Building A Climate of Hope: Reflections on a Climate Exhibit

ID: WMA2026_608

Track:

At the Natural History Museum of Utah, _A Climate of Hope (ACoH) _offers a path to rational hope. This exhibit shows how climate change affects Utah’s people and places, while also helping visitors envision a healthy, prosperous, low-carbon future. In this session, exhibit developers and learning researchers share stories from ACoH, from prototyping to research-based iteration that continues today. Audience members participate in activities to collectively imagine new ways of supporting visitor learning towards constructive hope amid climate change. 

Session Information

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

Uniqueness: Not only does this session share cutting-edge research about an innovative exhibit, it also engages audience members in unique activities designed to spur collective imagination.

Objectives: By the end of this session, participants will be able to:   1.      Generate new ideas for approaches to climate education in their home context by learning about the iterative, research-based development process of A Climate of Hope (ACoH) at the Natural History Museum of Utah (NHMU). By hearing stories from exhibit developers and learning researchers at NHMU, audience members will make connections to their own experience as museum professionals and generate new ideas for approaches to climate education at their own museums. 2.      Apply research-based ideas about climate education to exhibit development. By engaging with research-based findings from visitor learning in ACoH, participants will grow their understanding of what works in museum-based climate education. Additionally, through activities specifically designed to help participants apply theory to practical exhibit development, participants will gain deeper understandings of theory behind climate education while also growing skills in applying such theory to practice. 3.      Foster skills in imagination to collectively iterate on new, innovative ways to help museum visitors envision better futures. Through activities designed to foster imagination, audience members will exercise their imaginations and hone their imagination practice. Then, leveraging these imagination skills, audience members will collectively iterate on the NHMU team’s latest ideas for new exhibit components in ACoH, aimed at helping visitors envision bold new futures.

Engagement: One strategy will involve engaging the audience with physical and digital interactives from the exhibit, so that participants can understand and discuss the visitor experience. We will also provide prompts for small and large group conversations about designing climate change exhibits. Finally, we will share prototype versions of the next iteration of the exhibit and engage audience members in collective brainstorming about how to improve these interactives to support visitor imagination towards constructive hope.

Relationship to Theme:

Audience

Audiences: Curators/Scientists/Historians Other 

Professional Level: All levels 

Scalability: Our session is applicable to museum professionals across a wide range of institutions, as it will be relevant to anyone interested in or considering developing new exhibits or programming related to climate change.

Participants