2025 Virtual Conference

12:00 – 1:00    CONCURRENT SESSIONS

Session 7: Silenced Voices Art Sculpture: A Museum and University Collaboration

• As we embark on a future in which museums eagerly demonstrate increased relevance within their perspective communities we can begin by partnering with local universities or colleges.  This offers the benefit of working with a similar academic or cultural based institution while engaging university students who will begin their professional journey with firsthand experience and knowledge of the purpose and importance of museums.  The Southern Museum has created the initiative Silenced Voices with the objective of making southern history relevant to our modern community and encouraging dialogue by researching and sharing stories of individuals who have been traditionally ignored or silenced.  The Museum is partnering with Kennesaw State University (KSU) for students to create a sculpture representing the Silenced Voices of southern history.  KSU master craftsman students will engage for two full semesters in immersive social discourse, cross instruction with museum staff, design submissions, and casting of the ‘Silenced’ sculpture.  The finale will be permanent placement of the sculpture inside the Southern Museum galleries in 2026.

  This session will cover the various steps, challenges, and achievements in developing such a collaboration from the museum and university perspective with the hope of inspiring similar types of partnerships elsewhere. While the Silenced Voices sculpture project will be the main case study, speakers will include additional examples of museum-university partnerships that are appropriate for museums and colleges of different sizes, missions, and perspectives.

Session 8: Testing and Sharing Education Resources with the Affiliates Community: Lessons Learned from the Cellphone Education Toolkit

• In June 2023, the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) launched the Cellphone: Unseen Connections exhibit, followed by its digital, free, print-on-demand exhibit toolkit which includes educational resources such as activity boards, creative prompts, and facilitation guides. The education toolkit was initially developed and tested at NMNH, with input from a Youth Advisory Committee and from NMNH visitors. The toolkit focused on natural history topics, such as anthropology and mineral sciences, and was tailored to teens and young adults–an age group that tends to lose interest in STEAM, museums, or other educational spaces. Although these resources were successful in the context of NMNH (a natural history museum with high visitation numbers), we wanted to know: were they versatile enough to be used in an art or history museum? What about in a classroom setting? Or in smaller spaces with lower visitation numbers? To answer these questions, and to make these resources useful and accessible to as many educators as possible, NMNH partnered with Smithsonian Affiliates to test the adaptability of the toolkit.

  During this session, NMNH educators and staff from Affiliate partners will share their successes, challenges, and lessons learned in testing and implementing the Cellphone resources at diverse institutions.  We will discuss the original toolkit goals, success/challenges of the training and implementation, and benefits of this partnership model. Join this session and leave with ideas on how to think outside of the box and to implement natural history-specific resources in diverse spaces (art, history, air and space museums, classroom, after-school programs, etc.)

1:15 – 2:15      CONCURRENT SESSIONS

Session 9: Museum Stores as Hubs for Community Engagement

• As museums seek ways reach their communities, museum stores can provide surprising opportunities for engagement. The management team from the Mercantile at the Seattle Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI) will share several ways they have partnered with vendors and community organizations to support MOHAI’s community engagement initiatives, bring visibility to local orgs and deepen relationships with their community. See your museum shop in a whole new light!

SESSION 10: Creating Portraits of Community

• How can Affiliates activate teacher communities to help students tell their stories? Through the Creating Portraits of Community (CPoC) project, museum educators, teachers, and Smithsonian Affiliates are collaborating to help students tell their stories by building skills and providing a platform for the photographs and oral histories that they collect.  Speakers will introduce the curriculum and discuss the role that Affiliate collaboration played in its creation, and in hosting professional development sessions to continue activating the curriculum.

  Join Smithsonian educators from the project for an interactive experience that will explore learning techniques used in the CPoC project curriculum to build self-reflection, visual literacy, critical thinking, and interview skills. Learn how the Smithsonian can help Affiliates activate the curriculum in their communities, building relationships with local teachers and students.  Leave with ready to use strategies and digital learning resources to enhance your professional development and to share with your learning communities and organizations.

2:30 – 3:30      CONCURRENT SESSIONS

Session 11: Smithsonian Youth STEM Exchange: Empowering Youth Across Borders Through Environmental Education

• The Arab American National Museum, Iraq Space Center, and Smithsonian Science Education Center collaborated on a two-year program engaging high school youth in understanding environmental concerns in a social and cultural context. Working with multiple classrooms across two countries brought unique challenges and rich rewards, highlighting the complexity of cross-cultural collaboration. This session focuses on the last two cohorts, sharing insights from site visits, field trips, and cross-classroom collaboration that shaped the program’s impact. We’ll explore how the political climate and climate challenges affect student engagement and the vital role teachers play in navigating these issues both locally and overseas. We will hear from educators and discuss the student projects their classrooms produced, as well as the overall impact this program had on both students and teachers. Join us to learn about the successes, challenges, and responsibilities faced in this innovative international partnership that bridges education, culture, and social awareness.

SESSION 12: HBCU’s At the Vanguard: A New Model of Collaborative Praxis

• This power-packed session will illuminate a first of its kind Historically Black Colleges and Universities’ (HBCUs) initiative known as the History and Culture Access Consortium (HCAC), led by the National Museum of African American History & Culture (NMAAHC) to create a sustainable framework for HBCU museums and archives. The HCAC is a multi-year initiative that demonstrates the power of collaboration among Academic Museums and Archives at Clark Atlanta, Florida A & M, Jackson State, Texas Southern and Tuskegee Universities.

  Participants will learn how the HCAC model engages an ecosystem  of stakeholders who are essential to capacity building, organizational sustainability, and collective knowledge sharing to address critical issues. The session will provide practical tools and approaches for putting theory into practice with a focus on creating organizational change and collective impact.

3:45 – 5:00      Closing Idea Starter