By: Shana Cooper, Founder of The Resiliency Collective

Over the last few years, museums have been innovative in their approaches to furthering learning, engagement, and community. Many of these approaches are guided by the principles of diversity, equity, inclusion, and access, and driven by the urgency of the pandemic. While significant progress has been made to advance museums’ relationship with their audiences, there are still areas ripe for development.

 

Mental health–an essential component of overall wellbeing–is often left out of traditional DEIA frameworks. Integrating it could provide a tremendous benefit to communities and the museums serving them. The Resiliency Collective offers a next step in innovating the relationship museums have with their audiences by addressing their needs beyond learning and leisure and focusing on their mental wellbeing. Launched in 2021, The Resiliency Collective is a partnership between museum and mental health communities to create mental health-themed exhibits and programs at participating locations across Illinois. Since then, the project has grown to encompass a variety of services and resources designed to help museums reach new and returning audiences in deeper, more connected ways.

 

The strategies used in the project can be incorporated into any museum’s new and ongoing exhibits and programs and can serve as a model for how to get started. This blog explores some ways to begin this work.

West Chicago City Museum, West Chicago, IL

GETTING STARTED

 

START WITH WHAT YOU KNOW

 

As historians, educators, and program leaders, you know the importance of understanding your community and meeting them where they are. You also know the benefit of community connections for visitors and museums alike, so begin there, with a common purpose to engage.

 

Learning and education: What makes you unique as a community space, is that you are continuously learning and educating as new research, knowledge, and understanding emerges. Where we once believed mental health should be discussed privately and treated only clinically, we now see normalized conversations and myriad alternative approaches. This is an opportunity for you to do what you do best: learn about a relevant topic through research, training, and interacting with others, and then share what you know in practice. One organization to help you start is NAMI Illinois (National Alliance for Mental Illness). Every area of the state has a local NAMI affiliate that offers resources and support, and the organization provides training for staff at organization serving the public. The Resiliency Collective partnered with NAMI Illinois in 2023 to bring specialized exhibits and programs to three museums and cultural organizations across the state.

Illinois Art Station, Normal, IL

Maximizing your resources. As community organizations, you are experts at maximizing what you have, operating on creativity, and leaning into your network to rally your resources. Not only is integrating mental health and wellbeing into your work an extension of your practice, it also expands your toolbox to include more resources, ideas, and experts in your network. The Resiliency Collective is intended to broaden that network of resources and connections to reach more audiences and tailor experiences to those you already serve.

 

You have experience presenting sensitive topics. If you have hosted exhibits or events that offer insight into challenging times or tell the story of an extraordinary event, you have already broached mental health topics with your audience. You know how to do this in an educational format, now you have an opportunity to invite engagement beyond general questions. What your audience experiences when you present challenging material is as relevant to your interactions as academic information. It is the human elements that will stay with them afterward and encourage them to come back.

 

You already know your audience. It is all of us. People in your community who regularly or casually visit your space are living with mental health conditions. You are already interacting with them, and they are already engaged. You are part of this audience if you have, have ever had, or will ever experience a mental health condition, know someone who lives with one, know someone who cares for someone with a mental health condition, or considers yourself someone who cares about your own and others’ wellbeing. You can connect with your audience through shared experience almost right away. 

The next blog post will discuss where to go from here and include local and national examples of other museums already doing this work.

 

For more information on the project, or to learn how to get started, please reach out to

Shana Cooper at sbcooper79@gmail.com.