By: Marley Steele-Inama, Director of Community Engagement at the Denver Zoo and Nichole Nageotte, Community Research and Evaluation Manager at the Denver Zoo
This year’s American Alliance of Museums (AAM) conference was hosted in Denver May 18-22, making it easy for many folks from Denver Zoo and other community culturals to attend and present. Participating at AAM’s annual conference is a privilege for zoo and aquarium professionals to learn from and alongside our colleagues in the museum field.
Many of the sessions presented on this year’s theme – Social & Community Impact – were well facilitated and thought-provoking. Additionally, the keynotes were powerful and profound. Colorado’s Poet Laureate Bobby LeFabre brought the audience to their feet with his formidable spoken word performance, and artist/disruptor Gregg Deal (Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe) reminded us that we “have to put aside ego and a belief that we are so educated as to skirt responsibility”. Zoos, aquariums, and botanical gardens too, have a responsibility to our people, our planet, our power, and to our limitless possibility.
Here are some of our key conference learnings through the four lenses of this year’s theme:
People
Attending AAM is a great opportunity to learn from museum colleagues about people-centered programs that our conservation organizations may not typically consider. We learned about creative programs such as:
- Offering language classes for community members
- Providing quiet study hours for neighboring students preparing to take exams, and
- Focusing more on civic learning and engagement
How might creative community engagement benefit our collective missions to conserve wildlife, habitats, and ecosystems?
Planet
While AZA organizations have been involved in conversations, community engagement, and action around climate change for decades, the larger museum field is now stepping up and into this space. In a session called “Putting Social Science to Work in Climate Change Interpretation”, panelists discussed research that had been conducted on perceptions of the public about climate change. They found:
- Most Americans know that climate change is happening, is human caused, and people are worried about it.
- A vocal minority provides a false impression that more people do not believe in climate change.
- Most of the public think that museums should talk about climate change, and that climate change can be discussed appropriately by different types of museums, not just science museums.
- Climate change is not just an environmental issue, but one of social justice.
Knowing the public expects more from us, where can zoos, aquariums, and botanical gardens step up our ability and obligation to talk about climate change impact, reversal, adaptation, and resilience?
Power
The concept of sharing power was evident in many sessions. One session had us wondering what, within our zoo and aquarium collections, could and should be repatriated to Indigenous communities?
What would it mean for zoos, aquariums, and botanical gardens to return items, land, and even wildlife to Indigenous communities?
Another session titled “Ethically Training Formerly Incarcerated Adults in the Museum Profession” was updated at the conference to “Engaging People who are Systems-Impacted Through Museum-Based Professional Learning Programs”. Staff from The Broad Museum, National Museum of American History, and Eastern State Penitentiary modeled what reflection and improvement look like in action when they adjusted to first person language, putting the responsibility on systems and not individuals.
Where might we have systems in our own organizations where we center our language around individuals versus systems, and what harm might that language be causing?
Possibility
Zoos, aquariums, and botanical gardens, just like museums, have the responsibility to sustain healthy, resilient, inclusive, and equitable communities. This year’s AAM conference reminded us there is endless possibility for us to not only positively impact the outcomes of wildlife and ecosystems, but also to improve the lives of people and communities.
- A key takeaway for both of us is that we must have frameworks that guide our approaches to community work, community engagement, and amplifying the voices of our communities, especially those that have traditionally marginalized or silenced by society as well as our organizations.
- Additionally, we can change our restorative practices with communities harmed. In the session called “A Tool for Justice: The Center for Restorative History’s Framework for Community Engagement”, the panelists shared a four-step framework that helps organizations identify who has been harmed, their needs, the root causes of the harm, and our obligations moving forward.
What would it mean to consider ourselves community-centric organizations? How might our organization find possibility in social and community impact by building better and more meaningful systems of consultation, collaboration, and co-creation with communities?
Thank you to Denver Zoo for providing us and our colleagues with the means to attend this great conference. Additional great resources for further learning:
- Explore the conference’s Twitter feed using hashtag: #AAM2023
- Discover the podcast A Frame of Mind, published by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Arts in Kansas City, which takes a hard look at race in the United States through the lens of one art museum.
- Read and follow AAM’s Alliance Blogs written by incredible thought leaders in the museum field and beyond.
