- 9-10:15am: Sessions at the Ramkota Hotel
Give me the money (please): Successful Grant Writing Tips for Small Museums (Administration track) – Brooke Rohde & Anne Amati
Do you want to write grants for your museum but don’t know where to start? This session will cover some popular grants for small museums – the CWAM grant, the Greenwood Fund grant and NEH Preservation Assistance grants to name a few. Come learn about funding opportunities, what makes an application successful and chat with peers about what has worked/not worked. Featuring previous grant recipients:
- Hillary Mannion – Colorado Springs Pioneer Museum
- Bev Allen – University Archives and Records, CSU Pueblo
- Christy Smith – Grand Encampment Museum
- Tina Hill – Wyoming Frontier Prison
Challenging and Transforming Collections Care, Management, and Interpretation: Indigenous Curation in Museums (Collections track) – Halena Kapuni-Reynolds and Julia Strunk
What is indigenous curation, and how can we as museum professionals better care for collections? Through different cultural perspectives, this session explores transformations in museum practice through the incorporation of Indigenous care methods at three institutions. Topics to be discussed include Non-Western forms of caring for and interpreting collections, caring for sacred and ceremonial objects, examples of Indigenous curation within Western-style museums, and ways that museum staff weave together various cultural perspectives under one roof.
Connecting the world through informal education (Education track) – Leah Ritz
In a complex world, how can museums best support 21st century thinking skills? As informal learning centers we are able to challenge young problem solvers to think across disciplines and understand the relationships between the human, natural, and physical worlds. In this session participants will do a hands-on activity that uses science as a means for connecting social studies, language arts, and math, then have an opportunity to extend their own lessons to connect with other content areas.
Millennials in the Museum: Engaging Younger Audiences (Public-facing Track) – Brooke Gladstone, Megan Friedel
Who are the “millennials” and why should we need them in our museums? Learn about how to define this growing demographic and how to bring them into your museum. Practical tips and examples will be shared for engaging millennial audiences.
Planning an Anniversary Event or Big Event Planning for People Who Don’t Do Big Events (Volunteer Track) – Con Trumbull, Trey Corkern
How can we effectively harness the power of volunteers to create a large event? Join Con Trumbull, president of the Fort Caspar Museum Association, as he recounts the re-booting of a childhood event for a 150th anniversary event. Con will talk about the coordination, logistics, volunteer management, budgeting, scheduling, funding, timing, advertising, publicity, community buy-in, food for participants and the public, port-a-potties, security, staffing, volunteers, safety, transportation, parking, when to start planning, what worked, what could have been done better.
- 10:30-11:45am: Sessions at the Ramkota Hotel
Roundtable Discussion on the Digital Public Library of America and Colorado- Wyoming Museums (Collections track) – Brian C. Briggs, Regan Harper, Leigh Jeremias
Do people use your stuff? Are your collections alive today? Meaningful contact with collections is difficult in today’s e-world. Movement is afoot providing a solution to cultural heritage institutions. The Digital Public Library of America seeks to bring together the country’s material culture for a global, digital audience. Join passionate individuals from the Colorado State Library and CWAM to open the conversation about what DPLA would mean for museums, archives, and libraries in Colorado and Wyoming.
Building Colorado: Education Outreach (Education track) – Katie March
Golden History Museums’ education outreach program, Building Colorado, is a game that students play by taking on the identity of one of 10 frontier towns. Students are presented with issues actually faced by frontier Coloradans and are challenged to make good choices in order to grow into a bustling metropolis. Cities decide how many assets to risk on attracting the transcontinental railroad, becoming a state, or building a prison or a sugar beet factory. The program fulfills all social studies standards, including history, economics, civics, and geography. Learn how to create programs that fulfill the needs of both teachers and museums.
Crowd-funding and Communication to Maximize Community Engagement (Public-facing Track)- Brian Liesinger
This session will cover how to design an efficient project that utilizes community input, earned media and grassroots fundraising in a way that allows your constituents to feel ownership of the success of the project. The session will use the recent successful example at the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, which saved an original World War II structure and moved it 80 miles to their National Historic Landmark site in rural, northwest Wyoming. Using creative strategies to manage the project, fundraise and for public relations, we funded it in a short period of time and built a groundswell of support involving constituents near and far. The session will detail our process for crowdfunding, maximizing earned media, and cultivating community ownership.
Collaboration – Making it work (Public-facing Track)- Rachel Hedges, Jessica Brunecky
Collaboration can be hard. With so many different voices and competing priorities at the table, collaborating with other institutions can seem like a monumental undertaking. But it doesn’t have to be that way! The University of Colorado Boulder’s Cultural Consortium and the Casper Museum Consortium have both found ways to make collaborations easier and more successful.
In both cases, organizations and sites that make up the group are very different, but they are all share a similar mission: to promote cultural experiences either at the University of Colorado Boulder or in Wyoming. Benefits to institutions include: avoiding scheduling conflicts, sharing ideas, and generating visitation through shared programming. Collaborating and advocating for each other benefits everyone, join us and learn how it could work for your museum.
The Virtual Field Trip: Bringing the World to Your Museum (Education track)- Nathan Doerr
Just because a classroom is 1,000 miles away doesn’t mean those students can’t experience your museum. Through Skype in the Classroom, museums of all sizes and budgets can bring their collections and stories to students all over the world with just a computer, web cam, and internet connection. Learn how institutions in both Colorado and Wyoming have reached out to hundreds of classrooms across the U.S. and internationally, and how you can do the same.
- 11:45am-1:15pm: Lunch on your own
- 1:15-2:30pm: Thought Café/poster session (Ramkota Gazebo)
Uncovering the Digital Public Library of America: A Look at What it Could Mean with Colorado-Wyoming Museums with Brian C. Briggs, Regan Harper and Leigh Jeremias
Do people use your stuff? Are your collections alive today? Meaningful contact with collections is difficult in today’s e-world. Movement is afoot providing a solution to cultural heritage institutions. The Digital Public Library of America seeks to bring together the country’s material culture for a global, digital audience. Join passionate individuals from the Colorado State Library and CWAM to open the conversation about what DPLA would mean for museums, archives, and libraries in Colorado and Wyoming.
Preparing Private Antiquities Collections for Museum Donation with Jacey Bonavia
Many individuals have accumulated impressive artifact collections. Some have decided to donate their private collections to museums, which are not always able to easily accept these collections. I will illustrate my experience cataloging a private collection of prehistoric Native American pottery for efficient acquisition by the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe and provide attendees with guidelines to help other individuals prepare their collections for museum acquisition based on this experience.
Identifying Fossils with Jean-Pierre Cavigelli and Russell Hawley
Ever wonder about that old, unlabeled ‘mystery fossil’ in your museum? Here is your chance to find out what it is. If you’re driving to Casper, bring your specimen to our ‘Fossil Road Show’ booth for identification. We can usually assign age as well as taxonomic level – for teaching specimens, a little information is better than none! (Warning: There are always a few things that we can only ID as, “yup, that’s a fossil”!).
Re-Thinking CWAM’s Professional Development Opportunities with Nathan Doerr
What professional development opportunities do you think CWAM is missing? Stop by and visit with members of our Professional Development Team and share your concerns and ideas about the resources we share and the programs we offer. Not only will your ideas help CWAM, but they’ll enter you and/or your organization in a chance to win $50!
Evaluating Microclimates within Fluctuating Environments in Museum Collections with Kerrie Lyoob
Environmental monitoring is an essential part of museum collections stewardship. In addition to consistent data monitoring, being aware of your institution’s structure as well as local, outside conditions is important to establishing a collections optimal preservation environment. This poster will describe how through the careful placement of microclimates, including storage cabinets as well as sealed archival boxes, a more stable environment can be achieved to better preserve collections.
The CWAM Co-Op and Its Benefits with Rachel DeShong
The Thought Café will present the CWAM Purchasing Co-Op, what it does, and what the benefits are to all museums.
First Steps: Graduate School and Beyond with Brooke Gladstone, Shanea Ruybal, and Glendon Butterfield
Are you trying to navigate graduate school and a new museum career? Come talk with three successful graduate students from University of Colorado’s Public History/Museum Studies program about their experiences in graduate school, internships, volunteering, and museum roles.
- 2:45-4pm: Sessions at the Ramkota Hotel
Beyond Wine and Cheese: Interpreting the Science and History of Brewing and Distilling in Public Institutions (Administration track) – Trey Corkern, Amber Pollock
Let’s move our institutions beyond three martini lunches and boxed wine receptions! This program (a partnership between a museum, a distillery, and a hotel) will demonstrate how creating inter-institutional relationships brings expertise, knowledge, and broader audiences into our sites. We will also look at how other institutions have safely and effectively used libations for fundraising, brand building, and creating public/private partnerships. Participants in this hands-on workshop need to be 21 years of age.
Leveraging Connections: Museums, Public Schools, and Universities (Education track) -Steven Schnell, Leah Ritz
Museums are the perfect place for making connections between K-12 schools, colleges, researchers, business people, and the general public. In this session participants will learn about a successful collaboration between a science museum, K-12 schools, and a college that expands school access to field trips. Participants will be asked to consider a gap in education in their communities and brainstorm ways to meet that need. Participants will use tools to help identify stakeholders and leverage points and walk away with action items.
Refining Your Collections through Deaccession (Collections track) – Heather Thorwald, Bethany Williams
If a museum’s collection is like a community, then we all have objects that aren’t pulling their own weight. Yet refining a collection can be daunting without knowing where and how to start. This session will demonstrate how to evaluate objects to determine whether they support a museum’s mission, using real-world examples. We will also provide tools to help you develop a deaccession and disposition procedure appropriate for your institution.
- 4-5pm: Students and CWAM Mentor/Mentee Professional Networking Meet-up at the Tate Museum
- 5-9:30pm: Banquet (Ramkota Ballroom)