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As we begin 2022, nearly two years since the pandemic began, what I’m most struck by is that the world I operate in is a fundamentally changed one.  It’s fascinating and a bit disorienting that these changes happened so quickly, sped up by circumstance of the pandemic.  Change is happening all the time, but more often than not, it happens so gradually and subtly that it goes undetected in real time.  The accelerated changes in 2020 and 2021 allowed me to be a conscious witness and active participant in transformation.  In particular, the world of museums and cultural organizations changed in five ways that make me optimistic about my work as a researcher and evaluator in 2022.

1. There is room for vulnerability in the workplace. 

We let our guards down professionally during the pandemic which allowed us to connect with one another human to human.  Zoom had a lot to do with this by the sheer fact that we got a sense of each other’s day-to-day surroundings and context at home.  In two years, we went from types of communication that convey formality and reserve (like in conference rooms) to virtually getting a glimpse into people’s everyday lives (baskets of laundry, artwork on walls, cats on keyboards, etc.).  It’s subtle, but I have felt an opening up, a breath of relief, to bring our full selves—flaws and all—to professional encounters.  I don’t see that reversing even once we meet in person more often (except maybe less athletic wear).

2. There has been a broadening in who we include in research. 

This change has been a long time coming.  For many years now, research in museums and cultural organizations has tended to focus on current audiences rather than potential audiences.  One reason was access—it is easier to collect data from an onsite audience than to recruit and collect data from people out in the world.  But a more insidious reason is “navel gazing”— a tendency among museums to focus inward rather than acknowledge the complex, wider context in which they are situated.  The tables turned during the pandemic; not only was access to in-person audiences impossible for several months, but the question “who are museums for?” was amplified as protests for social justice took hold. So, audience research went remote, and in doing so a whole world of possibilities opened.  Even now, with museums open again, remote research that includes broader audiences is here to stay.

3. A reckoning in museums is leading to a dismantling of the status quo. 

This change is enormous, and even with all the attention to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in 2019, still felt like something in the distant future.  In 2020, with many museums pledging a commitment to Black Lives Matter, I wondered along with others, was it all lip service? Could museums walk the talk?  The answer is, “yes, sometimes.”  Some museums and cultural organizations are deliberately making choices that make space for a break down in the status quo. One of the strongest signs of this is the number of black leaders hired in museums and cultural organizations in 2021.  Along with staffing changes, I have noticed other more subtle changes, having to do with vulnerability described in #1 above, in which cultural workers are bringing their full selves to meetings, raising difficult questions and challenging topics that disrupt an implicit protection of the status quo.  I am hopeful for more real talk in the future.

4. The colonial roots of social science research and evaluation are being questioned. 

My training is in anthropology, and perhaps more than any other social science, anthropology grew from and thrived during colonialism.  Many anthropologists go on to be evaluators, taking their colonial origins with them.  None of this is news, but what is news is a strong and vocal outcry by evaluators questioning our role in social change and the methods we use.  I asked myself in the last 18 months, how have I protected the status quo in museums and cultural organizations through evaluation?  Two years ago, this kind of questioning was done privately—more often than not we evaluators found a way to justify our work despite its role in perpetuating systemic injustices.  During 2021, I have drawn inspiration from many posts on the American Evaluators Association daily blog, AEA365, that offer alternatives to traditional evaluation approaches, like this one about culturally specific research and indigenous liberation.  I feel freedom to explore new, more inclusive and responsive research methodologies moving forward.

5. Audience research and community engagement have been blurred.

This change grows from #1-4 above, and I am still working out what it means for my practice.  Prior to 2020, I thought of audience research and community engagement as separate, but related, endeavors.  Audience research is the study by a researcher of an organization’s audiences (current or potential) to learn how to serve those audience best, and community engagement is the actions of an organization building relationships with its surrounding community.  In my mind, audience research could inform community engagement, but I never saw them as the same thing.  Yet, in the last year a couple things have happened.  First, some museums have asked us specifically for community engagement services.  This immediately raises a red flag for me— should we, third-party researchers, be the first outreach to a potential new audience?  Is collecting data from someone really the best first step to engagement and relationship building?  Secondly, as our research and evaluation has started to include more and more people who do not visit museums, I felt uncomfortable extracting data from them for the museums’ benefit alone.  How do the research participants benefit other than a small honorarium that we provide?  I no longer see audience research and community engagement as separate.  I want audience research to include engagement by the museum as part of the process.  I am still very much in the process of working out what this looks like.

Being a part of these radical transformations, I am not the same person professionally that I was in 2019.  I am more energized, more focused, and grateful to be working in this field at this extraordinary time in history. 

The post Five Welcome Changes to Embrace in 2022 appeared first on RK&A.

For more than 30 years, RK&A has served as a premier planning, evaluation, and research firm, supporting hundreds of museums and informal learning organizations.  We are seeking a Project Coordinator to join our dynamic team.  The Project Coordinator will provide administrative and operational support to our team of researchers and play a wide range of roles in both qualitative and quantitative research, focusing on logistics.  

RK&A is remote-first with team members distributed along the East Coast (just north and south of Washington, DC).  As a small, tight-knit team, we collaborate daily and require flexibility.  The Project Coordinator is a remote position; however, we will prioritize applicants who reside in the mid-Atlantic region and especially within the DC-Maryland-Virginia (DMV) area specifically (where the majority of our projects take place) so they can assist with occasional in-person project tasks and participate in special in-person team meetings and retreats.  The Project Coordinator is a salaried position of $44,000-$49,000 (commensurate with experience) plus a generous benefits package, including health insurance and 401K.  RK&A will provide the necessary equipment to perform job duties (e.g., a computer), to be used for business purposes only.

Responsibilities will include:

• Coordinate across team members and project schedules to keep workflow on track
• Organizational set-up for new projects, including scheduling tasks and communication
• Monitor project timelines (milestones and deliverables), expenses, and equipment
• Take and maintain notes for meetings, workshops, focus groups, interviews, etc.
• Recruit, schedule, coordinate, and distribute incentives for focus groups, interviews, and surveys
• Program surveys, enter and organize data, and assist with data collection management
• Prepare quantitative and qualitative data for analysis
• Assist with hiring, scheduling, and monitoring subcontractors
• Assist with project related paperwork like IRB applications and other permissions
• Proofread reports and other deliverables for accuracy, quality, consistency, and formatting
• Support in-house activities like archiving, marketing, and new business proposal materials
• Support the overall operations of the business with various administrative tasks, as needed

The successful candidate will have:

• Demonstrated experience coordinating and organizing large amounts of information across multiple complex projects (e.g., using spreadsheets and project management platforms)
• Attention to detail and able to multi-task, manage, and prioritize
• Ability to work independently and collaboratively with and across project teams
• Excellent capabilities with Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel
• Experience working with data (qualitative and/or quantitative)
• Ability to communicate effectively in both written and verbal formats
• Interest in museums and/or informal education
• A quiet and appropriate work environment during the workday

Other desirable qualifications/interests include:

• Have an interest in applied research
• Experience with Survey Monkey (or other similar online survey platform), Google Workspace, OneDrive, Canva, Asana, or SPSS (or other statistical software)
• Fluency in a second language (Spanish or Arabic is a plus)
• Website maintenance experience

Come as you are. RK&A is building towards a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable working environment. If you feel like you don’t have all the qualifications for this position and are willing to use your initiative to learn the rest, we’d still love for you to apply!  Applications will be evaluated with an initial anonymized review (removing name, education affiliations, etc.) aimed at opening this opportunity to more candidates and mitigating unconscious biases in our hiring practices.  Please read the application instructions below closely.

Application Instructions

All applicants should submit a brief PDF cover letter and a PDF resume included as an attachment (please include Project Coordinator in the file names).  We will be using an initial anonymized review process for applications.  As such, please follow these instructions for your cover letter and resume:

• Do not include your name or pictures on your cover letter or resume
• Indicate your degree level and content area, but please remove any undergraduate and graduate school names.
• Generalize company or organization names in your work history (e.g., retail company, history museum, non-profit organization, restaurant) rather than naming specific companies or organizations.  We are more interested in learning about your job skills and responsibilities than where you worked.
• No references are required at this time.

Please submit your application via email to info@rka-learnwithus.com. We will be reviewing applications on a rolling basis, with plans to hire this position in February of 2022.

The post RK&A is hiring! Project Coordinator appeared first on RK&A.

[…] Earth Day at 51: Why Museums Must Embrace the Anthropocene for drawing our attention to the world’s new geologic context of the Anthropocene and pleading for museums to present a unified [rather than the all-to-common divided] portrait of nature and culture, “with equal respect for both.” […]

[…] When Disaster Strikes: Assistance by Museums Nearby because of its gripping personal narrative of 9/11 combined with a real-world example of a museum stepping up in times of crisis, and […]

As we exit 2021, I’m reflecting back on where I began the year, when I noted that “in 2020, the museum field as a whole showed itself to be out of step with society. . .  [and] irrelevant.”  At that time, I had begun having regular conversations with Emlyn Koster, a thought leader with three decades of experience as a nature and science museum CEO.  We talked about the ideas he expressed in his then-recently published Informal Learning Review article, where he emphasized urgency for relevance in museums, asking of any one museum, “Why does it exist? How does it align with surrounding environmental and/or societal needs?”  We talked about museums needing to “be bold” and step outside the constraints of their colonial and rationalistic origins, which privileges perspectives of those in power and separates nature from humans.  We discussed how we both wanted museums to embrace the complexity, interdependence, and global problems of life on Earth.  From those conversations, Emlyn became our regular 2021 guest blogger, writing monthly posts from his vantage point as a geoscientist, museologist, and humanist about difficult topics of our time, pleading museums to be leaders in addressing these issues.  

What I have valued most about Emlyn over the last year is his ability to bring together ideas and voices across time and disciplines and find interesting new ways of seeing things.  I’ve also thoroughly enjoyed the zeal with which he thinks, talks, and writes about the issues that are important to him.  Emlyn covers a wide range of topics in his 12 guest blogs, from his thoughts on how museums confront (or don’t confront) climate change to his beliefs on the type of leadership that is needed in museums.  From among them, two stand out as my personal favorites. 

• When Disaster Strikes: Assistance by Museums Nearby because of its gripping personal narrative of 9/11 combined with a real-world example of a museum stepping up in times of crisis, and

• Earth Day at 51: Why Museums Must Embrace the Anthropocene for drawing our attention to the world’s new geologic context of the Anthropocene and pleading for museums to present a unified [rather than the all-to-common divided] portrait of nature and culture, “with equal respect for both.”

Yesterday we published his final RK&A guest blog, Imagine: Museums Engaging with the Issues of an Anxious World.  In it, he weaves together voices from the distant and near past to illustrate how the museum field has repeated itself over the last century in its calls to be responsive and relevant during times of crisis in our country, yet the status quo remains the same.  From all of us at RK&A, I want to offer a strong expression of gratitude to Emlyn for his critical eye, commitment to the field, and camaraderie. 

The post Relevance Revisited: A Postscript appeared first on RK&A.