NEMA Conference 2022, Day 1
From November 2 through November 4, I attended the 2022 Annual NEMA (New England Museum Association) Conference as a General Scholarship Recipient, which I received thanks to “Connecticut Humanities and the Connecticut Office of the Arts; MassHumanities; Mass Cultural Council; Vermont Humanities; and NEMA Annual Appeal donors. After two years of attending virtually, the 104th edition of the conference was back in-person at the Sheraton Hotel in Springfield, Massachusetts
Keynote Session:
Becoming Good Ancestors: A Sense of Oneness
Before the keynote, NEMA Executive Director Dan Yaeger began with opening remarks about the last time the conference had gone on hiatus, which was during World War II when some museum workers were drafted. He introduced the new Value Statements and Mission Statement, which highlight the need for equitable treatment of all people, dismantling oppressive structures within the museum world, addressing the global climate crisis, and contributing to a more justice society. NEMA President Susan Goganian gave additional opening remarks.
The keynote was given by Richard Josey, an expert in DEAI (diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion; learn more from this article by the American Alliance of Museums) for historical museums and the founder of Collective Journeys LLC. He started the conversation with a question, “What Kind of Ancestor Will You Be?”
Josey shared stories from his museum career of over thirty years, including his early days as a youth interpreter at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia and a six year stint with the Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul. Josey described his struggle with a sense of belonging or "otherness" from his days as a grade school student, recalling that his classmates referred to him as “the black dude who always hung out with all the white people”. He felt the pull of three main forces: the dominant society of “white folk”, his home culture with “black folk”, and his work at Colonial Williamsburg, where his adult coworkers gave him balance.
Josey used his experiences at the Minnesota Historical Society to learn how to build a community without waiting for other people to invite him in. He explained how he created groups around his interests during the pandemic by beginning with a one-on-one video meeting, then growing the group by one or two people with each meeting. He told a short story of two neighboring shop owners. Rather than viewing each other as competition after being introduced, they became collaborators in their sales, even adding an open doorway between their shops.
Other issues in the keynote included self-care, collective care, and addressing trauma. Josey emphasized the importance of taking care of yourself and addressing trauma in your life through therapy. He added that it may be impossible to separate work life from personal life, as even mundane tasks or fun events might trigger cyclical thoughts from a stressful project. He encouraged the audience to spend ten minutes a day in silence with no electronics to observe thoughts and process feelings. Taking care of yourself allows you to take care of your community.
After the keynote, Josey answered several questions during a Q&A. Topics included reacting to the news and managing conflict, removing the stigma surrounding therapy, creating connections between museums and the community through attending events like festivals, navigating the feeling of being “other” in a group, and having conversations with individuals adverse to organizational change.
Destination Marketing and Museums:
Enhancing Communities and Economies
This panel was moderated by Kay Simpson of the Springfield Museums and featured Mary Kay Wydra of Greater Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau representing Western Massachusetts, Monique Messier of Discover Central Massachusetts, and Nancy Gardella of North of Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau representing Eastern Massachusetts.
Kay Simpson explained “The Role of Museums in Destination Experiences and Tourism”, as tourisms enter from the outside of the community and spend money on goods and services. Museums are a primary reason for tourism, but COVID-19 had a negative impact on visitation. NEMA museum attendance this year was at 74% of pre-pandemic levels. With international tourism town, museums refocused on regional tourism, especially hyperlocal residents. The Springfield Museums tracked ZIP codes of their visitors, revealing that 54% of their visitors come from Massachusetts, up from 21% before the pandemic.
Another shift described by Simpson was the major categories of tourism. Traditionally, visitors have traveled for leisure, business, adventure, or to watch sports games. More recently, niche tourism industries emphasize sustainability and the environment, culinary experiences for “foodies”, gaining deeper levels of engagement, and improving wellness. Tourists prefer areas with multiple attractions, including restaurants and hotels along with museums, which makes them more willing to stay overnight and spend more money in the region. Visitors have come to expect inclusivity both in physical spaces and on the website, which means receiving information in multiple written and spoken languages, participating in exhibits and programs representative of the local community, and ease of access for people of all ages and abilities.
In the next section of the presentation, Mary Kay Wydra described the role of Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) or Convention and Visitors Bureaus (CVBs) in generating tourism to an area and building the economy. Her motto for attracting visitors was “putting heads in beds, feet on the street, torsos through turnstiles, fans in stands, more in store, and cheeks in seats”. A CVB creates the brand of the region, maintains a calendar of special events, and works with local business and other organizations to keep messaging consistent. This work is especially important in Western Massachusetts, where tourism is the third largest industry.
Monique Messier described the need for organizations to work with Regional Tourism Councils (RTCs), as RTCs maintain a website, app, email newsletter, and social media channels to advertise for businesses and events within the area. RTCs create visitor guides, print magazines found in visitor centers, business, and museums in the region. The visitors guide for Central Mass is published twice a year, with copies placed in the visitors centers of each major corridor in New England. The latest edition featured the Worcester Tercentennial celebration, which I attended back in June.
One highlights of Messier’s region include her RTC’s ability to send marketing experts to special events to feature on social media, like the Halloween event “Phantoms & Fire” at Old Sturbridge Village (OSV) or a raffle held at the Worcester Art Museum (WAM). A Smile City Cultural Passport offered discounts and freebies to visitors going to Worcester, while the upcoming Worcester Winter Wonderland Passport for the holiday season is expected to draw retail-focused tourists from Boston and New York City to the area.
Nancy Gardella emphasized the importance of RTCs for using Salem, Massachusetts as a case study. While the town is known as Witch City, it has over thirty museums and draws a wide range of tourists (including me!) for its maritime history, spacious waterfront, and Salem Maritime National Historical Park. The Salem Witch Museum, first opened in 1972, is the 5th most visited museum in the state of Massachusetts. Visitor spending in Salem during 2021 was $26.5 billion, with 39% higher spending so far this year.
Outside of this tourist town, the rest of the Essex National Heritage Area is highly popular. This area benefits from familiarization tours, or FAM tours, where national and international travel agents visit the area to find the best attractions, restaurants, and hotels. Gardella explains the ability of a DMO to check the credentials of travel agents, journalists and bus tour operators; bring these travel influencers with tours of the area; and coach the staff at attractions in providing the best visitor experience.
A Q&A session after the talks gave additional information about how to host FAMs at a museum, the ability to host bus tours, improving website accessibility, best practices on social media platforms, the upcoming 250th anniversary of the beginning of the Revolutionary War, and how far in advance to plan print and social media marketing.
Industrial History New England Lunch
For lunch, I joined the Industrial History New England group. This newly forming PAG (Professional Affinity Group) declares itself “a resource for anyone interested in the critical impact of New England industry upon the history and shaping of the United States." As a regular volunteer with Blackstone Heritage Corridor and Old Slater Mill, I know a lot about local industrial history and enjoyed learning from the other members at the lunch. Another member museum that I have visited most recently is the American Watch and Clock Museum in Bristol, CT.
Teaching Hidden Histories
Massachusetts-based speakers Beth Beringer from Essex National Heritage (the same region as Nancy Gardella from the “Destination Marketing" session), Amita Kiley from Lawrence History Center, and Brian Sheehy from North Andover High School described a collaboration between the three organizations to create a local history and civics program for high school students. The idea for the program began after a group of former students emailed Sheehy, asking him to better prepare current students to understand civics and history.
The program relied on three pillars to create accurate material: content experts like professors of history, pedagogy experts like professors of education, and local resources like primary sources and oral histories. The program adhered to the DESE (Department of Elementary and Secondary Education) Guide Principle 2 Framework for Social Studies in Massachusetts, aligning the curriculum to state standards. The teachers used thinking routines created by the Harvard Graduate School of Education through Project Zero, such as “See, Think, Wonder” and “What Makes You Say That?” . These routines are typically found in art lessons but were repurposed to help students analyze primary sources. The resulting program was inclusive, encouraged critical thinking, and responsive to the learning interests of students.
During the initial training process, high school teachers, high school students, and college professors tested the lessons through two hour Zoom sessions. All sessions were recorded, allowing teachers to learn from the sessions and earn Professional Development Points (PDP), essential training for maintaining a teaching license in Massachusetts. The material is hosted on the “Teaching Hidden Histories” page of the Essex National Heritage Area website.
The program incorporated stories from regional history under five themes: “Irish & Latinx Life in Lawrence”; “19th century Black Experience in Essex County”; “Indigenous History”; “Labor History & Americanization”; “20th century Black Experience in Essex County”. One story in these sessions was about race-based riots in 1984 between Whites and Latinos over housing inequality in neighboring Lawrence. Despite its importance at the time, the event has been largely forgotten. Another session focused on a newspaper that contained an article about the Declaration of Independence and ads for catching runaway slaves, showing that freedom was available only for White Americans. Learning about the lives of people who lived nearby but came from a vastly different cultural, racial, and socio-economic background from most students in North Andover helped them develop empathy while covering state standards.
The work of Kiley in the Lawrence History Center was invaluable to the project. She enabled Beringer and Sheehy to find information in the many boxes of archives, guided volunteers in reorganizing collections, and is in the process of digitizing the collection to be fully searchable online. The Center stays in touch with teachers, allowing for future collaborations on projects. Kiley is working with Lawrence Heritage State Park to update the main exhibit at the center to include recent Latino history.
Hands-on Showcase:
Tools and Materials for Making Affordable Exhibits
In this final session for the day, speakers Betsy Loring, Meguey Baker, Don Biehl, Sheila Damkoehler, Todd Harris, and Laurie Pasteryak each explained their area of expertise in building exhibits.
Betsy Loring of expLoring exhibits was the moderator. She began by explaining the basic steps for exhibits: Interpretive Planning, Concept Design, Schematic Design, Design Development, and Fabrication (Reality). She reminded the audience that making many iterations and prototypes at the beginning of the process led to a less expensive exhibit.
Don Biehl of Green Dot Design described the use of off-the-shelf elements at the EcoTarium, a family-focused museum in Worcester, Massachusetts. Exhibits designed for children should have cheap, indestructible, and easily replaceable interactives. One problem at the EcoTarium was the high level of noise, which caused docents to quit. Since acoustic tile was expensive, Biehl placed the tiles only at ear level and added crevices between the tiles to further absorb the sound and create a mountain-like design. Biehl added that members of the Massachusetts Higher Education Consortium receive discounts on products from Grainger Industrial Supplies.
Sheila Damkoehler of Pocutuck Valley Memorial Association in Deerfield, Massachusetts described her designs for low-budget temporary exhibits featuring hollow core doors. Damkoehler first learned about hollow core doors while taking the “Exhibition Planning” class in the Tufts University Museum Studies program (which I took during the Spring 2020 semester). Even though hollow core doors have doubled in price over the past few years, they last a long time, are easy to transport between venues using a truck or van, and can be used to hide ugly or dangerous parts of an exhibit space. Damkoehler’s exhibit venues include the Great Hall at Great Falls Discovery Center, Memorial Hall Museum in Historic Deerfield, Prospect House at Skinner State Park, and the Visitor Center at Holyoke Heritage State Park.
Todd Harris of 42 Design Fab discussed selecting and using different types of materials. Inexpensive methods and products from Home Depot are often a good choice, especially for a temporary exhibit on a tight budget. Harris encourages designers to “imagine the worst” and use destructive children to test the durability of interactives. Designers must balance environmental sustainability of materials with their performance, as “green” materials do not always hold up as well as less green alternatives.
Laurie Pasteryak, a marketing manager at Cronin, emphasized the importance of planning and budgeting while designing an exhibit. This was my favorite short talk, because I loved her color-coded timelines and budgets created in Excel, which she generously shared with attendees. Other tips from Pasteryak included asking an independent party to conduct a professional accessibility review of a new exhibit space and putting important information on the floor of the exhibit to take advantage of our natural tendencies to look down.
Following the presentations was the opportunity to ask questions of individual speakers by going to a table with materials used for their work and examples of past exhibits. I personally struggled with the “musical chairs” system and would have preferred a panel format. However, I enjoyed listening to what other people at the tables had to ask. I learned more about designing hands-on and digital interactives with specific learning goals and how to use different types of signage materials.