Welcome to Week 3

After last week’s session on addressing inclusivity from an ‘eagle’s view’, or at strategic leadership level, this session will ‘dive in’ to how to operationalize and make this a reality for the audiences and communities museums serve. We will ‘dive in’ to principles for inclusive programming, as well as exploring different methodologies for conducting and monitoring these interactive and inclusive activities across a museum.

We ended last week’s session with a challenge to think about ways in which a museum could divest itself from its authority and share power. This week, we will explore strategies and methodologies for how to do this.

We will present cases which use oral history as a way of finding new and rewriting old stories. We will examine how community-based inventorying of intangible cultural heritage can bring life to objects and give meaning and insight into ways of being in the world. We will show how to collect and represent these in a way which is honoring and respectful of the people who continue to value them.

Through case studies and interviews with colleagues from across the globe, we will introduce examples of the intended and unintended consequences of applying the principles for inclusive programming. We hope that these will excite and encourage you in your own design and development of programs which have at their core the inclusion of peoples once marginalized and excluded from society and the museum.