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Can You Hear Me Now? Connecting to Visitors Through Real Stories of Artifacts and Place.
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Can You Hear Me Now? Connecting to Visitors Through Real Stories of Artifacts and Place
This workshop is based on national museum standards from the StEPs program offered bythe American Association for State and Local History. StEPs is a self-study program created specifically for small- and mid-sized history organizations. www.aaslh.org/steps Funding to develop materials for this workshop was provided by:
What is StEPs? • Self-study program • Enroll any time • No application • Mainly for organizations that do not feel ready for other assessment programs, but open to all George Squibb, Belfast Historical Society, Maine “We learned much about ourselves and we are confident that our organization can make effective use of the program.”
How Your Organization Can Benefit From StEPs • Learn more about standards • Plan for the future • Support funding requests • Justify decisions • Track accomplishments • Articulate progress • Increase credibility • Prepare for other assessment • programs • Be recognized for your success! “With the basic, good and better levels, the workbook became a valuable educational experience for us and helped us set goals for the future.” Flavia Cigliano, Nichols House Museum, Boston
Example Stewardship of Collections Standard: The museum legally, ethically, and effectively manages, documents, cares for, and uses the collections. Self-assessment question: Are there written procedures for acquiring, borrowing, and lending collection items?
Performance Indicators Basic The institution uses a written donor form for artifacts and archives items accepted into its collections. The institution uses a written loan agreement for each in-coming and out-going loan transaction that involves collection items. All loans are for a specified time period.
Good There are written procedures for acquiring, borrowing, and lending artifacts and archives items included in the collections policy. Better The institution reviews and updates its procedures on a regular basis. The institution requires condition reports for all in-coming and out-going loans.
StEPs Enrollment *Non-members pay $265, includes one-year membership **Must maintain active institutional membership to receive certificates One-time fee of $150* 320-page workbook Active ongoing enrollment Bronze, Silver and Goldcertificates** Window decal
More Benefits National recognition for certificates earned 20% discount on AASLH technical leaflets 10% discount on AASLH workshops Access to StEPs website offering sample forms, policies, job descriptions and other documents plus discussion forum, and calendar of training opportunities
www.aaslh.org/steps • Link to free info webinar • Enrollment information • Sample workbook pages • Info sheet for boards • “Are We Ready for • StEPs?” info sheet Rob Orrison, Brentsville Courthouse Historic Centre, Bristow, Virginia “We can demonstrate to county officials that we are following national museum standards.”
Plan for the Day • Establish benefits of using stories within museum exhibits, tours and historic settings • Learn basic elements of good storytelling • Examine methods by which stories might be better incorporated into museum interpretation • Object-based stories • Community story circles • Telling a story without a “storyteller” • Audience inclusive narrative
According to the National Storytelling Association: • Stories are narrative accounts of an event or events. • We use stories to pass on accumulated wisdom, beliefs, and values. • Stories explain how things are, why they are, and their role and purpose. • Stories are the foundation of memory and learning. • Stories connect us with our humanness and link past, present, and future by teaching us to anticipate the possible consequences of our actions.
Garrison Keillor National Geographic Magazine. December, 2000 “I find that if I leave out enough details in my stories, the listener will fill in the blanks with her own hometown, and if a Freeport girl exiled in Manhattan hears the story about Memorial Day…she may think of her Uncle Alcuin who went to France and didn’t return, and get out her hanky and blow. I’m not the reason she’s moved, he is. All I do is say the words: cornfield and Mother and algebra and Chevy pickup and cold beer and Sunday morning and rhubarb and loneliness, and other people put pictures to them.”
Listening to Stories http://themoth.org/stories
Object BiographiesPitt Rivers Museum From the museum website: All objects in the museum have a life (or series of different lives). They are made, used and then come into the museum. Excerpt from biography: …a glass specimen jar filled with alcohol and containing a slug impaled on a thorn (1898.71.1). Originally black, but now bleached white by years of being immersed in formaldehyde or a similar solution of alcohol, the slug represents one in a long line of cures for warts. It was purchased by the Museum in July 1898 from Thomas James Carter of Oxford and is the Oxfordshire version of a cure used in several parts of the UK. Cures for warts through the ages fall into several groups, with the slug example being considered a transference method. As the label on the jar in the Pitt Rivers says: Charm for Warts, Oxfordshire. Go out alone & find a large black slug. Secretly rub the underside on the warts and impale the slug on the thorn. As the slug dies the warts will go.
The Four Types of Truth Forensic Truth - What happened to whom, where, when, and how, and who was involved. Personal or Narrative Truth - Truth of personal recollection and memory. In the words of the TRC, “Memories of pain, however flawed with forgetting, indelibly scar the victims of unjust suffering…Personal stories are not the whole of truth, but they are integral to the truth that leads to new justice.” Social Truth - One South African jurist defines this as “The truth of experience that is established through interaction, discussion and debate." Simply put when a number of stories of a given society are told publicly, together they form a “social” truth, or more aptly put, a “societal” truth. Reconciliatory Truth - Also called “Public Truth” is the exposing of the past events in order to raise a public awareness and to elicit a “never again” position toward such atrocity resulting in a “healed” society.
Anoka County Historical Society, Vietnam War Exhibit
What is an Open-ended Question? An open-ended question has no right or wrong answer because it asks for opinion, belief, or knowledge based on personal experience.
Role of Questions in a Story-Based Interpretive Approach • Invite opinions, thoughts, and feelings • Encourage participation • Establish rapport • Stimulate discussion • Maintain balance between educator and visitor
Types of Questions Factual: Have only one correct answer Evaluative: Ask for opinion, belief, or point of view, so they have no wrong answers
Fact-based Questions vs.Open-ended Questions FACT - What kind of assistance do you think was available during the Great Depression? OPEN - Where would you turn for assistance during difficult economic times? FACT - What do you think the average rent for a public housing unit in Chicago is? OPEN - What would you be willing to spend for an apartment in center city Chicago? FACT - Where do you think Bob Schneider got the money to open his general store? OPEN - If you were starting a business, where might you get the money?
Best Practices • In the introduction, tell visitorsthat the tour will be a conversation between theeducator and the visitors. Explain “we’re going to think about this history together,”and that the tour will be a cooperative process. • Ask people why they are visiting today and relate their answers to the history of the site in an effort to get people to make connections between past and present. • Balance presenting information with asking questions - a good rule of thumb is one question per space or tour stop
Best Practices • Be supportive of comments peoplemake, especially the first commentbecause it sets the tone for the tour. • If someone says something that istangential or off-topic, acknowledgethe comment politely and graciouslyand then bring the discussion backto the main topic. • Only ask questions about the topics that you really want visitors to be grappling with. Don’t ask too many questions about less significant issues. • Build up to the most difficult questions. Start with questions that are less challenging (questions about personal experience) and move to those that are more challenging (questions about values and beliefs.)
Questions • Who, besides the staff of the institution, might have a story to tell about your object? • Whose stories are your institution not telling? • Who in your community might be the keepers of those stories?
The Hairy Part: Telling Difficult Stories So What Are You Afraid Of? enolagay.org (accessed on 1.17.12) International Slavery Museum
What is the Story You Most Fear Telling at Your Institution? • [Insert board member or funder name here]would be very nervous about us addressing that part of our community history • If I pitched an exhibit about ???? to other staff, volunteers or board members they would worry that we'd lose patrons • The most divisive issue in my community today is ????
