Today the Center for the Future Of Museums Blog graciously posted a call from me to museums about Game for Change’s new Game Plan opportunity. It was edited down from a longer piece (posted below) that I wrote about my experience revisiting museums now, during the pandemic, after having been largely absent since I left the AMNH over two years ago. I found it quite moving to write and perhaps you’ll find it of interest as well.
I was touched by something Seema Rao recently said to me, in our recent interview on Museum 2.0. She said that a recent project of mine felt like “a gift to museum educators and their patrons.” When I heard it I felt so grateful to be in such a privileged position, to be the one searching out museums to receive funds (made available by IMLS and General Motors) to build capacity in games-based learning. At the same time, immersing myself in the current state of museums has been heart-breaking.
I spent many years as an outside consultant to museums big and small, from the Noguchi in Long Island City to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C. Then for six glorious years I was the Assistant Director of Digital Learning at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). During that time I dug deep into the world of museums. I created a blog – Mooshme.org – where I documented (in over 350 posts) the innovations I was seeing in digital learning, both at our museum and through innovators around the world – and a new Twitter account so I could join in the #MuseTech conversation.
And then I left. Like many I knew advancing digital engagement within museums at the time, I found myself over time a round peg in a square hole. Leaving AMNH meant leaving museums all together, as my new position as VP of Digital Learning at the Girl Scouts of the USA took me into a wholly new sector. But I felt the absence in my life of every AAM, MCN, MW conference I had to skip. Every exhibit premiere still felt strange being viewed as an outsider. The museum world of course went on without me, but I watched it from afar, with longing.
Then the pandemic hit. I felt like I had dodged a bullet. Yes, I wasn’t in the ideal position working for an organization whose income was largely based on teams of girls selling cookies in public places. But at least, I thought, I wasn’t in a place-based institution. I would learn over the year that the advantages of the physical world are sometimes over-rated, that pivots to successful digital engagement were driven more by institutions with strong leadership and agile teams than how much they relied on bricks and mortar. And by the fall I was part of a wave of “workforce reductions” that led me to where I am now, running my own digital engagement consultancy. More importantly, it meant I could return to working with, and on behalf of, museums.
The gift Seema referred to comes through the new Game Plan initiative. Since we’re in the holiday season, let me say in this present-given metaphor I am no Santa (and not just because I am Jewish). That role belongs to Games For Change, to whom all thanks is due for spearheading this innovative program. Rather, I am their elf, who gets to distribute their good will. Game Plan is designed to build the capacity of museums to offer games-based learning in their youth programming. That means learning how to support museum audiences to design card games, and board games, and video games. And that means learning how to adapt both game design and game design pedagogy to both museums in general and to the specific content area of each participating museum.
Specifically, Game Plan will select 40 museums to receive a modest stipend ($3k) and three online professional development courses (around 25-30 hours in total). These museums will adapt the curriculum in their own ways, around their own needs, and offer programming this spring and summer. At the same time, they will join a larger pool of Game Plan museum educators within a new community, all of whom will have access to the full game design curriculum, a new nationwide student game design challenge and, more importantly, each other.
Reading museum applicants, I can appreciate why this is such a gift at this time. With ⅓ of museums still closed since last spring, and so many turning to remote learning, we are in a liminal moment, a state of transition. And in such times innovative people are willing to challenge assumptions and look for new solutions. Games-based learning is one of them. For many it offers a new pathway to engage with youth audiences, the potential to increase the relevancy of museums within their communities and, yes, a potential new source of revenue.
Returning to museums this past month, I’ve felt a bit like Rip Van Winkle. It’s like I’ve been asleep for the past few years, missing digital advancements in museums, the responses to the rising awareness of systematic racism, and the devastation wrought by COVID-19. Now, waking up, this project is giving me the opportunity to look around and ask: What’s going on around here?
Reaching far and wide (and moving to my third metaphor) I feel like an operative in a Mission Impossible movie, re-activating over three dozen secret agents – I mean, re-connecting with museum contacts – asking their advice and support identifying our 40 museums. Through their support, and through LinkedIn, I’ve reached out to another 130 museums. As someone reading this, concerned about museums and living it day to day, I imagine what I saw comes as little surprise to you: so many staff laid-off, so many with reduced salaries and forced vacations, so many grappling with the lost year in the lives of the youth they serve. Time and again, before reaching out to an old contact I’d go to their LinkedIn page and visit their blog, and be stopped in my track, finding yet another remarkable museum educator let go, with little notice or support, after so many years of service. And I would just have to break from my work, and pause to breathe, to honor then, and to take the space to grieve, for both them and the field.
But then I am reminded about the OTHER things I am seeing: new museum consultancies launched by talented individuals now working from outside the system who are thriving, museum programs that have moved successfully online creating programs that might outlast the pandemic, educators developing new skills to prepare themselves for a more mobile workforce, and education departments challenging themselves to find new pathways to connect with their audiences. Game Plan is part of this creative response by the museum field to these challenging times, and I feel renewed by the hope it brings for the future of museum learning.
