Innovators-in-Residence for Museum Programming

ID: WMA2026_563

Track:

Social Practice uses collaboration and community discourse to innovate new museum programming opportunities. From an institutional standpoint, social practice helps museums and audiences develop new perspectives and create meaning together. Think social imagination, hyper-local relationships, and collaborative benefits. This session shares challenges and opportunities institutions face when innovators are invited to expand definitions of collections, history, belonging and community. Explore these possibilities in conversation with the Springville Museum of Art and its first artist-in-residence.

Session Information

Format: Regular session/panel (roundtable, single speaker, etc.)

Uniqueness: Small museums have big challenges. This is a case study of a small museum’s nimbleness to achieve community-driven mission through creation of innovator-in-residence opportunities.

Objectives:

1. We will discuss how mission is critical for the creation of targeted public programs (i.e., artist-in-residence youth programming) and innovation opportunities and explore how these facilitate and encourage social interactions for positive community change. Participants will learn how alignment with mission and knowing a museum’s audience’s motivations to visit provides the scaffolding needed to connect museum visitors to meaningful public programming opportunities and relationships that extend beyond staff roles.
2. This session will introduce Social Practice concepts applied through community-based arts programming with museums at the center. Participants will learn what social practice and community-based programming is, and what it is not, and how to apply it in their own museum regardless of disciplinary focus.

Engagement: Discussion with panelists post case-study introduction. No additional resources needed for audience engagement. Audience will listen to case study then be invited for questions at the end of presentation.

Relationship to Theme:

Audience

Audiences: Curators/Scientists/Historians Facilities Management Personnel Other 

Professional Level: All levels Emerging Professional Mid-Career Student 

Scalability: Though the session is designed to showcase the nimbleness of a small hyper-local art museum, museums of all sizes and types (not just art museums) can use the session as a starting point/inspiration to develop and support targeted public programming opportunities and re-examine how the engagement and relationships between staff/docents and visitors/new audiences with a community mediator (artist, scientist, historian, etc). Who else can use this approach to connect with their communities without sacrificing mission priorities?

Participants