The Power of Place: Grounding America 250 in Utah and the West

ID: WMA2026_624

Track:

Explore the powerful ways America250 can connect to local history. Through collaborative partnerships, Utah’s resources integrate local histories, multicultural perspectives, arts education, and America’s founding. Learn about how Am250-Utah developed integrated content with local partners. Engage with proven materials that engage K-12 students in active learning, and that remain evergreen resources after the commemoration. Take home flexible models for connecting national and local history, and developing authentic partnerships and inclusive narratives.

Session Information

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

Uniqueness: Attendees will actively participate in mapping exercises, arts integrated activities, and collaborative interpretation to localize national history and integrate multicultural perspectives into America250 programming.

Objectives:

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

1. Localize national historical narratives. Participants will learn strategies for connecting national commemorations like America250 to the specific histories of their own places. Presenters will demonstrate a simple framework for asking “Who was here?” and identifying the diverse communities—Indigenous nations, colonists, enslaved people, and others—present in their region during the eighteenth century.
2. Integrate multicultural perspectives responsibly and authentically. Participants will explore methods for identifying and incorporating multiple perspectives that reflect the cultural diversity of a given place and time. Integrate different cultural perspectives by incorporating records of lived experience, traditional knowledge bearers, tribal governments, languages, and cultural practices. Presenters will share best practices for community collaboration and consultation, including engaging with humility, active listening, acknowledging incomplete knowledge, and representing distinct cultural identities rather than homogenizing peoples within general labels (Native American, Latino, etc.).
3. Use arts-integrated learning to deepen visitor engagement. Participants will experience practical techniques that use music, visual arts, storytelling, and drama to move audiences from passive observation to active participation. These approaches allow visitors and students to interpret historical narratives through multiple modalities, encouraging deeper reflection and personal connection. Participants will leave with adaptable strategies, examples of collaborative partnerships, and ideas for creating integrated, accessible learning resources for early childhood, elementary, and secondary learners.

Engagement: Participants will engage in short interactive activities modeled after the presenters’ educational programs. These include quickly analyzing historical maps and artifacts to identify who was present in North America in 1776; textual analysis of primary sources; integrating multicultural perspectives within the West; and participating in arts-based interpretation activities such as matching music to historical narratives or creating quick visual story responses. Attendees will discuss how these strategies can translate to their own institutions and audiences.

Relationship to Theme:

Audience

Audiences: Curators/Scientists/Historians Events Planning Marketing & Communications (Including Social Media) Other Technology 

Professional Level: All levels Student 

Scalability: The approaches shared in this session are intentionally adaptable for institutions of different sizes and resource levels. Many strategies—such as using publicly available mapping tools, arts-based engagement activities, and collaborative storytelling methods—require minimal materials and can be implemented by small museums, historic sites, or large institutions alike. The session also emphasizes partnerships as a key strategy for scalability. Museums can collaborate with educators, artists, tribal representatives, and community organizations to develop interpretive materials together. The examples shared—including curriculum resources, participatory activities, and creative storytelling tools—can be scaled from classroom or gallery programs to exhibitions, public programming, or community collaborations.

Participants