Museum Musings: New Ideas for Museum Outreach

Like classroom teachers, museum educators must be flexible and nimble when facing new challenges. One challenge we all faced in March 2020 was the pandemic and the resulting school closures. As a school programs coordinator, the main focus of my job is welcoming students into the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, but because the schools were closed, I lost my audience. I had to quickly brainstorm new ways to connect students with our art collection.

Connecting with Carpenter Art Garden
One strategy I devised was partnering with a fellow Memphis arts nonprofit, the Carpenter Art Garden (CAG), a community organization located in Binghampton that works with children to promote creativity and self-worth through exposure to artistic, educational, and vocational programs. Located in a purple house with a large front porch, the organization is a gathering place for the Binghampton community.

A Focus on Art Kits
In June 2020, I reached out to CAG and asked if I could drop off art kits. CAG enthusiastically agreed. Like the Brooks Museum, CAG searched for ways to engage with their community despite being unable to gather in person. We decided that every week I would deliver fifteen art kits and create an instructional video to accompany each kit’s lesson for CAG’s Facebook page. CAG would place the kits on their front

Creating the kits stretched me creatively. I had to make sure the kits were easy to transport from the museum to CAG, as I delivered them in my car. I found the best way to package the kits was using gallon-sized zip-top bags, and plastic portion cups with lids made great containers for paint.

Like most art educators, I’m on a strict budget, so I had to keep the cost of the kits low. Luckily, we have a well-stocked supply closet, so most weeks I could use what we had on hand to create the kits. Providing scissors and glue sticks in the kits each week was cost-prohibitive, and there was no way to know if students had these supplies in their homes, so I either precut the required pieces or focused on torn paper activities. I also found that glue dots were a great cost-effective alternative to glue sticks.

Another challenge was creating projects that students of various ages could accomplish on their own. One way I achieved this was by providing instruction sheets with step-by-step directions, accompanied by photos. Once I created an instruction sheet template, I reused it each week and changed out the photos and directions.

Collaborating with Literacy Mid-South
To help me think of a new kit idea each week, I drew inspiration from our museum collection. One week, my focus piece was Winslow Homer’s Reading by the Brook. In this painting, a little girl quietly reads a book in a shady spot provided by a tree branch. This artwork provided the opportunity to promote the importance of reading.
I reached out to the organization Literacy Mid-South and asked if they would be interested in contributing to the kits. That week, each student received their own book, a tote bag, and a rubber bracelet. My contribution to the reading kits was a bookmark-making activity.

Creating Instructional Videos
Making the instructional videos was also an area of growth for me. Luckily, modern technology makes video production possible even for novices. I acquired a tripod and used my cell phone as my camera. I turned the museum’s field trip classroom into my video studio, using a colorful bulletin board as my backdrop. I downloaded a free video-editing software program, and with a little tinkering, taught myself how to use it.

Reflections
Providing art kits to the Carpenter Art Garden helped me continue to reach the students of Memphis, even during the pandemic. The kits allowed me to serve a large audience; ultimately, I created 480 kits over a nine-month period. The instructional videos posted to social media had a large reach as well, garnering 3,786 views. I look forward to applying the new outreach skills I learned during the course of this partnership in the years to come.