This is a recorded session from the 2025 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. Museums are trusted to be good stewards not only of their collections but also of their communities. Fulfilling this important aspect of public trust requires programs that go “beyond the tour” to activate museum spaces and collections in approachable, accessible ways. In this session, three presenters consider novel ways to attract diverse audiences through programming that fosters emotional responses to artworks and spaces. Explore strategies including mindfulness sessions, sensory explorations, and programs built through intentional partnerships with out-of-sector professionals.
Speakers:
- Ames Morton-Winter, Coordinator, Youth and Family Programs, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art
- Katie Nickel, Head of Educational Programs, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art
- Lilit Sadoyan, Gallery Educator II, J. Paul Getty Museum
Additional Resources:
Slides from Beyond the Tour: Building Trust by Reimagining Public Programming
Transcript
Lilit Sadoyan:
Good afternoon, we made it. Congratulations. I hope everyone had a very fruitful conference. Thank you so much for being here, sticking with us until the very end, with your curiosity, with your energy, with your commitment. We really are grateful that you are joining the three of us today. I am Lilit Sadoyan. I am a museum educator at the Getty, which is a large museum here in Los Angeles. If you don’t know it already, please do find some time to come and say, “Hi.” And I’d love for my co-panelists to introduce themselves too.
Ames Morton-Winter:
My name is Ames Morton Winter, and I am coming to you from the John and Mabel Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida, way on the other coast. Our museum is on a 66-acre plot of land and has a lot of varied venues, and it’s the state museum of Florida. So, I thought I should give that background, just in case you aren’t familiar with it.
Katie Nickel:
Good afternoon, everyone. And I’m Katie Nickel. I am also an educator at the John and Mabel Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, along with Ames. And like Ames mentioned, our site is a really unique site of wonder, as I like to say. We are an art museum holding circus magnate, John Ringling’s collection of Baroque works, and we’ve added to that collection with modern and contemporary photography and Asian art since then. But we also are a historic house museum, as well as a circus history museum, level two arboretum and a historic theater, which houses an avant-garde performance series. So, we have a little bit of something for everyone. So, I wanted to just provide that context in case it’s helpful as we get into things.
Ames Morton-Winter:
So, I thought just for a really quick second, you all could turn and talk and introduce yourself, just to one or two people around you. So, turn and talk.
I’m so glad that you all had a chance to just introduce yourself to the people around you, and you will have more chances to talk to each other, I promise. I thought it might be nice, since we’re at the very end of our time here in Los Angeles and we’ve been rushing around, and we have all these new ideas and we’ve had all this stimulation, just to take a moment to breathe together for a moment, and bring ourselves back to the present moment. So, I like to do this with works of art, and it can be really powerful and refocus visitors, even during a tour or before you start a tour. So, we’re going to use box breathing, and I’ve put a piece up here from the Ringling Collection. If you’re not familiar with box breathing, it’s a relatively simple technique when you breathe in for four counts, hold for four counts, hold, exhale, and then rest for four counts.
But the challenge is… And you do not have to breathe if you don’t want to breathe, and you just want to sit there quietly. Breathe, sorry. Take breaths, deep breaths. Please breathe. Please breathe. Or you can use this work of art, if you want to do it with your eyes closed, whatever you’d like. But the idea is to take a deep breath in, to hold, to exhale, and then to rest. You could do it with the concentric rectangles, however you’d like to do it. I’ll lead you for a couple and then let you breathe for a moment. But I thought it would be a nice way for us to kind of come to this moment right here and right now. So also, when we breathe, let’s work on really filling our lungs and then really emptying them as fully as we can. So we’re going to inhale, 2, 3, 4. Hold, 2, 3, 4. Exhale, 2, 3, 4. And rest, 2, 3, 4. Inhale, 2, 3, 4. Hold, 2, 3, 4. Exhale, 2, 3, 4. And rest, 2, 3, 4. I’ll let you take a breath on your own.
All right. Well, thank you for trying that. I actually almost always start programs with breathing. I come from a classroom teacher background. We took many moments to breathe, just to refocus in our classroom, and it works I feel like in museums as well. I even run a preschool program and before we start doing our ten-second VTS practice, which is about what I get out of them, we often start with a breath. So, I appreciate you doing that today. So, you’re going to get a little…
Katie Nickel:
All right. So, I’m going to provide just a short overview of what you can expect from this session, and then we’re going to launch right into it. So, Lilit, Ames and I are each going to present for about 15 to 20 minutes each. And within these presentations, we have a number of different activities that we’ll all be doing together as a collective. So rather than sort of all talk first, workshop after, this is a very integrated presentation. Lilit will be getting us started with her conception of activity-based teaching, and specifically looking at a program that was called Art Impact and Mindfulness. Ames will be following up with an adaptation of that program called Teen Mindfulness at the Ringling. She’ll also be talking about trust very specifically, and then her conception of the visitor response pedagogies. And then you’ll see me again right at the very end, where I’ll introduce building trust with very specific, often out-of-sector audiences. So, I’ll give a case study on that, through the theory of cultural humility, and explain what that means. So, without any further ado, we’re going to go ahead and launch in, with Lilit leading us off.
Lilit Sadoyan:
So, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about our approach to museum education, to gallery teaching at the Getty. And this is really through movement, embodiment and emotion that we utilize museums as essential spaces for play. Conceiving of gallery activities as a form of play is really a direct response to the possibilities and the invitations that artworks offer to visitors for exploration. Viewing the museum, therefore, as a playground allows for open, expansive and curious engagement with works of art. It also builds trust among educator and participant, as well as among participants and their museums. So, artworks present themselves in and through play with their viewers, and the viewers, in turn, play along. Viewers will only truly grasp what objects offer them by allowing themselves to be lifted into that play. And the play of art occurs when we are touched by a proposition, an address, an experience that so captures us that we surrender readily to our impulse to play along.
There are many elements, for example, in a sculpture that we feel in our bodies, or maybe in a painting that we can see ourselves in, or maybe even a photograph that reminds us of a place that we’ve been before. And we respond to these invitations to engage with works of art by acting on them. A little bit of a background. Together with my former colleague, Lisa Latina, I began exploring play in the galleries beginning in 2013. I’ve been with the Getty since 2008. And this impulse emerged out of a creative interest to go beyond language. We wondered together, “Could artworks be understood without words?” Which was at first, an idea that seemed far too radical, even for us, since all of our knowledge was shaped by art historical writing, and our practice in facilitating experiences with visitors was based in dialogue. But we still felt that there was more to the deeply personal experiences that we had with these artworks and that we were observing in our audiences.
So, we undertook a project to rethink our approach to teaching in the museum, focusing particularly on activity-based teaching as a way to expand and complement the dialogical approach that characterized our decades-long existing practices. So, this was at the same time that our highly esteemed museum educator, colleague and dear friend, Elliott Kai-Kee, was developing some theories around play. And together we co-authored this publication, Activity-Based Teaching in the Art Museum, published in 2020. Following the theoretical history and basis for the approaches defined by Viola Spolin, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Ian Bogost, that are described in our book, we conceived play as a form of movement, of exploration and of inquiry. Every art object offers itself up as an opportunity for play. And there are all of these different potentials for play or for movement. There’s back and forth. You can think of these examples for yourself, your personal experiences or experiences at your own museum. To and fro, up and down, within and around.
These are opportunities that really present themselves to us. And museums, therefore, are like playgrounds, particularly prime spaces where such play occurs. And this is not to juxtapose the perceived frivolity of play with the seriousness of museums. Rather it’s to conceive of museums as defined spaces constituted by their contents, which in turn shapes the play that takes place within it. And you can imagine that this is a group of visitors gathered around a single artwork. It’s a corner in a garden, it is a single gallery, it’s an entire exhibition. So, we have this two-pronged approach of activity-based teaching and dialogue, to engage our audiences. And so, for us, doing is just as important as talking.
You can see a couple examples of that here on the screen, especially with decorative arts objects. Chairs, they ask to be sat in. Clocks need to be wound. Chandeliers, they need to be lit, right? Globes just ask you to spin them. That’s what happens with our visitors. This is an eighteenth-century, French, Rococo bed. And upon entering a gallery, the visitors just kind of gravitate towards it, feeling the impulses in their bodies to get in. And I invite you right now to think about how you’d get in. Would you slowly climb in? Would you plop down on it? And then think about how you might hold your body in that piece of furniture.
You might be even responding to a feeling of comfort, which was very much a new goal, motivating furniture designers at that time. And then at the left, you can see an image. After we’ve imagined ourselves in it, we of course need to make the bed, right? So, we are in two rows, and we imagine lifting the sheet and placing it down on the mattress. Imagine tucking it in, pulling on the covers, pulling the pillows on, really tapping into any kind of lived experience that may be helpful for a visitor. So, I wanted to introduce some of the central principles of play. The first principle of play is embodiment. And that is the idea that mind and body play together. When we view art experience as a contemplative pursuit, the implication is that it is a disembodied experience, but mind and body are inextricably linked when looking at art. I always say this, “We’re not just brains and eyeballs floating through the galleries. We’re whole bodies.”
And the body, as a kind of active partner, responds to the physical and environmental qualities of a work of art and of course a museum space. So, we’re physically involved. As soon as we enter the museum, we’re moving around. And as phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, describes, “Motor intentionality involves the movement of our bodies in response to the possibilities of action that we encounter around us.” So, these interactions with art, they’re felt in the body. You can see here striking a pose, for example, immediately immerses one into the world of the figure. And that’s what our visitors do to better understand, better grasp the qualities of the sculpture by Giambologna, with a greater appreciation for the very complex composition of the serpentine figure, the figura serpentinata. Affordances is the second principle of play. Once we discover that art is understood as both an intellectual and physical activity, we can tune into the ways in which it solicits the beholder’s reaction.
The body is an active, not passive receiver, and works of art offer opportunities for that kind of action. You might think of psychologist J.J. Gibson, who indicates that the environment offers unlimited opportunities that he notes are affordances, which are use values to the perceiver. So, people, things and activity come together in these action possibilities. And for Gibson, meaning or values of things are apparent. So just look around you again, maybe you have some water that says, “Drink me.” A chair says, “Sit on me.”
You have some pens or pencils, “Write with me.” Right? “Open the notebook.” So just like that, art objects offer opportunities for action, because they’re invested with functional meanings by their surroundings, by their content, by their social conventions. And of course this is very much culturally derived, and we see that in this image here. Participants are invited to explore a salon de compagnie, which was a gathering space designed for socializing and conversation. So, as they imagine stepping into this work of art, stepping into this home or room of a home, they take in the designs of the most celebrated architect of his time. And then we move into this game of prompting social interaction through the use of mirrors.
Next, we think about movement, which I’ve been alluding to a great deal, given the significance of visitors’ personal responses to works of art. Again, turning to this, excuse me, phenomenological approach, knowledge comes from individual experience, and your perception is really tied to your positionality. If we think about John Dewey as well, who explained that perception always begins with sensory-motor coordination, where movement is paramount. Paintings for example, our physical movement may be necessitated to get a better grasp of the subject or the surface. I’m thinking of Monet for example. Similarly, sculpture is the case here, and I’ll come back to this example a little bit later, demands for spatial exploration.
So, we’re moving to take it in spatially, kinesthetically, intellectually, and of course that also engages our senses. So, as we’ve explored, the body is integral to the experience of art. Throughout the centuries, however, the sense of sight has been far too privileged in museums, even the term viewer is suggestive. However, all of the senses provide portals to engagement with art. Every work of art lends itself well to exploration, usually to more than one sense. We may even consider the ways in which we have a synesthetic response to art, where one sense crosses over to another. We may feel the texture of a sculpture, not with our hands, but maybe with our eyes.
Sense memory activities can also break open an artwork by inviting visitors to reflect on their own sensorial experiences from the past. So, in this image, we have van Gogh’s irises, and this immediately invites sensory exploration, even as the artist has immersed himself in a bed of flowers in a garden. So, we take a moment to carefully select an individual iris, consider its position, notice its form. And we hold our bodies like the flower, and we get as close to the lines and the shapes and the forms and the configurations, as much as possible. Thinking about what qualities of that flower we can feel in our bodies, imagining ourselves planted right there in the garden, growing right out of the earth. Imagining that the sun is beaming down upon us. So, we cultivate this kind of awareness, maybe even feeling into the breeze that’s gently moving through, that makes the painting almost feel like you can hear the leaves rustling around you, and maybe even take a moment to sway from side to side.
And finally, sometimes we see ourselves in works of art. Other times we try to grasp what the artist is communicating. And when we try to make sense of what others, what philosophers and psychologists have termed intersubjectivity, we actually perceive their feelings and intentions through their actions, through their gestures, not necessarily their mental states. So, we don’t merely try to figure out what they’re thinking, but we become aware of their unified body and psyche. We pay attention to and absorb the person’s movements, their appearance, their facial expressions. And this inner subjectivity speaks to empathy, emotions and the interconnectedness of life. In this choreography with the subjects in the artworks, we may empathize, but we can also feel repulsed at times. Even emotions are a form of movement and play, and we may be so lucky as to be moved by a work of art.
Which brings me too mindful looking. Mindful looking is conceived as an embodied approach to exploring works of art. The pedagogy combines principles from best practices in mindfulness meditation, dialogical interpretation, and activity-based explorations of art. The art experiences depend on the individual’s active participation in the process of curiosity, discovery and transformation. Moreover, mindful looking translates to a practice of applying these skills beyond the museum experience, offering opportunities to connect with us and each other. Museums are particularly well positioned for introducing or integrating mindfulness, as they are spaces where visitors, I hope, make a conscious effort to slow down, to engage more fully with art and with themselves. This is an image of a recent exhibition. It was a single gallery installation of the work of Helen Pashgian. And it’s a work that is very much about slowing down and reflecting. It changes over time because the lighting conditions move from light to dark on a cycle.
And as much as our work as educators is outward facing, I have wanted to turn that focus inward a little bit by offering an unprecedented opportunity to one of our most underserved audience areas, and that’s our staff. I arranged for the gallery to be open prior to public hours, so our colleagues across the institution could have an intimate, mindful experience. And over a hundred staff members came across 15 sessions. Some even came back three or four times, which was truly remarkable. On the last day, one colleague poignantly remarked, “What took me so long to arrive here?”
So, let’s do just that. Let’s take a moment now to arrive. If you are interested, and Ames beautifully invited you earlier, please do breathe. But if you’d like to just kind of breath on your own, that’s more than welcome. But just taking a moment to ground into our bodies, I’m going to guide us through a very brief mindful moment, a very brief meditation. It’s an abbreviated version of what I would do normally upwards of 20 or 60 minutes, but I know we’ve all been sort of go, go, go at this conference. I’m wondering how many of us have taken a moment to just notice one breath. I forgot to. Without judgment, just noticing it. So, let’s explore what it feels like to be still in our body. We’re going to practice a mountain meditation, and this is an invitation to find our inner strength, our balance, and help us maybe feel more calm and connected.
If you feel comfortable, you can close your eyes. If that’s not something you want to do today, that’s okay too. Just try to lower your gaze, so that you’re minimizing visual distraction. The idea is to really use this time to go inward. And for your posture, hold your body in a way that feels relaxed, yet alert. Again, whatever feels comfortable for you today. Take a moment to notice how your breath moves your body.
Notice the way the air moves in and out of your nostrils. Maybe you get curious about the temperature and the texture there. Notice the rise and fall of your chest with each in-breath and out-breath. Maybe your breath is deeper than that. No need to force or extend anything here, but you can feel it like a balloon inflating and deflating. Soft belly. And if your mind starts to wander, and know that that’s completely normal, your brain is doing its job. The objective is never too clear or empty the mind, but just become aware as any thoughts arise. And gently guide your attention back to your breath. And just doing the body scan here. So, from the crown of your head, scanning your body, noticing if there are any unnecessary points of tension or clenching that you can release. And start to feel into the surface upon which you’re seated or standing. See if you can feel held here. This chair, this floor, this room, this building, this piece of land, this city, this state, this country, this continent, this earth. Here we are, just floating in the universe.
Coming back into your body, notice how you feel right now. And if your eyes are closed, you can gently open them and bring your attention to the image that’s before us. And just keep in mind that we can learn a lot from mountains. They stand tall, they stand strong, they remain calm, peaceful hopefully. So, let’s explore what it’s like to be a mountain in this painting. Breathe deeply. Hold your body upright and still and strong, vast and wide. Lift the crown of your head like the peak of the mountain, skyward. With your shoulders back, you can imagine your arms sloping like the mountainside, your palms like the valleys, your seat solid beneath you. Be the mountain, whole and unwavering in your inner stillness. Take a deep breath of that fresh air. Thank you.
And that brings me to the final component of this, which is our Art Impact: Mindfulness program. Art Impact: Mindfulness is a multi-visit museum education program for teens, that was first piloted at the Getty Museum in the early part of 2022, and will be now, I’m happy to say, returning on a more regular, biannual basis. Art Impact, again, engenders these contemplative and embodied experiences that allow for open and curious, and sometimes profound engagement with works of art, through the integration of mindfulness, meditation and art experience. This program was the result of many years of research and preparation. It’s a testament to collaboration and has been invaluable to us as an education department, as we work to integrate more mindfulness practices into a wide spectrum of programming.
Art Impact provides opportunities for youth to connect to artwork on a deeper level, by providing safe and accessible spaces for reflection, for self-discovery, for sharing and meaning making. The Getty found an incredible partner in Artworks LA, which is an organization that serves alternative education for high school students, for many decades. And they already had an infrastructure in place that really dovetailed nicely with the aims of our program. They had a group of interns who were part of their advanced programs, which offers after-school residencies and creative pathways workshops. So, this partnership really worked for us both. The program took place across eight sessions, which included a pre and post-visit… Virtual visits, excuse me. To introduce the mindfulness practice, to set expectations for subsequent visits, hold open forums, and also discuss resources for integrating and deepening practice beyond the museum program. Our youth programs team handled all of the logistics, the transportation, the meals, and getting everyone organized, being a point of contact for the interns that were visiting our site.
And that meant that they had to arrive to the Getty very early, between 9:00 and 9:30. The relatively early start time was really to allow for the group to experience the Getty Galleries at their quietest, before opening to the public. Having that kind of space, both physically and mentally, was really optimal, especially for meditative practice, especially for teens who were new to meditative practice. And it was essential for setting the tone for the experience. We followed up the in-gallery mindfulness experience with some independent exploration time. Then we had lunch in various locations around the site. After that, we met in the boardroom to discuss the experience and really have some time for reflection. And we also used this time to share out any kind of mindful moment that I asked them to integrate between sessions. The programs themselves followed a pretty consistent structure. I will just briefly share what we covered throughout.
So, this was our first session on-site, which would be session two. We began with a body scan, bringing that kind of sensory exploration to Vincent Van Gogh’s irises, again, imagining that we’re moving into the garden, becoming the flowers. In the following session, we explored Edvard Munch’s, Starry Night, through a blue light visualization. Selecting any shade of blue, participants would imagine that as light washing over their bodies, different parts of the bodies. And this mindfulness meditation was also followed by embodiment exercises, which is what you see here. We’re imagining that we’re moving into the landscape. In our fourth session, we headed outdoors to explore mindful walking in our largest work of art, which is the Central Garden by Robert Irwin. And this was a multi-sensory experience. Again, thinking about the affordance of the garden. That’s what the artist had in mind. So really tapping into that. We extended the idea of mindful movement to the following week, as we explored Ed Ruscha’s, Picture Without Words, pairing light beam visualization with that walking meditation.
In our sixth meeting, we continue to build on these previous sessions on mindful movement and embodiment activities, with George Rickey’s, Three Squares Gyratory, outdoors. So, in teams, the teams, the participants mirror different elements of the sculpture in their bodies, noticing the subtlety of movement in this kinetic work of art that moves, depending on the wind. It could be a light breeze; it could be a strong wind. So, they’re really responding with nuanced action. And in our penultimate session, which was our final session on site, we practiced a loving-kindness meta-meditation in concert with Jean Francois Millet’s, Man with a Hoe, to cultivate compassion and empathy in ourselves and each other. So, week after week, I was selecting works of art that tied to more traditional mindfulness meditation practices. And these were informed by the essential characteristics of mindfulness-based programs or MVPs, scaffolding their learning experience.
And here they are in the galleries with their independent exploration time. And our partner remarked that it was during this time that the interns really found each other and the artworks. Just wanted to share some of our core values around which we built trust in this program. So, to be present and attentive, curious, non-judgmental, respectful, and authentic. We were careful to develop a thorough evaluation plan from start to finish, that incorporated pre and post-program surveys, focus groups, brief weekly check-in surveys, filmed interviews and feedback from our colleagues and partners at Artworks LA, all of that is available online, I’ll have a QR code at the end, to really measure some of these qualities. And Art Impact, participants really reported significant increases in the following areas: curiosity, enjoyment of our awareness, focus. They were able to apply their practices and be more open to new experiences. They also reported back that their knowledge about art and mindfulness-related terms increased as a result of the program. Their comfort level in talking about art and being in a museum space like the Getty, increased as a result of their participation, and just their overall enjoyment and understanding.
I’ll end with this quote by one of our participants because I think Art Impact, more than anything, changed the lives of our communities, improving their mental health, their wellbeing. We heard this from them when they shared about how some of the practices we learned, they put into practice for test taking or helping calm their nerves or helping younger siblings. But this one really has stuck with me throughout. “I just find myself asking more questions. I wonder more. There’s so much to wonder about.” Thank you.
Ames Morton-Winter:
Thank you, Lilit. Well, I’m so relaxed. I highly recommend starting with some box breathing and a mindful mountain meditation before presenting at work, doing anything that’s stressful. All right. So, I mentioned before that I was a classroom teacher. I am relatively new to the museum space, having taught for more than two decades. As I was studying and exploring ideas surrounding impactful educational programs, ideas and questions related to trust building and relationship building just kept popping up for me. As a teacher, a lot of my impact came from developing that trust and that relationship first, and social-emotional next. And then the content kind of followed that. So, I found myself asking these questions about trust and impact, and I started just keeping lists and Excel sheets and files of ideas that seem to address some of these things. It culminated in an educational framework for responsive programming that I’m going to share in a minute.
But while I was sort of gathering all this information and these ideas, and trying to make sense of it in my own brain, I learned about Lilit and her colleagues program at the Getty, the Art Impact program, and just the skills and the relationships that they could build among participants, and between participants and the museum. So, it impacted me. So later, as I started my role at the Ringling, I reached out to Lilit. So don’t ever be scared to do that because I just cold emailed her and said, “You don’t know me, but I think you’re awesome and I would love to learn more about your program, and I would love to replicate it at the Ringling.” And so, with Katie’s support and my team’s support at the Ringling, I developed our own version of the Art Impact program. So, there were some similarities and differences.
We did cooperate with a community partner. And as Lilit mentioned, that made a huge difference, having that sort of buy-in from a group. One of our favorite groups in the Sarasota area, Girls Inc., which sort of empowers young girls through all sorts of different programs and activities that they do, were our group. We had about 15 girls, all ages, 12 to 15 years old. So, I have since obtained mindfulness and meditation certification, but at the time, I was newer to the practice. And so, I did contract out specialized facilitators. And we have so many people in our area who were experts in their fields. And even though we are repeating… Even though I have obtained a certification, we’re going to do it the same way because I was just so impressed by their facilitation. So, we’re doing it again this summer, and we’re going to do that in that same manner.
And then we incorporated visual journaling and a lot of art making. So, when they arrived, they would have some sort of creative flow art activity, and then that was how the day ended. And these, we were only able to schedule a four-part instead of an eight-part. These were sort of what I homed in on, sort of looking at the Art Impact program and trying to distill it down. So, we did color and emotion, we did movement, we did yoga and breathing, and sound.
Our daily schedule looked a little bit like this, a little mini art project. When they arrived, I led a mindful moment and a setting of intentions and going over the schedule for the day. For about an hour, we would go in and do the in-gallery experiences, and we had gallery exploration and visual journaling, and then we ended with more art making, lunch, and that reflection time. As we mentioned, we’re on 66 acres, so it’s a big thing to open up the museum early. But we did obtain permission to close galleries.
So, we really activated our different galleries and our different venues and were able to close them for 30 to 40 minutes at a time. Usually, the facilitators went to a couple different spots, and we were able to, with stanchions and signage, close those galleries. And it really makes them, just as Lilit was describing in the morning, being there early and being the only ones, closing those galleries and really giving them some private space… Because we’re asking them to do some things that are personal, maybe new to them, and having that sort of private area made them feel special, and I think gave them a level of comfort.
So, during this experience, I collected weekly qualitative data from the participants, and we had almost a hundred percent satisfaction rate, with the main criticism being they wanted more time for independent gallery exploration. And it’s interesting you say that, that that was a time when they were really bonding, because that is a time when they were bonding. And you can see in this picture previously, up here, up on the left-hand side, she’s independently… She’s in our glass pavilion, she’s doing visual journaling, we’ve got art making, the mindful walking, and then the facilitator here in the bottom. So that independent time, that was what they wanted. So, they also expressed that they learned a lot about mindfulness and helped them look more closely, be more present. The only kind of switch I’m going to do this coming June when we do it again, is I’m going to try to do a little bit better job I feel like connecting the tenets of mindfulness.
I feel like they understood how you use art to be more present, and to look deeply and closely, but how that can be taken into their lives. But they did leave with supplies. They left with their own yoga mat. And these are just some things that they shared. “I really enjoyed the yoga. It was nice to do yoga in different places throughout the grounds. I love how we had the creative freedom to create what makes us happy.” “The dancing, yoga and focusing have been so powerful.” “I loved what I learned about how to be mindful in my life.” “It made me want to change how the world is coming apart.” “I wish we could do this forever.” And then, “I want to be an intern here. Please call me.”
So, with a program like this, it reinforced these ideas surrounding programs that enhance social-emotional learning, and reinforcing skills that might be taken out into the world. And a multi-part program offered those opportunities for trust-building that I was used to as a classroom teacher. But most of my programs do not follow this model. Most of my programs are one-off, short programs. They often involve fleeting interaction, a one-hour gallery experience, an art-making program, a workshop. So sometimes we have regulars, but usually it’s just a one-time visit. Maybe they’re tourists, maybe they’re just coming for a new activity and then that’s their one experience. So, they are usually fleeting interactions. So as I mentioned, as I finished my degree program and I transitioned from the school classroom to the museum as a classroom, I found myself without those familiar frameworks or guidelines that are sometimes a pain and often too constricting, but that, generally speaking, are researched and grounded in educational theory, of theories of learning, grade level standards, child development markers, and for better or for worse, made at least some of the decisions about what to deliver and sometimes how.
So, I wondered if I could create a guiding framework, even if it was just for my own use, making sense of all these things I had been learning and observing, that took in the special circumstances of museum educators in mind. Things like fleeting interactions or largely object-based learning, as well as learning theories most applicable to museum education. And create a guide to try to choose the best, most impactful programs to build trust, honor diverse perspectives, and just move that needle for the visitor in some way, just beyond that tour, that traditional sort of knowledge transfer, kind of fill the container. So, I created a framework called Visitor Response Pedagogies. This framework leans heavily into social-emotional learning. And just to give you the two-second version, I started with learning theory.
I leaned really heavily into constructivist and transformative theories of learning. I considered inclusion, social-emotional learning and the transferable skills that are associated with that kind of learning. And then I identified activities that I had experienced, I had used or created as a teacher, read about, done at a museum myself, or just observed, and measured them sort of according to these criteria. And if they met at least four or five of the skills that I identified, my assertion was or is, that they might for some people, encourage growth in some individuals and move the needle for them in some way.
So, these are the skills that I homed in on. And I’ll just provide a really quick overview. What do I mean by transferable skills? I mean skills that are utilized in many forms of learning, so skills that they could take with them somewhere else, out into their lives. So, I focused in on, and the ones that I kept identifying, were a close looking observation, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, empathy, self-awareness, and active listening. And by the way, mindfulness activities like Art Impact or the Teen Mindfulness program at the Ringling, addresses all seven of these skills. So, I thought we could take a few minutes and try a few more of the exercise that I identify as VRP activities. VRP activities are really easy to implement. They require few or no materials. They can be implemented with all kinds of objects, at all kinds of museums, with a wide range of ages.
So, we’re going to start with six-word stories. I don’t know if any of you are familiar with the whole six-word craze. I used this method all the time when I was a teacher, to encourage my students to think critically and succinctly, which is actually a really, really hard thing to do, and it can be challenging. So, one of the most important, famous six-word stories is by Ernest Hemingway, who wrote, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” So that is one that many people know. So, we’re going to use this painting as your inspiration, and I’m going to give you a couple minutes to write a six-word narrative or a story.
It might be a collection of feelings, a scenario you imagine happening here. It can be anything at all. It doesn’t have to be a complete sentence. And I’m going to give you a few minutes. Then I’m going to ask you to turn and talk to a neighbor, and you all can share if you would like. All right. So, if anybody needs a pencil or something to write with, or a piece of paper, just go like this and I’ll come by. But yeah, I’ll give you a few minutes to do this.
Is there anybody who has one that they’re excited about? They would like to share it. I’d love to hear a few. All right. Okay. “Help. Where is the dog’s food?” Love that. I see that. Anybody else? Yeah.
I love that. Yeah, you can relate to it, right? Trying to get people positioned in the right way. And there is such interesting body shapes and positioning in this piece. Anybody else? Yeah. Yeah, because it does look like he’s sort of trying to control… Anyone else? Yes.
Speaker 4:
The family dynamic is fairly fraught.
Ames Morton-Winter:
I love that. “The family dynamic is fairly fraught.” Mine is a little… I don’t know why, I see something sad in it, and I wrote, “Lost, but holding strong without you.” It felt like maybe there was a figure that should be there, that isn’t. But anyway, thank you for sharing. I really appreciate it, and I love all the different perspectives. So also, something that addresses all seven transferable skills.
So, we’re going to use the same piece and we’re going to try something really different. This is kind of a variation on something called one word, where you’re just asking for a really quick response from visitors who are maybe looking at a piece and you ask one word. So, we’re going to do this and we’re going to do it in the form of naming feelings. You’re going to take another moment and look, and you’re going to look at those body emotions, body positions, emotions, expressions, eyes, gazes. And being able to tap into yourself and maybe see something reflected in a painting, is a really interesting skill to explore.
You can also open it up to emotions that maybe you feel as you look at the painting, and that kind of furthers that sort of creation of trust and community among even a group of strangers that don’t know each other. So, I’m going to give you a minute, and if you just want to think or even jot down a few emotions that you see in these pieces and these people, these figures in this painting. I’ll give you a minute to do that, and then I’m going to tell you how we’re going to share. So, we’re going to try this as a soundscape. So, I’ll say begin and then you all can just start sharing what you see in this painting. So, let’s begin.
Speaker 5:
[inaudible 00:50:02].
Ames Morton-Winter:
Yes. Thank you. That was really cool. I love that. We’re going to try the soundscape one more time, but in a different way. And this will be the last activity that I do with you, and then I’m going to pass it on to Katie. We are going to use this piece, and we’re going to do another version of a soundscape at the end, but what I would like you to do is take a moment to imagine stepping into this painting, and really think about all of your senses. See, feel, hear, smell, taste. And just think silently at first, and then we’re going to do a similar thing with the soundscape. And as I call out the senses, again, not worrying about raising hands, not worrying about talking over people, you’ll call out what you see or hear, or what you imagine you would hear, or what you imagine you might taste. And you could even make a sound.
If you heard a sound and you wanted to make that sound, you could do that too. And then together we’re going to create a sensory soundscape. And this is just a really novel way to close look. It builds trust in community and may be a memory that somebody takes with them, even if they’re among a group of strangers that they don’t know. All right, so I’m going to give you a minute to close look, and then I’m going to start calling out the senses, and then you can voice your ideas.
I’ll begin. See.
Feel.
Smell.
Hear.
Taste.
It’s good. All right, thank you so much for doing that with us. All right. So, as I wrap up, I do have a book. It’s called Purposeful Programming using Visitor Response Pedagogies. And in it, I provide museum highlights, simple lesson plans for different types of museums, an A-to-Z toolkit, which I listed here. This list keeps growing. But it’s really intended to be a book that is a teacher, that I wanted to just be able to grab and flip through for an idea or an inspiration, and just new, different ways of delivering programming in museums. We’ve already and will be doing a couple others. So, by the time you leave here in a few minutes, you will have explored or experienced a bunch of things already on the list. So, thank you so much for letting me talk about building trust using visitor response pedagogies, and talking about trust with these short and fleeting interactions that we often have when we do programming at museums. And with that, I’m going to pass things over to Dr. Katie Nickel.
Katie Nickel:
All right. So, I’m now to talk to all of you about applying some of these ideas that Lilit and Ames just shared, very specifically with an out-of-sector audience. So to kind of give a quick introduction, really when we think beyond the casual museum visitor, we also know as museum educators, that we often find ourselves working with a very specific audience, who enter into partnerships with us with their own objectives, their own learning goals, and their own sort of knowledge systems, that we may not always have full access to. So, I’ll be talking about a case study that builds trust with a very specific audience in mind. The audience I’ll share is healthcare leaders. However, I’ll also be offering some advice and frameworks that I think are very helpful in the ways that we might approach any out-of-sector partnership that comes in with their own learning goals. To give you an idea of what we’ll talk about, I’m going to introduce, what on earth is cultural humility?
This is a concept from out of our field. I’ll also talk a little bit about how we might build trust with these out-of-sector audiences. And many of them are skeptical, they are skeptics coming in. So, we’ll talk about that. And then also, how can we incorporate some of these beyond the tour types of learning engagements within our museum? Especially with an audience that often comes in actually expecting a tour and to be given information from an expert, which is us as the museum educator. So, to start off, I wanted to just briefly introduce the theory of cultural humility, which is a theory that suggests that cultural learning is a lifelong process.
This really takes the idea of cultural relevancy, cultural competency, which are terms that often get thrown about in the field of education, a little bit further. Rather than something that can be achieved in a one- or two-time workshop, or by listening to a really incredible TED Talk, cultural humility is something that we must dedicate ourselves to each and every day. This theory is really built upon five key attributes, with what is, I think one of the world’s worst theoretical models that I’ve ever seen in my life. Obviously not created by a museum person. However, I’ll break it down for you really quickly and then I’ll show you a better one.
But this is the official one, so I wanted to have it up here. But these five attributes are being open, a culture of openness, being self-aware, being intentionally ego-less, using critical self-reflection often, and seeking out supportive dialogues and interactions with diverse individuals. And you do this throughout your life, with the idea that there are highs and there are lows. This is a little bit of a better model, if you wanted to take a quick photo of this. But to be really quick, this is really looking at that lifelong process that leads into exploring how power dynamics, specifically in the healthcare field, work.
The theory of cultural humility was developed actually within the healthcare setting. There are two key models. I’m using one from nursing education, but there’s another model that is very similar, from the field of psychology. And I originally found this model as a way to approach arts and health programming with healthcare professionals, in a way that may resonate with them and their learning goals and their vocabularies that they’re coming in with. But also staying very true to the power of meaning-making and just that magic that can happen in an informal, art museum, learning environment.
And so, when I think about building public trust with these specific audiences, I’m also thinking about, we’re not just building trust with maybe 10 to 20 people in the program. If you can build effective trust with those 10 to 20 people, they go out and they spread that within their own communities. And oftentimes, if you’re working with an out-of-sector audience, you’re thinking that these are communities that largely are not coming to our institution. So, the area of impact can be quite large. In our museum at least, and I’m sure for many of you as well, word of mouth is one of our most effective marketing tools. So, we have a real opportunity when working with out-of-sector audiences to be really effective spokespeople for our museum in our community. So, these are just some pieces of advice that I found really useful when I was first forging relationships with healthcare leaders in our community and has since really impacted the way that I approach out-of-sector partnership building holistically.
So, I just wanted to quickly go through them before we get into our case study here. First, it is so important to seek out your own understanding of that group’s values, needs, what their workflow looks like, what’s their timeline for turnaround look like. We can’t make any assumptions on what’s motivating people to come and partner with us. I think it’s also really important to spend time at your partner’s location. When you work at a museum, and I work at a really beautiful museum with a cafe, and it’s very inviting for many people, they want to come to me. But I actually want to come to them, because I think that that builds trust in a way that I value where they are, and I value the communities that they are serving. This is always a good idea, just eat with someone. It’s amazing what kind of trust can be built when you share a meal.
Also, it’s important to share that authority, we talk a lot about sharing authority in our field, and to develop these programs collaboratively. This was particularly important with a healthcare audience, because they do come in with extremely precise learning goals that they would like to measure quantitatively. But it’s helpful in all areas. And then finally, seeking to find that common ground to sharing and understanding each other’s perspectives. And I learned a lot of lessons, sometimes the hard way. For example, when I first started working with healthcare professionals, I confused a DNP with an NPD, which means nothing to us, but one of those people has a very serious doctorate degree that they spent a lot of time and money getting, and the other person is a nurse practitioner. And so, it was a really rough rate to figure out like, “Oh, I need to actually learn the vocabulary that is common in their field,” that you may not think about as applicable to the museum field.
So briefly, I’d like to introduce a case study, just as Lilit and Ames had, and mine is called Artful Leadership. And this was a three-part program that we did at the Ringling for Healthcare leaders. It was a professional development training. These three sessions took place in person at the museum. We held a session virtually on Zoom, and then we actually took the third session to the hospital, with the express goal that the participants would then be extending and bringing their learning that they gained in the museum setting, directly into their place of practice, really solidifying that neural pathway of place and being and embodiment. Our objective was to ward against burnout by developing that same cultural humility that we talked about.
And for anyone who’s interested in this theory of cultural humility, you’ll find a lot of research on how it’s being achieved in an educational classroom setting. And despite the very obvious connection to art and to museum informal learning environments, there had been no studies done with how this might interact with the humanities. So, I’m going to talk really briefly through some of the activities that we did through this presentation. We’re going to try one or two of them out, depending on time, and then we’re going to get right to your questions for all three of us.
So, in our first session, we were located in the museum itself, and we actually began with VTS or visual thinking strategies. And the selection of VTS as a part of this particular program was very intentional. And that is because VTS is that area of common ground between museum education and healthcare education. It’s actually something that a lot of healthcare providers are trained in and practice, to develop empathy, to develop observational skills, with nurses, with pre-med students, really running the gamut of healthcare professionals. So, it was the natural common ground in which to start. It was something that our people were somewhat familiar with, and it’s something that works obviously very well in our museum. Jumping into the next, we developed an activity called Multiple Interpretations. And this is something that we developed at the Ringling, to be able to introduce these different concepts of bias in healthcare, of perceived bias, and also the importance of group observation and not relying on the sole source of observation in a clinical setting. So, I thought we would try this one out, depending on time. Am I good on time?
I will explain it to you very briefly. How about that? And you can try it all at your own institution. So Multiple Interpretations is something that the museum educator needs to invest a little bit of time in. So, I’ll show you our interpretations in a moment. And I write these interpretations. This is museum educator written interpretations, but they’re actually rooted in art historical scholarship. Meaning that your needs to choose a work of art that is somewhat ambiguous in meaning, that does have a lot of robust scholarship around it and has multiple possible interpretations that are accepted by our field. So, the way we use this activity is, we typically group people into a few different groups. I give the healthcare workers an interpretation to work on, and they’re tasked with finding three pieces of visual evidence from the work of art, that defend the interpretation that they have been given.
So, you can kind of see how this leads into defending a bias. So, we have some really rich conversations about that. In case anyone is interested, because we obviously like this painting at the Ringling, it’s very big, it’s in a very big gallery, it’s great for teaching, these are the interpretations that we’ve written. And again, we actually don’t know which one of these is most correct, which really infuriates a healthcare worker who love to be correct about everything. So, it’s a really great practice in the tolerance of ambiguity. So, this always wraps up with a debrief. So that’s just a word of advice. If you ever work with any kind of healthcare audience, always include a debrief. Ask them the meta-conversation of, “Why do you think we just did this activity in an art museum? As a group of healthcare professionals, what can you bring with you into your practice?” That moment to debrief is incredibly important to this audience.
Our first session included so many different gallery activities, including a mindful looking, using the five senses. You may recognize that particular painting from the sensory soundscape that you all just so beautifully performed for us all. But we do use some mindfulness tactics with this group. And again, these are transferable skills that they can bring back with them into their practice in the hospital, which is a very stressful environment. We’re going to go ahead and skip this one as well, but who doesn’t want to look at these beautiful Rosa Bonheur oxen again? They’re just so delicious. All right. Finally, our last activity in session one is the Personal Responses Tour. And this is an activity that was originally developed by Ray Williams, for healthcare workers, but has a really… It’s so much fun to use this with any kind of audience. The way a personal responses tour works is, everybody who is part of the program gets their own unique prompt.
When working with a healthcare audience, you write these prompts with your healthcare sort of liaison, the person you’re in partnership with. These prompts can be anything from, “Find a work of art that for you, embodies some element of peace. Defend your choice.” Or “Find a work of art that reminds you of a difficult time at work. Why did you choose this piece and what has it brought to you today?” So, you’re asking them to be very vulnerable with themselves, with each other. And then the individual folk’s kind of build the tour. So, you kind of go through the museum, everybody shares their prompt, everybody shares why they chose that work of art, and it becomes this really beautiful moment of vulnerability and sharing amongst the group.
On our second session for this particular program, we held this one online because it was just easier for everyone’s schedule, but this works really great in the museum too. We used an idea called narrative medicine. And you can kind of read its definition on the screen here, so I won’t read it out for you verbatim. But narrative medicine is an activity, a humanities-based activity that was actually developed within the healthcare community but has a lot of wonderful applications for us as museum educators. There’s a lot of different points of access here. So, between the healthcare provider and the patient, for example, narrative medicine can improve the way that a healthcare provider works towards empathetic engagement, and then of course, improved patient outcomes. So, there’s a lot of different ways that narrative medicine interacts between people. So, it’s not just between healthcare provider and patient, but it’s also between the provider and the larger healthcare team.
It’s also between the provider and the public, and perceived public trust in the field of medicine. And then I think most interestingly, it also helps promote the healthcare provider’s own understanding and sense of self. And this is very important when working towards burnout. So, this one we are going to try. So narrative medicine, there’s so many ways to engage with this, and if you’re interested in this, I absolutely could take an entire hour to introduce the literature and how it’s used in practice, to you. And we just don’t have that. So instead, we’re going to just do a very quick, 55-word story in collaboration with each other.
So, the very first thing I’d love for you all to do is grab your pens and pencils, and we’re going to do some free writing for a moment, answering this prompt. And free writing means just write literally any and every word that comes to your mind for about 60 straight seconds. So don’t stop writing, don’t stop looking. You’re just going to spit out everything that comes into your brain. And the prompt that I’d like for you to write about please, is to write about this man’s well-being story. So, I’ll give you about 60 seconds to do that.
All right. And now we’re going to write a short poem, and I thought it would be fun to do it together. Now in this program, I’m pretty militant about sticking to 55 words. If you show me a 54-word poem, you did not follow the prompt. However, in the spirit of this is the end of the day, and it’s been a very long conference, I’ll forgive you all if you don’t quite get to 55 words or if you find yourself particularly verbose. But if you could find a partner or two, in small groups, let’s go ahead and use your collective, free-write, vocabulary list and assemble a poem. You can add extra words in there too. But answer a poem in a more poetic, artistic way that again, answers this prompt. What is this man’s well-being story? What kind of a story can you talk about him? So, I’ll give you all just a couple of minutes to work on that together, and then I’ll ask for maybe one or two folks to share out if you’re feeling brave.
All right. And we will bring it back together as a large group. Would anyone be willing to share the poem that your group just wrote collaboratively and brilliantly, in about three and a half minutes? Would anyone like to share your poem? You just have what? That’s okay. That’s art. That’s art right there, baby. Would anyone like to share your list of words then? How about that? Yeah, please go ahead.
Speaker 6:
I’ll share. “Old man [inaudible 01:11:15].”
Katie Nickel:
Nice. We have a whole backstory going on here. You’re really digging into this man’s life. Nice.
Speaker 7:
She had that take, and I came out with, “My like has been well-bred. I have my Buggles to dine on. I’ve returned in the outside in lulls, lurry with my tossed hair and any goal already paced. Honest, be one.”
Katie Nickel:
And it’s interesting, we get that a lot in healthcare too, when I give them this prompt in this particular work of art. It’s amazing how quick nurses will go into diagnosing this person. They’re like, “Well, you look at those veins on his hand, and that means…” All these things that I have no idea what they’re talking about. But it is interesting how we can all look at the same thing and have these different perspectives of someone’s health, which is really helpful when you do this with a group of healthcare workers. Anyone else burning to share their poem or their artistic list with us?
Speaker 8:
I did one.
Katie Nickel:
Please. Yeah. What did you all do?
Speaker 8:
“Tossed and drew it. I can’t hold it in. I can’t be vulnerable but need someone to be vulnerable with. This man has never known material discomfort, but he has known law and loneliness. He holds his own hand, imagine you’ll never.”
Katie Nickel:
That was profound. That was profound, everyone.
Speaker 8:
It was a sad poem kind of.
Katie Nickel:
You really are. On that slightly depressing note… No, it’s all good. Well, what’s interesting about narrative medicine is, it is designed very specifically to elicit empathy, in a healthcare worker in which is often burned out and often is very disconnected from the empathetic side of their job. And so, it’s a really wonderful activity. It takes nine times as long as we just spent with it to do properly in a gallery, as I’m sure you can see. But when done well, it’s really transformative for this particular audience. So just to wrap up my area of presentation, we did have some key findings from this particular program, which I did use for my dissertation. So, it’s like real research, which is very fun. But we did find that cultural humility can be developed through engagement with the arts. And this is something that was new to the healthcare field.
So that’s something that I think is really exciting. We also found, somewhat surprisingly, that the arts can promote leadership and communication skills that I did not realize are not typically taught in the healthcare leadership professional development pipeline. The art of looking, the act of leadership, the act of communication is often assumed for leaders in those roles, and they are often not great at it.
So, it’s a really important partnership that we can help them with. And then finally, participants did report high levels of transferable skills back to their workplace, along with feelings of respite and well-being, which I think really support the work that Lilit and Ames are doing, with that idea that art can create these transferable skills moments, and really help center and ground people as they’re looking through works of art. So, I wanted to go ahead and make sure that you had access to all of our emails. We’d love to continue the conversation. And we do have quite a few minutes for questions. So, if anyone has questions, I think for accessibility, we would love for you to come and use the microphone if possible, or we can run one around, or you can just be very loud. But anyone, any questions for any of us? Yeah.
Speaker 9:
I’m wondering if your work with the healthcare [inaudible 01:15:03].
Katie Nickel:
That’s okay.
Speaker 9:
I’m wondering if your work with healthcare [inaudible 01:15:07] work with other sectors? And then my second question, do you find that the meaning, the mindfulness work that you’re doing can be translated for younger or older audience?
Katie Nickel:
Yeah, I’ll answer really quickly. Right now, the past five years, I’ve been working with a lot of different types of healthcare partners in this work specifically. So new nurses, nursing leaders, medical students, and established professionals. And it works for all of them. We have had a little bit less experience bringing a lot of these programs out to general audiences, but we do use a lot of this, maybe not narrative medicine, but we do use a lot of these activities on general tours to great success. So even using the personal responses tours with groups of teens or a group of strangers coming in, can be a really fun and engaging way to help people think about looking at art differently.
Ames Morton-Winter:
And then, I don’t know if you want to respond to that as well, but yes, I’ve been working a lot… I actually work a lot with littles. So, I mentioned we often start with breathing. We’ve been exploring topics of mindfulness. I’ve been doing this largely through either gallery, family gallery talks, or creating something for them to take to the… If I’m highlighting a piece with an art making activity, having them take something into the gallery. So maybe I’m asking them to do a sensory exploration on their own, or a 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 breathing activity, or a sketching activity. And trying to do more of that, where I can facilitate a family experience or a caregiver and a child experience, and trying to incorporate a little bit more. The families are really, really receptive. I recently focused on a book with my little ones that were three and four, and it was called The Places in Between. And it was about places you could go to find calm. And they highlighted museum spaces in the story. So yeah, want to do more. But…
Lilit Sadoyan:
Yes. Similarly, I’ve incorporated mindful moments into school tours. And then I do have a drop-in program called Mindful Moment in the museum, that’s for the general public, that visitors can just join me in. And sort of along the lines of what Katie was sharing about healthcare professionals, this is a new audience area for us too. I recently piloted a workshop wherein I incorporated mindfulness for medical students, recently graduated medical students. I’ve also incorporated it into a pilot workshop for conservators. So, exploring the reciprocity between mindfulness and conservation practice. And they’re of course adults. But yeah, practicing professionals as well as general public visitors.
Katie Nickel:
Thank you. Any other questions? Yeah.
Speaker 10:
So, you spoke about working with littles, and then you spoke about mindfulness. And I said you were bringing in contractors to come and do these type of thing. I’m in a museum and so, this very interesting and I love the fact that you had a [inaudible 01:18:38] and everything, because that calm everybody up. But how would you do that, especially when you’re doing a cultural kind of thing with other people? So, our museum doesn’t have a lot of artworks. I don’t have a lot of other things in there. And I just want to figure out how to incorporate that and how [inaudible 01:19:02].
Ames Morton-Winter:
Great. Those are good questions. Yeah. So, as I mentioned at the time, I think the area of mindfulness has always been one that I’ve been interested in, but I didn’t really have any kind of credentialing in it. So yes, for a specialized program where I’m saying, “This is a mindfulness program,” for me, I felt most comfortable… Lilit has a lot more experience, more years of doing it. So, I felt most comfortable for something like yoga, for example, bringing in a facilitator. I 100% think you can do mindfulness activities with all kinds of artifacts. I don’t know if you remember the photo of the girl’s doing yoga. We actually were using wagon wheel artifacts that are mounted on the wall as our inspiration. The girls were put in a circle position. The yoga teacher that I brought in created this sort of… Yoga positions are often sort of displayed in a wheel. And so, she taught them about 10 different positions in a wheel format.
Katie Nickel:
I’m going to find it.
Ames Morton-Winter:
I think it… Keep… There we go. Yeah, so you can see the pieces. So, she was really focusing on that circle and coming back around, and yoga as a practice where you’re moving through a series of positions around a circle, and she brought in those wheels. So, I definitely think there are all kinds of objects for contemplation, and it doesn’t have to be a painting by any stretch.
Lilit Sadoyan:
I’d love to add to that because it’s such a beautiful description there of how you integrated the practice with the object, that this is a really important component of activity-based teaching, is that the activities always grow uniquely out of the objects. So, they’re in response to something about the subject, the composition, the material. There’s always something about the work of art that the practice is grounded in. So, like Ames said, I think it doesn’t necessarily need to be a painting. If you’re working with other cultural artifacts, there are absolutely ways in.
Katie Nickel:
We’re almost at five o’clock on the dot. Any final questions for the good of the group? Great. Well, we are happy to hang around for a couple of moments. If you have more questions, please come up and meet us. But thank you so much for sticking with us to the bitter ends.
Lilit Sadoyan:
Thank you everyone.
This recording is generously supported by The Wallace Foundation.
