1. Introduction
"Enriching communities through technology one museum at a time."
That's the motto a group of interns participating in a new AmeriCorps Cultural Technology Program (ACT) in New Mexico. This paper is based on our experiences as staff and interns in launching this innovative program.
ACT is a significant new development for the Center for Cultural Technology (CCT), a partnership established in 2005 between the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, a state agency, and the Media Arts Program at New Mexico Highlands University, a regional institution of higher education primarily serving students from Hispanic communities in northern New Mexico. These communities are predominantly rural and very low-income.
The goal in establishing the CCT partnership was to develop a more effective and productive alternative to traditional museum studies programs by simultaneously addressing two needs particularly relevant to northern New Mexico:
- the need of media arts students for career paths that will allow them to apply their creative talents and technological skills in helping their communities
- the need of community-based cultural institutions for practical and affordable technological solutions to engage on-site and on-line visitors.
The ACT program combines rigorous academics with opportunities for paid internships in cultural technology, the emerging field at the intersection of cultural content, networks, and digital media. The University provides the academic component through its Media Arts Program. The Department of Cultural Affairs, through its Office of Digital Initiatives, provides administrative and financial support and liaison among the university, institutional partners, and mentors, and develops opportunities for class projects and internships.
The program works closely with partnering cultural and scientific institutions on creative ways to use technology to expand on-site and on-line access to cultural sites, resources, and information, and to reach out to new audiences. Our interns are having an impact on all aspects of museum operations – raising the production quality of exhibits, helping get collections on line, creating interactive exhibits and websites, producing videos, and using social media.
2. Museums, Communities & National Service
CCT received funding to establish the ACT program in 2010. Administering an AmeriCorps program has turned out to be more complicated and challenging than we could have ever imagined but has been well worth the effort. In particular, AmeriCorps funding has significantly expanded the program's ability to provide internship opportunities to students.
Integrating a museum internship program with national service has taken the CCT program to a new level by offering students sustained mentorships from seasoned museum professionals, on-the-job-training, and the experience of public service in cultural institutions as a viable career path. It has also expanded our service-learning focus beyond practical skills to encompass full integration of experiential learning, civic responsibility, and community building. New Mexico communities benefit as interns use their skills to help partner local and regional museums, and other cultural institutions employ advanced multimedia technologies to expand their reach and impact.
ACT volunteers can complete terms of internship service that are fulltime (1700 hours), halftime (900 hours), or minimum time (300 hours). They receive a modest living allowance and other benefits. For example, members who successfully complete AmeriCorps service can receive a Segal Education Award to help pay for college or to pay back student loans.
AmeriCorps has provided CCT with a connection to national service. AmeriCorps, sometimes called the domestic Peace Corps, is tied to the history and tradition of national service in the United States, which started with the vision of philosopher William James of a non-military national service corps. Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced this concept into public policy during the Great Depression through creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which put citizens to work in reforestation projects.
Today, AmeriCorps offers service opportunities through a network of partnerships with local and national nonprofit groups. Most members do work like cleaning up parks and streams, building trails, tutoring, helping run after-school programs, and working in disaster response. But nothing limits AmeriCorps programs to these activities, and it is wide open to new ideas and opportunities. Before ACT, there were models for university-based programs and for programs that serve community-based arts and cultural organizations, but there was no precedent for a program integrating the needs of museums and students with modern technology.
For Michael Jackson, an ACT intern at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science in Albuquerque, the program has important differences from other AmeriCorps programs. At an AmeriCorps members' launch, ACT interns met other AmeriCorps volunteers involved in the activities mentioned above, such as environmental projects and tutoring in an afterschool programs. "For others," Michael pointed out, "this may be what they are looking for; but for media art students, this wouldn't be an ideal job." In other words, ACT has opened up an entirely new group of people to the AmeriCorps vision of volunteerism.
When he compared ACT to traditional museum internship programs, Michael pointed out differences from them as well:
Most other museum internships are unpaid, and the interns might not get to work on actual exhibits. ACT members get paid living allowances and get to work on a variety of exhibit projects. The opportunity to work in a museum setting allows us to use our skills and put our degrees to work, while continuing to learn more skills, and get a foot in the door right after graduation.
To address some unique issues, the ACT program offers an elaborate support structure. Supervisory responsibilities are shared. An internship coordinator develops and monitors contracts between students and mentors. The liaison from the Department of Cultural Affairs assists mentors in developing internship proposals, which are then vetted by a committee and matched to interns through an application process. Before the placement begins, the internship coordinator provides orientation to both mentors and interns on their roles and responsibilities, and each intern is assigned a faculty advisor, who can provide technical assistance and guidance as needed.
Concurrent with their participation in ACT, interns are required to enrol in a mentorship class which provides instruction, peer-to-peer contact for problem-solving, and reflection on reading assignments, their experiences, and the meaning of service. The class meets in person every other week and via a Facebook chat on alternate weeks.
3. How is technology driving changes in the traditional roles of museum interns and mentors?
There is a long tradition of mentorship within the museum profession; therefore, cultural institutions are natural partners for internship or service-learning programs. Mentorship has benefited and continues to benefit the careers of beginning museum professionals in many ways. The role of mentor can be gratifying, especially as many mentors have been mentored themselves prior to being in their positions. Mentoring also benefits institutions and has played a significant role in professionalizing the museum field and in career and human resource development. In fact, many of the host institutions we work with view mentorship as part of their succession planning and the process of understanding how technology is changing job descriptions and institutional roles and responsibilities.
Establishing rapport, communications, and a good working relationship across the divides of age, cultural diversity, and socio-economic status takes a strong commitment, conscious effort, and time. In cases where the mentor is a designer, the relationship of mentor and intern can be fairly traditional, that of teaching practical skills. In cases where the mentor is not a designer; for example, where they might be an administrator, curator, collections manager, or educator, the mentor might not be teaching a practical skill set, but nonetheless provides critical guidance on organizational culture, behavioral norms, and social roles, as well as an introduction to professional standards and practices.
For Angelo Mitchell, an AmeriCorps intern at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, the mentorship relationship is critical. It is building his confidence and makes the internship experience that much better because he is not just getting coffee or filing paperwork for someone – he's learning. Even so, he recognizes that there can be good and bad mentors just as there can be good and bad interns. The key for him has been getting to know how his mentor works and deals with situations. In addition, doing his work involves interacting with lots of people, not just his assigned mentor, and he views them as his mentors as well, although they might not know it. Angelo sees mentoring as a major building block for fashioning new people to enter the museum field.
Through hands-on experience and learning by doing, Angelo has found himself continuing to grow and change as a person and a professional. His experience is really preparing him for the pursuit of his career and is giving him a better chance of not failing, knowing how to conduct himself in a professional setting and around superiors and peers. Not coming from the museum world, looking at it from the outside in, he is gaining a better outlook on what is and isn't working. This gives him the chance to take on a leadership role when he chooses to in looking for radical ideas and practical solutions to problems that the institution may or may not have identified. By doing this, he hopes to motivate others to take action. If he is successful in that, he will have met his goal for being a catalyst for change.
4. Empowering students from diverse backgrounds to become cultural interpreters and knowledge contributors
When I found out that I was going to be the only native New Mexican there, I thought, well, that's kind of cool. I'm just going to stay true to the culture and the traditions.
(Melissa Marquez, AmeriCorps Intern at the Roswell Museum & Art Center)
There can be little doubt that once museums and other cultural institutions have professional staff members like Melissa, they will be transformed far beyond access to better graphics and more multimedia technologies. Change will encompass all aspects of interpretive content and communication, as well as multimedia interpretive delivery systems.
Over the past several decades, the museum field has made great strides in reaching out to broader and more diverse audiences and becoming more "visitor centered". Museums have become less elitist and more deeply engaged with a broader cross-section of the communities they serve. This process has gone on hand in hand with technological advances capable of enhancing exhibits, addressing multiple learning styles, and reaching new online audiences. More recently, technology has begun to blur the lines between institutions and the public, inviting interaction, information exchange, and even contributed content. While at one time museums tended to view visitors as cultural consumers, they now offer them opportunities to become cultural contributors.
Yet for the most part, the same openness to diversity is not yet reflected on professional staffs. Just as technology has transformed the relationship of museums to their audiences, it also holds the potential to catalyze a more diverse workforce within the museum profession by attracting students who might not otherwise consider or be exposed to career paths in museums and other cultural institutions.
What is the museum work experience like for our interns – to be the youngest person on the museum or department staff, to be the only Hispanic or African-American, to be the only person with his or her technological skill set, or even to be the only person who thinks like a designer? Our experience is that it can be very up and very down, but in the end, the AmeriCorps program has turned out positive for all our volunteers.
Michael Jackson's experience is typical. When he started at New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science, he could see that, like a lot of other museums, the institution and its staff needed change. And he was confident he was the change they were looking for – a fresh new face with lots of ideas that would impact the museum and the community it serves. But he immediately noticed that amidst all the talk about change, no one was really trying to make it happen. The very idea of change seemed nonexistent. When he made suggestions, some staff members might be receptive, but others viewed him as a dreamer.
But Michael earned the respect of his supervisor with his work on small exhibit and graphic design assignments. Within two months he was promoted to co-project director on an exhibit that will be opening in May. The exhibit, on origin of life, is a collaboration of the museum, an exhibit design class at Highlands, and scientists at the Santa Fe Institute. Most museum interns don't get this kind of opportunity. If it weren't for the ACT program, Michael believes he would still be trying to get his foot in the door somewhere.
For the host institution, change may be coming more slowly than Michael, with his youthful energy and enthusiasm, anticipated – but change is coming. Michael's goal is to think outside the box and try to stay ahead of the curve, with the ultimate goal of helping museum visitors to enjoy themselves even more and to have even more fun learning.
5. Funding Strategies & Partnerships
It is generally accepted that having internship experience on one's resume can give a beginning professional a significant edge in the job market. Students who are working their way through school cannot afford the luxury of volunteering time for internships. Therefore, paid internships are essential to leveling the playing field for all students regardless of socio-economic status and to prevent internships from becoming a sieve that culls low-income and minority students from entering the profession.
That being said, the main obstacle to paid internships remains lack of funding. Most museums don't have a line item in their budgets for "internship stipends", although arguably they should. This is particularly challenging when you are working with our target student population and with institutions which are in the main small and rural.
Federal funding agencies have programs that will provide support for internship programs, including stipends. A major challenge faced by our program in serving a rural and low-income population is one of credibility with national funders. We believe that the solution will come from developing national partnerships. Coming to Museums & the Web has connected us to partners with national reputations who see our students as part of the future of the museum profession and who are willing to partner with us. Special thanks are owed to Rich Cherry of the Balboa Park Online Collaborative and Tom Scheinfeldt of the Center for History & New Media for their openness to developing cultural exchange with our program.
That being said, our program does have a couple of funding advantages. The university is a huge resource for in-kind administrative support and funding. Likewise, the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, a state agency, also provides administrative support and funding for internship stipends, equipment purchase, travel, and other program expenses. In addition, private donors have provided funds for scholarships, student travel, and other vital activities. Our goal is to use the foundation of institutional and private donor support to build a more diversified funding structure. But without our institutional partnership and the base of support that it provides, the program would not be able to survive.
The important role of strong relationships with our partnering museums and other cultural institutions cannot be overstated. Over time, the number of partners is growing, and they are increasingly able to match our funding, or provide total support internship stipends, through a variety of means:
- Building internships into grant proposals
- Tapping into foundation funding
- Reallocating funds from line items for contract services
- Sponsorships – approaching private donors who are committed to education
6. How can interns help museums adapt to technological change?
How can cultural institutions that are by nature conservative, slow moving, and chronically under-resourced in terms of staff and money, take advantage of the potential of technology to transform their operations, exhibits, and education and outreach programs? How can they even begin to keep pace with the rapid advances in the technological world while struggling to care for their collections and engage their communities?
Eric Maldonado is an ACT intern in a small community-based museum in Las Vegas, New Mexico. He says,
The problem I see with change in the museum here in Las Vegas is not so much that they do not want it, it is that they do not have the funding or the space to do it. Therefore I believe the solution is to make small changes here and there in order to bring more visitors into the museum . . . This could all be done without making huge, significant changes.
For Angelo Mitchell, being a change agent was foremost in his mind as he began his AmeriCorps service at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. He thought about how change is something that happens everywhere naturally or by direct influence, and has effects both positive and negative in all aspects of life, from politics to art and technology. He had to apply all of these thoughts to understanding what change means in the context of his institution.
Angelo arrived at his worksite fresh out of school as a young ambitious person with lots of ideas and the feeling that he can do anything and that nothing is going to stop him. As a digital native, he is used to using technology and working at a fast pace. The slower pace of museum work took some adjustment. He says "Our attention spans travel about as fast as a mouse button can click, and we hear and see everything on the Internet these days." He thinks this is a good thing, and believes that museums need to adapt to this change in their exhibits and in how they attract visitors.
As someone who is coming in from outside of the museum realm, Angelo is offering his institution fresh perspectives, particularly on what attracts new audiences and younger people and how to gain their attention. His BFA in Media Arts has given him many different tools, from graphic design to website development, photography, and film – all of these things tie together. He takes responsibility for being in the know about trends and what's new, and how new tools can be used by museums to attract audiences both young and old. Happily for Angelo, these things are becoming more prevalent within the museum world. Like Michael, he appreciates having the opportunity to use his skills right away after graduation, and to move forward with his career in a supportive work environment that despite a tight economy still wants to move forward as well.
7. Some Final Thoughts
Though the particulars of each situation are unique, what museums and other cultural institutions have in common are the new roles and responsibilities that are emerging as they respond to radical social changes, many of which have technological underpinnings. The Internet is having a profound impact on how institutions fulfill their cultural missions. An increasing share of resources – human and financial – are being devoted to digitization and the use of multimedia in exhibits and online.
Cultural Technology job positions and career opportunities are expanding. Preparing the next generation of museum professionals to fill those jobs is a growing need. On the non-technology side of the equation, technology also provides museums with an opportunity to attract students from more diverse ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds into professional-level museum work.
Here is how Angelo Mitchell sums up the situation:
Being resilient and adaptive can make a big difference in how we approach the new age of learning and communication with each other. Looking from the outside in and taking chances can be helpful for the future of museums. Young minds though inexperienced in certain aspects can have answers to age-old problems if given the opportunity to create, take action, and come up with the answers.
Websites
Center for Cultural Technology: http://cct.newmexicoculture.org
AmeriCorps: http://www.americorps.gov
