Making Connections: Can Making in Museums Play a Role in Community Engagement and Equity Work?

• In Event: 14.015 - Making Spaces for Youth From Nondominant Communities: New Approaches for Supporting Equitable and Consequential Experiences

Abstract

In this paper, we present a different possible approach to making within science museums and science centers, and consider data from a three-year NSF-funded research study that has attempted to use this approach as part of a broader effort to change the relationship between local communities of color and one large science center. This project considers the engagement of families, including young people. This paper explores the challenges and benefits, for museum staff and for families, involved in creating more inclusive making practices.

Since 2006, the exponential growth of the Maker Movement has catalyzed the development of tools, spaces, programs, and events that allow people to engage in activities and processes that have clear links to STEM learning (Kalil, 2012; Kalil & Garg, 2012). Museums and science centers have embraced these practices, setting up makerspaces, advancing making activities, and sharing practices across institutions at conferences (e.g., ASTC, 2013; ASTC, 2014; ASTC, 2015). While Maker activities and events have been shown to be successful at attracting traditional ISE audiences to an expansive range of design-based activities, emerging leaders in the movement have identified a need to better engage a broader range of participants, including people of color, who have been engaged in making throughout history and circumstance (NYSCI, 2010; Karlin Associates, 2012, Wardrip, Brahms & Crowley, 2014).
Since 2013, the Science Museum of Minnesota has been engaged in an effort to reconsider the role of Making in our overall engagement with local communities of color, including people who identify as Latino and Hispanic, African-American and African descent, Hmong, and Ojibwe and Dakota. Data collection, discussion, and further iteration of the activities occurred over two phases of research. Extensive focus groups with community members led to new activities developed such as storycloth embroidery which had relevance for Hmong families, as well as for other participants whose cultural traditions included weaving. This approach is based on the broader literature which emphasizes the importance of allowing learners to retain and draw on their own cultural identity when they engage in learning (Ladson Billings, 1995; Calabrese Barton, 2003; Gonzales, Moll & Amanti, 2005; Nasir, 2012; Paris, 2012).

Through this project, we saw ways that the new activities prompted better engagement with participant families and young people, and provided insight for museum staff involved. During the activity development, families saw their personal knowledge and cultural heritage valued by the museum in new ways; museum staff gained new insights into some projects and used this to create new culturally grounded activities. Families engaged with these activities as they were presented on the museum floor. However, significant challenges remained present: staff sometimes lost cultural messages that were valued by families as activities were developed and described, and participant attrition created difficulty with maintaining productive creative relationships.

As museums work to become more centrally relevant to communities beyond their traditionally white base, making can be a powerful tool for changing those relationships. Findings from this project show successes and stumbling points for creating long-lasting change in our field.

Authors

• Lauren Causey, Science Museum of Minnesota

• Marjorie Bullitt Bequette, Science Museum of Minnesota

• Gina Navoa Svarovsky, University of Notre Dame