We presented in Baltimore on May 17, 2024, at the American Alliance of Museums (AAM)’s annual meeting. AAM’s Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo brings together museums of all types and sizes—from art and history museums to zoos and botanic gardens—to share ideas and make connections that are transformative.

Our talk was on “Remembering in a Gentrifying City: Innovations in Community Collaboration,” with Samir Meghelli of the Smithsonian, Michele Casto of the DC Public Library/People’s Archive, and Benjamin Stokes of the Playful City Lab at the American University School of Communication.

ABSTRACT: In the context of rapid gentrification and the erasure of longstanding communities, how can museums be authentic partners in local organizing and amplifying community voices and history? This session offers a new model for cultural institutions to go “beyond their walls” in community collaboration and engagement. Through repurposed payphones on wheels, storytelling stations at a neighborhood library, and multimedia trucks hosting mobile exhibits and handing out calling cards, the innovative, collaborative efforts of three Washington D.C. cultural institutions combined the power of community history with creatively constructed, community-accessible technology to help cultivate a more robust civic culture and greater historical awareness in a rapidly gentrifying city.

Take-aways (and action steps for museums):

1. Museums can be important community conveners and collaborators, not just static exhibitors of content

2. Community members are an authority (and content producer), not just an audience and content consumer

3. To amplify their work, museums can be in conversation and collaboration with:
   1. …with arts innovators and community-engaged researchers (like Leimert Phone Company & Playful City Lab)
   2. with community-rooted/anchor institutions like local libraries, which have a built-in community/patrons of a wide array of ages, backgrounds, needs/interests

4. Multi-sited activation/engagement… where people already are, where gentrification is happening
   1. engagement that stretches beyond museum walls, that bridges to—and happens at—other sites
   2. at anchor/community institutions of all kinds, whether libraries, bookstores, local small businesses
   3. Out in the streets (at neighborhood festivals, community events) with participatory and interactive history-based engagement 

5. Radically “low tech” for access and audience
6. Make peoples’ stories matter – sharing with policymakers, with organizers, with archives, with you

Report / book coming soon

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