The ENVi committee are delighted to continue this series in which we attempt to seek out the positives for the museum education sector.
We are thrilled to receive positive feedback from our peers and we encourage you to let us know what your learnings are during this time. Please continue to share your thoughts with us or consider presenting on a subject (with our support). The more voices we can share exemplifies the diversity of our practices that helps us all to learn from one another and improve.
We have found it helpful to hear about what other orgs have been doing during this time and reassuring of how people have been travelling. These forums have also given us ideas and inspiration for things that we can do…
Silver Linings 4 program attendee
Silver Linings 4: Inventing a New Future video
In July’s Silver Linings, Andrew Hiskens (consultant and former Manager of Learning at State Library Victoria) introduced a theoretical approach to help us to navigate the kinds of futures we might want to invent for our programs. To begin Andrew invited us to consider maps as a metaphor for moving forward.
One of the ways in which people like to think about the future is the idea of a road map. The idea we can go down the street ahead of us, and [what we are looking for is] the first right, second on the left, third right. Then it’s the fourth building down on the left. But the future never really turns out like that. The future is something actually much more like a treasure map. This idea that somehow there’s a question mark in the middle, we’re not quite sure, something is crossed out. Treasure maps often had sea monsters and pirates and so on. So when you’re trying to navigate with a kind of level of uncertainty, what you really need are tools for navigation.
Andrew Hiskens, Museum Consultant, 2020
Andrew introduced Three Horizons, created by Bill Sharpe, a tool that helps us to think collectively about how to approach and enact transformative change.
Andrew then interviewed Ben Liu, Creative Producer, Learning and Participation Programming and Audience Development at Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria. They discussed how Ben and his team transformed education programs from being face to face to being delivered completely online. The path Ben took loosely resembled the Three Horizons strategy, which provided an example of a potential application for this tool.
Please let us know if you apply the Three Horizons tool in your work.
We look forward to seeing you again at Silver Linings 5: What have teachers learned? where we hear from researchers and teachers about their learnings during Term 2 when they suddenly moved to teaching online. What will museum educators learn from this and how can we best adapt our programming to meet their needs?
See you then.
Christine Healey
References
Sharpe, B., A. Hodgson, G. Leicester, A. Lyon, and I. Fazey. 2016. Three horizons: a pathways practice for transformation. Ecology and Society 21(2):47.
Arundhati Roy, 2020, The pandemic is a portal, Financial Times
Natasha Ziebell, Daniela Acquaro, Wee Tiong Seah, Cath Pearn, 2020, Australian Education Survey: Examining the impact of COVID-19 Report Summary.
Graham Leicester, 2020, Three Horizons presentation, International Futures Forum
Scotland and Covid-19: A Three Horizons Map of the Landscape, May 2020
Enterprise Professor Sandra Milligan, Dr Rebekah Luo, Associate Professor Eeqbal Hassim & Jayne Johnston, 2020, Future-proofing students: What they need to know and how educators can assess and credential them.
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See our previously recorded conversations here
Silver Linings 4: Inventing a New Future – July
Silver Linings 3: Now Normal to New Normal – June
Silver Linings 2: What do Teachers want? – May
Silver Linings in Museum Education – April
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