring was certainly a challenge but also an incredible opportunity. 

There were times when coordinating a fire art festival while researching socialcapital theory made me want to burn my computer. But, overall I feltoverwhelmingly fortunate to be in a job, a museum and a community that I lovedand furthermore to be afforded the valuable time most of us do not have todevote to further researching, thinking about, reading and discussing the theoriesthat comprise the foundation of my work.
I chose to focus my thesis on Community and Civic Engagementin Museum Programs.  The purpose of mythesis was two-fold:

1. To research and analyze community and civicengagement practices, methods, theories and examples in other museum programs.
2. To apply the results of my analysis to produce acommunity-driven program design specifically for implementation at the SantaCruz Museum of Art & History (the MAH). 

You can download and read the full version of my thesis here. For thepurpose of this blog post I’ll discuss three key ingredients from my thesisthat can activate community engagement in museum programs and how we apply thisto programs at the MAH: assessing and responding to community assets and needs,building social capital, and inviting active participation.

Assess and Respondto Community Assets and Needs

If you want to activate community engagement in yourprograms, you first need to work together with your communities to determinetheir diverse needs, assets and interests. This can be accomplished through avariety of feedback methods conducted both inside and outside the museum.  Deeper community relationships through focusgroups or community advising committees can further help museums connect with issuesrelevant to their communities while also hold the museum accountable for theirresponses. 
Two exceptional examples of community committees stand out:one long standing, TheCommunity Advisory Committees of The Wing Luke Museum of theAsian Pacific American Experience and one emerging, the CreativeCommunity Council of the Children’s Creativity Museum.  Both emphasize museums reaching out into thecommunity to support, understand and experience what the community is alreadydoing. They stress community engagement should be an asset- over needs-basedapproach. It’s not solely about how museums can serve communities but ratherwhat are the communities’ resources, knowledge and interests that can informmuseum practice? Furthermore, how can museums and communities work together toshare strengths in the community?
Museum programs need to then actively respond to theircommunities through a variety of ongoing discursive, collaborative and inclusiveformats that address needs and assets but also invite communities to be activeparticipants in this process. 

At the MAH

Our first program goal is to meet the needs and assets ofour community as defined by our community. We seek to understand this by listening to and developing ongoing dialogueswith a range of community members. We attentively respond to requests andpurposefully use different modes of feedback to inform program design from ourcomment board, social media outlets, conversations and observations both insideand outside the museum, creative feedback at events such as our Showand Tell Booth and online visitor surveys specific to our programs.  We continuously and actively respond torequests as well as invite people to be a part of our programs.
We also formed a CreativeCommunity Committee (C3), composed of a diverse range ofmultigenerational community representatives from social services, the arts,business, education, the city, technology and our board of directors to providea multitude of perspectives and expertise. C3 meets bimonthly to help us understand and brainstorm ways the MAH cancollaboratively implement and address the needs and assets of the vast array ofcommunities in Santa Cruz County.

Build SocialCapital

A crucial theory in community engagement through museumprograms is social capital theory, best defined by Robert D. Putnam, who haswritten extensively about social capital in American society in his book, BowlingAlone. Putnam defines social capital as “connections among individuals-socialnetworks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise fromthem.”  Social capital has two mainforms; it should gradually and increasingly encompass both distinct forms ofbonding and bridging to create healthier, wiser, more connected, economicallyand socially sustainable communities.
Bonding social capital refers to networks that bring peopletogether with common interests to strengthen relationships in preexistinggroups.
Bridging refers to an inclusive and outward looking form oflinking different and diverse individuals and groups together to form newrelationships.
Museum programs can be designed to further bond similargroups together such as families and friends in family workshops such as theDallas Museum of Art’s FirstTuesdays. Museum programs can also bridge different groups thatmight not typically interact such as the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum’sEducational Residential Centre, which designed a program specifically to bridgechildren of two groups engaged in social conflict, Catholics and Protestants.
Co-created programming that represents the complex range ofvoices in communities, offers platforms for communication, collaboration andshared experiences that can enrich preexisting relationships while also offer aspace for new relationships to form and strengthen.  An example of this is The Portland ArtMuseum’s partnership with the faculty and students in Portland State University’sArt and Social Practice Department for their annual Shine a Lightprogram.  The program is an experimentalplayground that bridges artists, students, chefs, comedians, hairdressers,bartenders, dancers, wrestlers and even tattoo artists to produce a community-ledevent.  Collaborative programs withdiverse groups bring in a variety of visitors causing new audiences to interactand connect.

At the MAH

Our second community program goal is to build social capitalby strengthening community connections with our collaborators andvisitors.  This is a continual process ofbonding within preexisting groups and bridging between groups and individualswho might not usually interact.  
Our programs bond our collaborators by closely co-creatingprograms with community organizations which strengthens their individualinternal connections and their relationship to the MAH. For example, the MAH’s Poetryand Book Arts Extravaganza event partnered with Book Arts Santa Cruz and Poetry Santa Cruz to collaboratewith 61 talented book artists and poets.  Evaluation surveys showed that Book Arts SantaCruz members felt their bonds were strengthened as they connected with membersin a collaborative capacity that increased group dialogue and stimulated asense of pride, identity and vision around their work as a group at this event.

Cardboard tube orchestra at Radical Craft Night.

MAHprograms are also designed to bond and bridge visitors through creativeactivities that form participatory dialogical spaces where knowledge isenhanced, widened and deepened through meaningful opportunities for visitors toconverse, discuss and collaborate with each other. Relationships can grow asfamilies bond over a FamilyArt Day experience or friends can work together to create their ownshoebox guitar at SantaCruz Music 3^rd Friday or strangers can collaborate byparticipating in a cardboard tube orchestra. 
Sometimes we purposefully bridge distinct groups as wellsuch as middle-aged women from local knitting groups with young collegestudents interested in street art to yarn bomb our stairwell for RadicalCraft Night.  The MAH’shistoric EvergreenCemetery brings together the Homeless Services Center and MAHvolunteers or the local rugby team to collaboratively restore thecemetery.  We are constantly looking fornew meaningful opportunities to bridge groups and individuals in ourprograms.   

Design to InviteActive Participation

Participatory design can be one of the most effective vehiclesfor developing relationships, building social capital and engaging withcommunity members in museum programs. Implementing participatory activities and constructivist learningtheories allow the learner to actively experiment cognitively and physically,individually and socially, and to collectively build meaning and knowledge.Participatory programming highlights alternative narratives, activatescommunities and reverses the role of the visitors from consumer to producer,which in turn engenders more connected and active communities.
The value of participatory experiences is epitomized in FIGMENT, afree, creative, participatory, non-profit, community art event.  This participatory event led by emerging artistsfrom all backgrounds, engages communities by encouraging a culture of making,doing, creating and collaboration rather than spectatorship. 
The Denver Art Museum has been leading the way with dynamicprograms such as Untitled, which offersa variety of non-traditional encounters with art and the museum throughparticipatory, multidisciplinary activities led by Denver’s creativecommunity. 

At the MAH

Our third community program goal is to invite activeparticipation by offering opportunities at events for visitors to havemeaningful, hands-on, cultural experiences in which they act as contributors andco-creators, not just consumers.  Wescaffold levels of participatory experiences at events that areintergenerational, multidisciplinary and appeal to different types of learners.We give visitors a new skill to claim rather than a product and work intenselywith our collaborators to insure active participation in their activities.
All of our events require some level of participation. Sometimesthat results in an artist-led cascading collaborative sculpture of 475visitor-made scrap metal fish.  Othertimes it’s a collaborative collage animation workshop, a black light artactivity with red lentils, dodge ball, recording songs to send to loved ones,writing haikus for strangers or an urban history scavenger hunt on bikes.

Artists from different worlds, brought
together through Street Art Night.

Our events invite our collaborators to work with us todesign participatory activities and offer visitors active, collaborative andmeaningful experiences that inspire citizens to positively and activelycontribute to their communities.  

Final Thoughts

Theseare certainly not the only components that constitute successful communityengagement in museum programs but they are central for MAH programs and for ourcommunity.  This summer, at our StreetArt Night, when I saw a young graffiti artist learning how to knit from awoman in her sixties and then taught her how to spray paint or at ExperienceMetal, when a motorcycle repairman learns how to operate a new tool from anart bike welder or when families work together to create their own cardboardneighborhood or when two individuals who met at one of our events team up tocollaborate- it allows me to see first hand the gradual impact of our goals onthe community and makes me realize all those late nights spent writing mythesis were completely worth it.

Stacey will be responding to your questions and comments on this post. Enjoy her thesis, share your own example, have a meaty conversation.