Category: Education

Today is Earth Day – and not just any Earth Day, but the 50th anniversary of Earth Day – a date that is traditionally marked by environmental action and conversations about sustainability.

In this time during a devastating pandemic, where each day seems to last a year in itself, thinking about sustainability can be difficult. However, we in the museum community still need to look towards the future and plan to meet that challenge. First, as museum professionals our job is to preserve and interpret cultural objects or intangible heritage – from vintage sheet music to the tune and lyrics themselves. This is why we exist, receive donations, and are funded by tax dollars, corporate monies, and private contributions. The mission of a museum is to hold the public’s trust utilizing ethical, educational, and sustainable methods, and to measure plans for the future so as to never lose that public trust and support.

Second, in a world besieged with climate change, water shortages, trash pile ups, and other environmental impacts, museums need to look to the future to further assist their communities – and to preserve their own holdings – by demonstrating proactive sustainable measures. As a representative of their town, city, or other local area, museums must do their part and continue their role as public educator.

So what things can we do to help while working in a museum? First, a few simple things, amongst others: recycle, use less water, watch our paper use (e-newsletters are our friend!), reuse what we can (wash the plastic forks after an event), make good choices in our supplies, and monitor our electricity usage as far as possible – for instance, using LED lights in exhibit cases not only conserves energy but it helps to preserve artifacts. And sustainability can also be addressed in larger ways. For example, some museums are being redesigned to be more environmentally friendly, or in some cases completely carbon-neutral such as the new science museum being built in Lund, Sweden.

And as central educational centers for the public, what we do to lessen our environmental impact is viewed by our public. Those of us whose mission intersects with the natural and scientific world can, of course, produce programming and exhibits that teach environmental care and principles. But even if our mission is not focused that way – for example, a music museum like us – leading by example is another pathway to sharing sustainability goals and actions with our community. We can even use what we know to assist those in our community take similar steps. For instance, through BCM’s festival branch, our Green Team works to make green changes and encourage recycling at our annual music festival.

And so, museums today are working on a better future environmentally and taking what steps we can to help. But besides this, what other goals can museums express for sustainability? We hold collections of culture, science, and art – tangible and intangible – and educate the public on their value, for those here now and for generations afterwards. But to continue to exist and be relevant, we need to be responsive to changes in our world. In what ways can we do this? To answer this, museums are going to need to fully open their doors, all too often appearing, at least to some, as intrusive monoliths in a city’s landscape compared to the daily activities performed around them. For instance, the Georgian-styled archives, the Greek Revival art museum, etc. A redesign is needed by many institutions, not just of their façade, but of how the community views the museum itself.

We in museums have to ask many, many, questions. Who is our audience? What are their expectations? Where do we fit in our community? And how can we help? How can we sustainably preserve the history, art, and cultural heritage for future generations? How can we make our mission resonate with different ethnic, religious, and cultural groups? How do we not become obsolete in a quickly changing world?

Even during this time of Covid-19 taking over our “normal” lives, museums are proving how necessary they are. Yes, most – if not all – are closed, but still they are active in their communities. Some are offering their large parking lots for testing or food pickup. Many museum professionals are assisting with supply gathering or sewing of masks. Museums are using social media and their own websites to offer activities for children (and adults) now at home full time, or to demonstrate science experiments, or to show virtual exhibits. And the public is responding and consuming all this extra content with gusto. And while doing so, museums are still deemed important and needed, even when closed. Hopefully, due to these creative and innovative ways museum professionals are still interacting with their audiences, people will return when we open back up.

And our communities will continue to support us as we evolve with our community. Sustainability is based on change, resilience, and an understanding that normal can shift to something new in the face of different attitudes, resources, situations, and perspectives. This can be seen right now as we are all dealing with the uncertainties of this pandemic – in the midst of this, museums are proving that they can work with other organizations and community partners to help and be relevant, even with their doors closed to the public. The future is more uncertain than ever right now, but we museum professionals are on the front lines and will continue to assist our communities in many diverse ways.

And so, on this 50th anniversary of Earth Day, we will continue to search for other methods we can help lessen our negative impact on the environment and plan for future changes our museum can do such as updating an HVAC system or using natural light to illuminate and heat the museum. But as well, we will reach out to our community, and the community of museums, schools, libraries, and other institutions, to set programs and exchange ideas on how we can have a better impact on our audiences and – well, the whole earth – to sustain our importance and social need. 

For more information, here are some great resources: Principles for Sustainable Museums; Sustainability and Museums; and Museums, Environmental Sustainability, and Our Future.

Today is National Teacher Appreciation Day!

And while the museum views itself as an educational resource, some of OUR most important resources are the teachers who bring their students through our doors and take what they learned in the museum back to their classroom. And so today, we wanted to share a blog post about the educator’s experience in our museum – and say a HUGE thank you to all the teachers who enhance their students’ learning through a variety of creative lessons and activities, who support the kids in their classrooms in ways big and small, and who work hard to set the foundation to make the next generation into curious, interested, and engaged adults!

The Birthplace of Country Music is always looking to find great ways to engage with students and teachers and with families looking for entertaining learning experiences. This is an essential part of our mission. We do this in a variety of ways from school tours to educational programming to fun family activities and through all three of our outlets: the museum, the radio station, and the festival. Check out our blog post here to learn more about some of these activities. We are also fortunate that our museum’s permanent exhibit enables us to approach our content from multiple angles – for instance, music and its history, Appalachian culture, local history, and technology, to name a few.

But we also have the wonderful resource of our Special Exhibits Gallery and the variety of traveling and temporary exhibits that are displayed there – and these present us with the opportunity to bring a variety of other interesting and relevant educational opportunities to our local and regional schools and our community. We hosted the Smithsonian’s Things Come Apart exhibit last summer and fall, and it is a great example of how a special exhibit can address a host of learning goals – due to its heavy STEAM focus, we saw several school groups visit the exhibit and we experienced firsthand how teachers can use our content as a supplement to their curriculum.

One school – Sullins Academy – decided to make the most of all that Things Come Apart offered, and we asked their Head of School Roy Vermillion to blog about their experience, sharing with us and our readers how the exhibit enhanced their learning goals – and was just all around good fun!

“Sullins Academy’s faculty and staff had a chance to experience the wondrous exhibit Things Come Apart last summer right as it opened. We came to the museum for one of our faculty workdays, which gave us the chance to dig deep into this Smithsonian exhibit firsthand and to actually see how touring and working with the content of this exhibit could benefit our students.

After having lots of fun ourselves, we booked several of our classes to visit the Birthplace of Country Music Museum to see this exhibit focused on various common items that had been taken apart and presented in a most unique and artistic format. STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) education is such an important part of our school’s curriculum, and the Things Come Apart tour supported and affirmed the importance of providing such opportunities for our students. The experience gave our students the opportunity to view things differently and to begin to understand the complexity of items and the engineering that goes into the manufacturing of such objects.

The tour enjoyed by our faculty, as well as our students, was enhanced with a fortuitous chance to have a hands-on experience through a variety of Smithsonian Spark!Lab activities where groups worked together to create a product specific to a particular need. These makerspace centers encouraged the groups to collaborate in order to solve a problem, which further enhanced what was taken away from this educational “Beyond the Classroom” experience.

The principles highlighted in this exhibit also carried through into our classrooms back at Sullins – for instance, prior to visiting the museum, our eighth-grade students actually disassembled a broken cell phone to see all the components and applied what they would see at the exhibit to a real-life experience.

This exhibit was important to Sullins because it gave us a unique educational opportunity to enhance our students’ learning experience. It also served as an inspiration for our students to explore and to experiment as they participated in their own Things Come Apart projects back at school.

We encourage everyone to take advantage of the myriad of opportunities a facility like the Birthplace of Country Music Museum is able to bring to our community. We are fortunate to have the availability of such an innovational entity from which we can garner these unique and important educational opportunities for ourselves and the children we serve.”

The experiences of Sullins Academy’s students and teachers really reflect the goals of our museum: to provide an educational and inspirational experience, one that brings real engagement to those who visit us and acts as a support for learning within our local community and schools. And they also reflect the dedication of our teachers and educators to bring out the curiosity of our children and get them excited about learning.

As we move forward, we embrace the excitement of engaging with students – and all of our every day visitors – in order to share our resources with them and highlight the value that museums – and teachers – bring to communities like ours on a daily basis.

Guest blogger Roy Vermillion is Head of School at Sullins Academy in Bristol, Virginia. Head Curator René Rodgers provided context to his guest post. Thank you to teacher Sarah Hampton for sharing her wonderful pictures of the students at the museum and in the classroom.