Community Engagement & Impact

How Museums Can Help Increase Voter Registration

By Caitlin Donnelly

Every election year, millions of Americans find themselves unable to vote because they miss a registration deadline, do not update their registration, or are unsure how to register. Our democracy suffers because of this, when participation …
“Most Americans are trapped in a history that they do not understand”

By Carla Galfano

The final keynote speaker at this year’s AAM Annual Meeting In New Orleans was Jose Antonio Vargas, author of Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist, filmmaker, and founder and CEO of the …
The Power of a Story Well Told

By Bill Tramposch

We all know the power of a story well told. One example: the books that became the Odyssey and the Iliad were told orally long before they appeared in book form. Imagine—so powerfully memorable were those tales that even in their great …
Monday Musing: Managed Retreat

By Elizabeth Merritt

Did you know that over a third (34.6 percent) of US museums sit are within 100 kilometers of the coast? A quarter of those are in areas that score very high on the Coastal Vulnerability Index, meaning they face high risk from rising sea …
How the MAP Program Helped the expERIEnce Children’s Museum Move Full Steam Ahead

By Ainslie Brosig

When I became the executive director of the expERIEnce Children’s Museum in 2013, the museum was seeing tremendous growth in attendance and reinventing itself in the community. With these changes afoot, it was important to me and the rest …
Explore How Museums Can Rebuild Public Trust

By Elizabeth Merritt

Would you like to explore how museums can use their superpower of trust? This new video and discussion guide about “Truth, Trust, and Fake News”—the first chapter in CFM’s TrendsWatch 2019—is designed for use by museum studies programs, …
2019 Award Winner for Innovation in Museum Education: Vizcaya’s Urban Farming School Program

By Diana Peña

The EdCom Award for Innovation in Museum Education recognizes, encourages, and celebrates new, creative ways of engaging with audiences. Vizcaya Museum and Gardens‘ Urban Farming School Program was lauded by the judges for engaging …
Confronting a Painful History: How a museum partnered with its Native community to educate the public about an offensive place name

By Michele Graves

The Black Rock Historical Society (BRHS) is a volunteer organization on the west side of Buffalo, NY, formed in 2013 around the two-hundredth anniversary of the War of 1812 and chartered with the New York State Education Department in …
We, the Aged, Are an Integral Part of the Community

By Ken Gorbey

In April, while on a visit to New Zealand, I convened seven highly-respected Kiwi colleagues in Wellington to discuss creative aging. I asked two questions of the participants: How might our museums be more sensitive and responsive to the …
2019 Award Winner for Innovation in Museum Education: Wa kuk wa jimor (“Canoe of One Community”)

By Allyn Lord

The EdCom Award for Innovation in Museum Education recognizes, encourages, and celebrates new, creative ways of engaging with audiences. The Shiloh Museum of Ozark History’s approach to collaborating with the local Marshallese …