Tag Archives: community asset mapping

Inclusive Practices, Social Action

Towards a More Community-Centered Museum, Part 3: Defining & Valuing Community

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Written by Mike Murawski

Obviously, there is no single definition for the word ‘community.’  And it does not benefit this conversation to check with Webster’s dictionary, since the traditional definition of community is vague and outdated.  In his influential book Community: The Structure of Belonging (2008), Peter Block offers an exploration of community building and the ways that healthy, restorative communities emerge and sustain themselves.  Defining community as the experience of belonging, Block writes, “We are in a community each time we find a place where we belong.”  This core sense of belonging has two meanings.  It is about having a sense of relatedness and being a part of something, and it is about having a sense of ownership and acting as a creator or co-owner of that community.

First and foremost, then, community is about people.  At its core is a set of human relationships, not just a place, organization, idea, or internet platform. Second, it is important to recognize that people participate and identify with multiple communities at the same time.  We might belong to a church, feel affinity to people in our neighborhood, be connected with those at our school, and bond with others who share an aspect of our personal identity (age, sexuality, ethnicity, language, etc.)—all on the same day.  We all belong to many communities, some that we define for ourselves and some that are defined for us.  Our participation in certain communities might be deep, long-term, and really meaningful to us, while our involvement in other communities might be fairly thin and insignificant.

It’s also important to note that the social relationships that form communities are fluid, constantly shifting given time and changing circumstances.  While it seems obvious that formal institutions (schools, churches, museums, and non-profits) play an important role in forming communities, we also need to recognize the powerful role of informal institutions (the neighborhood barbershop, a local grocery co-op, a community choir group, or a gardening club).  Through each of these communities, we might come together to feel various degrees of shared belonging, trust, mutual interests, and safety.

On top of these ways to define community, I want to layer on the transformative belief in a ‘beloved community’ that comes from the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as more recent writings by Grace Lee Boggs and bell hooks. It is the idea of community as an agent of change, engaged in the struggle for justice and the well-being of the whole.  In her book Killing Rage: Ending Racism (1996), hooks writes:

“Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.”

This affirmative vision of community is based, in part, upon finding common ground through social justice and the possibility of radical change as well as the transformative element of shared responsibility.  Community is not merely a passive gathering of people around shared interests or shared geography, but rather the form through which these shared understandings take on life as collective action.

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artist Karina Puente with activists, community organizers, and warriors of justice Donna Hayes and Irene Kalonji at the Upstanders Festival, Portland Art Museum, May 2017.

This more active notion of community, or building community, also connects deeply to the concept of ‘bridging’ popularized by Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000).  In this groundbreaking book that has been part of the conversations in museums for many years, Putnam examines how we might begin to strengthen a sense of connection through social networks and building social capital. While one form of social capital is created through “bonding” among homogenous, exclusive, inward-facing groups, another more powerful form of social capital is created through “bridging” diverse, heterogeneous, inclusive, and outward-looking groups through activities of sharing, exchange, and consensus building.

The Better Together report, published by the Saguaro Seminar in 2000, takes a look at the role of the arts and museums in successfully building social capital in the United States. Elizabeth Crooke discusses this report in her fantastic book entitled Museums and Community (2007), in which she describes in more detail he various concepts of social capital. The Saguaro report argues that arts and culture organizations can nurture connectedness and bridging by “strengthening friendships, helping communities to understand and celebrate their heritage, and providing safe ways to discuss and solve difficult social problems.”  Overall, the report recommended key principles to guide the arts, including to encourage initiatives that “form bridges across race, income, gender, religion, and generations” as well as including arts and culture in community planning and organizing.

The concepts of beloved community and the social capital of bridging both celebrate difference, and work toward bringing people together to form and strengthen new relationships. Overlap these defining characteristics of community with the ideas of a human-centered museum, and we find deep commonalities of human connection, social relationships, and a commitment to change.  For me, these overarching ideas form the basis for any productive discussion of community and how we then work to specifically define a local community and build an institution’s connection within that community.

As Elizabeth Crooke so perfectly writes:

“To be of value, museums need to find significance within these communities—without those connections, the museum and its collections will be of little importance. It is people who bring the value and consequence to objects and collections; as a result, if a museum cannot forge associations with people, it will have no meaning.” (131)

Valuing Community

When museums begin to develop relationships with certain communities, they must understand the power dynamics involved.  Most museums hold a great deal of institutional power and authority, so many relationships or partnerships with community groups begin in a situation of imbalance and inequity.  In her introduction to the edited volume Museums and their Communities (2007), museum scholar Sheila Watson recognizes that museums are understood “to represent those who have privileges in society, i.e., the educated, the relatively wealthy, those who are in control through either their status … or through direct political power.”  This power extends to a museum’s architecture, collections and collecting practices, exhibitions, scholarship, and interpretation.

It is also important to recognize the tension in most museums between traditional academic scholarship and community input.  Consulting with community knowledge holders can often be viewed as an erosion of scholarship and curatorial confidence, and working with community-based artists can be seen as lowering accepted standards of ‘quality.’  On top of all of this baggage, the Western colonial concept of museums may not necessarily be relevant or valued in many communities who have been excluded or oppressed by this system.

For community relationships to grow and thrive, museums need to step back their role as authorities and see community members as experts on their own needs and local assets.  Identifying community assets and valuing resident participation works to empower residents and legitimize these community partnerships.  Stacey Marie Garcia, Director of Community Engagement at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, has both researched and enacted community and civic engagement practices, methods, and theories in museums.  In a post for Museum 2.0, she writes:

“it’s not solely about how museums can serve communities but rather what are the communities’ resources, knowledge and interests that can inform museum practice? Furthermore, how can museums and communities work together to share strengths in the community?”

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The Laundromat Project’s Kelly Street Housewarming Party. Photo by Osjua A. Newton, Copyright © 2015

At the core of our work with specific communities and local neighborhoods is the practice of identifying and embracing the strengths, creative skills, stories, languages, cultures, voices, and experiences that come from our communities.  In the overall research on community development, this is referred to as an “asset-based” approach or “capacity-focused” development.  This thinking runs counter to the mindset of a “needs-based” approach that focuses too much on problems and deficiencies in a community or neighborhood and, thus, how institutions can ‘serve their needs.’  “This phrase drives me nuts,” writes Nina Simon in her most recent book The Art of Relevance (2016). “It smacks of paternalism. As if it weren’t enough to be experts on our subject matter. Now we’re the experts on what people ‘need’ too?”  Rather than telling communities what they need and how they should do things differently, museums can instead center the gifts and creative capacities of communities as we work toward building relationships based in trust and mutual respect.

According to foundational work in the field of asset-based community development (check out “What is asset-based community development?”), this approach should focus on identifying community assets and strengths, and be both community-driven and relationship-driven.  Rather than asking ‘what are the needs of your community?,’ we can approach these conversations from a asset-based and community-driven approach.  Key questions might instead be: What do you value most about our community?  When was a time you felt our community was at its best?  What is the essence of our community that makes it unique and strong?

Finally, thinking about community development work through an asset-based approach tends to build relationships among community members.  As Graeme Stuart, community development specialist and activist, writes:

“The real value in asset mapping is bringing people together so they can discover each other’s strengths and resources, and to think about how they can build on what is already in the community. One way we can do this is by fostering the relationships, or the place, where assets can be productive and powerful together.”

Museums and cultural organizations hold the potential to be these places where community assets can be powerful together.  We just need to take bold steps to value the skills, interests, culture, and heritage of our communities and neighborhoods and begin to de-center the traditional power structures of museum institutions.

And as uncomfortable and messy as this might be for so many museums, we have got to start somewhere and make this change happen.

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ABOUT THE SERIES: Through this series of posts, I am exploring a range of ideas, challenges, and strategies for building community-centered practices in museums and advocating for deeper connections between institutions and community.    What do we mean by ‘community’?  How can we value community?  What are some strategies for change that we can enact now in our institutions?

I’m open to all types of critiques and questions, as long as they are aimed at moving this collective work forward.  My ideas, thoughts, and questions have emerged from decades of meaningful conversations with others, so I don’t claim ownership of these ideas — I simply hope they can spark new conversations and allow us all to add to our learning and growth as we work to transform museums.

Other Posts in This Series:

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About the Author

MIKE MURAWSKI: Founding author and editor of ArtMuseumTeaching.com, museum educator, and currently the Director of Education & Public Programs for the Portland Art Museum. Mike earned his MA and PhD in Education from American University in Washington, DC, focusing his research on educational theory and interdisciplinary learning in the arts. Prior to his position at the Portland Art Museum, he served as Director of School Services at the Saint Louis Art Museum as well as coordinator of education and public programs at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University.  He is involved in the Museums as Sites of Social Action (MASS Action) initiative, contributing author to the MASS Action toolkit, and co-created the #MuseumsAreNotNeutral tshirt campaign with LaTanya Autry to erase the myth of museum neutrality. As a cultural activist and museum professional, he is passionate about how we can come to see museums as agents of change in their communities as well as sites for transformative learning and social action. He has led workshops and presented at conferences and institutions nationally and internationally, including a keynote at the 2016 MuseumNext conference. Mike’s postings on this site are his own and don’t represent the Portland Art Museum’s positions, strategies, or opinions.

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Header Photo: Queens Museum’s New New Yorkers Program student council at the Immigrant Movement International community gathering space.  Photo from https://queensmuseum.org/new-new-yorkers. 

Inclusive Practices

Finding Common Ground: An Interview with Manuel Padilla

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Editor’s Note: As we strive to work more closely with our local communities, be a more inclusive institution, and connect meaningfully to the issues that affect the lives of those living in our city, I wanted to share a recent interview with Manuel Padilla.  Manuel is the Executive Director of Portland Meet Portland, a local non-profit dedicated to welcoming immigrants and refugees to the Portland area, enriching community by creating mutually beneficial mentoring opportunities that promote cross-cultural learning, enhance work skills, and build trust. The Portland Art Museum is proud to partner with Portland Meet Portland on programs, events, and a community gallery related to our current special exhibition Common Ground: Photographs by Fazal Sheikh. This partnership is part of our broader efforts to focus on building community, and the following interview is part of efforts to recognize this work and tell these stories as core to our museum’s purpose and mission.

This partnership and relationship with Portland Meet Portland led to the co-creation of a series of public programs, community events and workshops, an in-gallery resource for reflection and action, and a community-centered gallery space within the exhibition (see 2 photos of the gallery below).  I have enormous gratitude for Manuel, everyone with Portland Meet Portland, and all of the community members and organizations that have come together to make this happen.  I also want to recognize everyone on the Education team here at the Portland Art Museum for their dedication when it comes to making our museum matter, and the curator of this exhibition for being open to community involvement and for valuing the knowledge, voices, and experiences of community members whose knowledge, voices, and experiences are largely devalued by the institutions of museums.  None of this would be possible without a growing community of change within and beyond the walls of our museum, and I have so much gratitude for being a part of this work and for being a learner in this process.   -Mike Murawski

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Portland Meet Portland community gallery, Portland Art Museum. Photo by Jon Richardson.
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Portland Meet Portland community gallery, Portland Art Museum. Photographs installed in this gallery are by Kaykay Wah. Gallery photo by Jon Richardson.

The following interview was posted on the Portland Art Museum’s blog on February 27, 2018, and is republished here with permission.

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Manuel-Padilla-768x1024An interview with Portland Meet Portland’s Manuel Padilla

How is Portland Meet Portland involved in the Common Ground exhibition?

Portland Meet Portland is working with the Portland Art Museum’s Department of Education and Public Programs as, what could be called a “community partner in residence.” We are co-creating the educational and interpretive programming in connection with the exhibition. This involves a broad range of things like designing and facilitating dialogues with museum participants, producing podcasts, working with the museum and refugees to provide content for the interpretive space, training docents, and helping create informational resource guides for visitors and docents alike. It has, and continues to be, a very inspiring and meaningful partnership for us.

How has the experience of working with an art museum been similar or different than other projects and partners that PMP works with?

Working with the Portland Art Museum is a unique and special experience for us. We have worked with the museum before on an Object Stories exhibition, and this is a deepening of that partnership. Words I would use to describe working with the museum are: dynamic, collaborative, creative, and celebratory. Our work together has been synergistic and generative, each person strongly contributing to breathing this project into life. One of the most fundamental points I want to stress is the museum’s direct, hands on participation with refugee community members. This experience was crucial to the cross-cultural learning and growth of everyone involved and gave vital context to exactly what it takes to make sure refugees can be truly relevant in their participation in projects like these. Institutional flexibility and change are at the heart of that level of participation. Ownership and agency of refugees’ own work and needs, throughout this partnership, was always prioritized.

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What do you hope that visitors learn about their own community through the Common Ground exhibition and related programs?

Primarily, I hope people visiting this exhibition, and interacting with all of the great programming, are challenged to examine their own narratives of refugees and the narratives that are manufactured for them. And I want visitors to not only learn, but to find moments where they are outside of their heads and more into their hearts. Learning information means little if it does not become instrumental, in some way, in our own lives.

I would like visitors to understand how truly segregated Portland is and how different things could be if we made a decision to remove barriers and injustices that divide us. How quickly the black and white of segregation could turn into a Kodachrome of connection. But desegregation and cross-cultural relationship building with refugee individuals and communities requires that dominant culture give something up, and that is the primacy of its interpretation of the world. And dominant culture must leave open the possibility of being transformed by that. This is no less true when thinking of dominant culture’s relationship with any historically marginalized or underrepresented community. Yet, when we do this, we find we gain so much more than we have given up.

It’s important, too, to realize that refugees are more than just the sum of their experiences fleeing violence and persecution. They are more than victims. Thinking about refugees only as victims crystallizes their identities and marginalizes them even further. We should honor those experiences of suffering AND understand they had lives before and after that. We are all more than the worst moments of our lives. Right relationship with refugees means a “walking with,” sharing in the full nature of our personhood together.

Lastly, I want people to understand that refugees have often lived longer in Portland than the person reading this sentence right now. I want to blur the lines between newcomer and local. Also, resettlement to a new country and community can be the most traumatizing event in the experience of becoming and being a refugee.

Do you think or how do you think about the power of art to serve as a platform for big/ tough conversations?

I love this question and the answer seems at once both obvious and elusive. In my work I have dealt a lot with something called Cognitive Theory of Metaphor. There is a book called Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. The idea is that our entire cognitive structure, how we navigate and make meaning in the world, is determined by the foundational metaphors that emerge linguistically and pre-linguistically in our culture and society. The fundamental comparison of one thing to another in terms of “like” and “unlike” forms the building blocks of our worldview. If we think of art in terms of symbol, sign, and metaphor, then art IS the conversation. Aesthetic, in that sense, is not simply mood to us, but morality. What we consider beautiful or ugly takes on much more significance than simply being a matter of taste.

So, if we can challenge or change cultural aesthetic, if we can change the “art” on which society is built, then we have not only been able to navigate tough conversations, but we have, in doing so, changed the composition of the conversation itself. Art (and the people who create and consume it) are individual and collective manifestations of moments in dialogue. Photos, painting, dance, music, pottery, comics, movies, and other forms of art are part of the syntax and grammar, punctuation and silence in the language of art that we use to speak aesthetic reality into being for and with each other. Therefore, they are also the tools at our disposal to be able to speak and be different to one another. Through this we have emergent relationship, we can challenge one another and create mutual understanding and build trust.

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How can people learn more and/or get involved with Portland’s refugee community?

Well I would be remiss if I did not answer with “get involved with and support the work of Portland Meet Portland!” It’s a little shameless, but true. I am proud of our organization, what we are doing, and where we are headed. But, coming to visit Common Ground is certainly a place to start as well. The museum is hoping, through the exhibition, to provide perspective on the continuum of life “as a refugee.” This might help to ground and encourage you to take a step toward being in closer relationship with refugees in your own neighborhood and the larger Portland community. From there, I would point people toward the printed and on-line resource page [PDF] on the museum website that is connected to this exhibition. That should give you what you need to start to get involved.

Anything else you want to share?

I just want to thank all of the people who were instrumental in making this project happen. All of the people in the Department of Education and Public Programs at the museum, other staff of Portland Meet Portland, and particularly the refugee community members that are sharing their time, expertise, and lives with us through this museum space.

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GET INVOLVED

Learn more about some of the organizations working to support refugees and immigrants here in Portland and Oregon, and find ways to get involved.

Catholic Charities
catholiccharitiesoregon.org

Immigrant & Refugee Community Organization
irco.org

Lutheran Community Services Northwest
lcsnw.org

Muslim Educational Trust
metpdx.org

New Portlanders Program
portlandoregon.gov/oni/62226

PDX Friends of Refugees
pdxfriendsofrefugees.com

Portland Meet Portland
portlandmeetportland.org

Refugee Care Collective
refugeecarecollective.org

Please visit Refugee Volunteer Organization (refvol.org) for more complete information on organizations that provide services to refugees in Oregon.

Experimenting in Museums, Inclusive Practices

Getting Outside the Bubble: Museum Social Action Project at MuseumNext

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Reposted and revised from MuseumNext, a global conference on the future of museums which has acted as a platform for showcasing best practice today to shine a light on the museum of tomorrow.  Check out more details about the upcoming conference in New York by visiting their new website.

MuseumNext is very much a collaboration which brings together museum professionals to share what they feel is important and exciting, that is true of the presentations and workshops which our community propose through our call for papers and through the other activities which form our conference fringe.

Since 2009, we’ve had everything from brainstorming wild ideas with Nina Simon, to a symposium on heritage and retail to playing with the latest sensor technology, but for our conference in New York City we have a very exciting addition to the program.

Mike Murawski, Director of Education & Public Programs at Portland Art Museum, challenged us to build a Museum Social Action Project into the program and offered along with Monica Montgomery to make the project happen.

MuseumNext asked Mike to tell us more about this exciting project:

How did the Museum Social Action Project come about?

At a time when museum professionals are increasingly thinking about the social impact of museums as well as the role these institutions play within our local communities, it seemed urgent to get outside the ‘bubble’ of the conference and more directly engage with organizations responding to local realities.

I was invited to present at the MuseumNext conference in New York on the topic of enacting change in museums and converting talk into action, so it felt necessary to get outside the conference venue and ‘walk the walk.’  Not having a strong familiarity with the local communities across New York, I immediately reached out to Monica Montgomery (MuseumHue, Museum of Impact) to explore this idea of a Museum Social Action Project.

Monica and I brainstormed about some possible ideas, and she connected us with the team at The Laundromat Project, an amazing organization that works to bring socially engaged arts programming to laundromats and other everyday community spaces.  

Why should a museum conference try and facilitate something like this?

As museum professionals, it is vital that we enact a mindset of giving back and supporting grassroots organizations like The Laundromat Project that strengthen our communities. Each and every professional conference should be focusing more on how it can be connected and relevant to the place of its convening, and not just think about locations as conference hotels and convention centers.

Conference sessions, panels, and topics can certainly be more grounded in the realities and issues of the conference’s city and neighborhoods, but I think it’s important to get outside the walls of the conference, explore direct ways to see our ideas in action, and be a responsible part of building stronger communities (beyond the spotlight of the conference).

What is The Laundromat Project?

Launched in 2006, The Laundromat Project brings socially relevant and socially engaged arts programming to laundromats and other everyday community spaces in order to reach as many of our neighbors as possible. The LP’s artists and staff work to amplify the creativity that already exists within communities by using arts and culture to build community networks, solve problems, and enhance the sense of ownership in the places where we live, work, and grow. The LP is particularly committed to long-term and sustained investment in communities of color as well as those living on modest incomes.

Their Kelly Street Initiative was launched in 2016 in partnership with Workforce Housing Group, Kelly Street Garden, and Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association, transforming a 2 bedroom-apartment on Kelly Street in Longwood, South Bronx, into a thriving creative community hub, with artist studios, arts programming, and community partnerships that allow The LP to engage the larger Kelly Street community.  We are honored to be collaborating with Hatuey Ramos-Fermín, The LP’s Director of Programs & Community Engagement, to build this Museum Social Action Project together for MuseumNext.

What’s the project that you’re doing?

Participants attending this Museum Social Action Project will meet staff and artists at The Laundromat Project, learn about their various projects and programs, and tour the Kelly Street Initiative location as well as learn more about that neighborhood.  LP staff and artists will then lead a short workshop and discussion on how organizations can learn more about a neighborhood’s capacities, creativity, and skills through community asset mapping.

Participants will also discuss ways to build a sustained investment in community partnerships, rather than one-sided outreach efforts or one-time program offerings. As a vital part of this project, we also ask that participants find a way to give back to The Laundromat Project and help them create more joyful spaces of creativity and community. Participants can do this by bringing an art supply Gift Card from Dick Blick or by donating directly to the Laundromat Project online (which I strongly encourage people to do, even if you are not involved in this project or the MuseumNext conference).

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The Laundromat Project’s Kelly Street Housewarming Party. Photo by Osjua A. Newton, Copyright © 2015

 What do you think the delegates will get out of it?

The aim is for delegates attending the Museum Social Action Project to be able to gain a more concrete understanding of community-based practices, of how cultural organizations can serve as sites of social action and relevance, of how museums and arts non-profits can bring people together a work to build stronger, more resilient communities.   They will gain skills from The LP staff and from each other around community asset mapping, and really listening to local community voices.  

What impact can the project have?

For me, personally, there are a few big “what if’s” at the heart of this type of Museum Social Action Project.  I know that museums and cultural organizations across the world are striving to be an essential part of their communities; but what if our communities could become an essential part of our institutions?  What if we could effectively re-center this movement for change around our local communities and the power, knowledge, creativity, and capacities that they can bring to our institutions?  What if conferences and professional gatherings spent more time doing and less time talking?

I don’t think we’ll achieve this all at our half-day Museum Social Action Project this November in New York, but I hope others are inspired to do similar types of projects and experiences, getting outside the walls of our conferences and harnessing the power of museum professionals to learn from and give back to our communities.

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The Museum Social Action Project is one of the fringe activities for MuseumNext New York City. The conference takes place 14 – 16 November 2016 at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center. Find out more about the conference here.

Featured header image: The Laundromat Project Kelly Street Housewarming, Photo by Osjua A. Newton, copyright © 2015.