Community Engagement
Feeding the Spirit: Museums, Food and Community
American Alliance of Museums
The Alliance’s Center for the Future of Museums shares a guide to help museums promote food literacy, make their food services healthy and sustainable, and use food to build community.
Innovation Lab for Museums
American Alliance of Museums
Museums need to innovate in order to successfully navigate the rapidly changing landscape of the 21st Century. In order to encourage museums to experiment and take risks, AAM partnered with EmcArts to offer Innovation Lab for Museums. The Lab provided different museums with facilitated support in researching, prototyping, evaluating and disseminating innovative responses to organizational challenges. This page details the museums and their projects.
Making Your Case 101: What to Say, How to Say It, and Getting Your Staff and Visitors Involved in Your Museum’s Cause
American Alliance of Museums
Staff and visitors can be powerful advocates in supporting museum-friendly policies, whether at the local, state or federal level. This recorded, online advocacy day program explains how to engage museum visitors and supporters in the policy process, and looks at practical strategies for effective engagement, including real life examples from the museum world and online tools.
Making a Collection-Community Connection
American Alliance of Museums
Museum magazine explores how to leverage collections in order to engage with the museum’s community and reach new audiences. The article looks at 5 ways to attract visitors using collections: the use of mascots in social media (e.g., Owney); recruiting and using community curators; allowing members of the public to adopt an artifact; offering behind-the-scenes tours; and utilizing volunteers.
Welcoming Guidelines for Museums
American Alliance of Museums, LGBTQ Alliance (Professional Network)
The LGBTQ Alliance shares guidelines intended to provide institutions and members of the museum community with a series of parameters, which they may consider when assessing how to provide the LGBTQ community—staff, visitors, management, and allies from all fields—with a welcoming experience. (PDF, 64 pages)
Animating Democracy
Americans for the Arts
Americans for the Arts sponsors Animating Democracy, a program to foster arts and cultural activity that encourages and enhances civic engagement and dialogue. They provide tools, templates, and sample materials for planning, implementing, and evaluating arts- and humanities-based civic engagement projects, as well as technical assistance.
Blue Star Families
Blue Star Museums
This helpful flyer to give out at your museum provides insight into the Blue Star Museums program for military families. (PDF, 1 page)
The Participatory Museum
Nina Simon
Nina Simon shares The Participatory Museum, a publication that explores how museums can experiment with programming and education to engage and interact with audiences.
Nonprofits, Voting & Elections: An Online Guide to Partisan Voter Participation Activities for 501 (c)(3) Organizations
Nonprofit Vote
Nonprofit Vote shares a guide that describes the range of appropriate and legal activities that nonprofits can conduct. In addition to covering nonpartisan voter participation and education activities, it details easy ways to engage all members of your community–from clients and constituents to staff, board members, and volunteers.
Oklahoma Museum Network
Science Museum Oklahoma
Each partner museum in the Oklahoma Museum Network features science exhibits that rotate twice a year, providing unique learning opportunities and new experiences.
Culture Connects All: Rethinking Audiences in Times of Demographic Change
Partners for Livable Communities
Partners for Livable Communities provides a report on how cultural institutions, like museums, can connect and engage with changing demographics, specifically growing older adult and immigrant populations.