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Meet Your Museum

Image from the 
Alberta Museums Association
The Alberta Museums Association is a major cornerstone within Alberta's museum community. They not only provide incredible training and development opportunities for professionals, but they also provide support to museums through grants, community support, advisory programs, and promotion. Their latest promotional campaign, "Meet Your Museum" has been spreading throughout the province and has become a great way to, quite literally, introduce people to their museums.

The campaign centres around the idea that increasing awareness surrounding museums in Alberta will "promote joy and collective celebration, and increase attendance". While the latter is definitely important at the end of the day, as museums need people to show up if they are going to exist at all, the former points are why the museums should exist in the first place. Creating connections will inevitably create joy.

Museums serve as a meeting point in so many ways. People connect despite barriers of language, culture, geography, and even time. These interactions are crucial not only the fabric of museums but in the contribution to a higher quality of life. For people to be able to connect with their community tangibly, and offline, is a rarity these days. Now, I am by no means undermining the importance of the internet. The irony of doing so on a blog would not be lost on me. However, I believe that as we become more tech-based, we do forfeit tangible experiences in lieu of shared ones. Neither is better, but neither should be neglected as they are not substitutes for each other.

One thing I love about this campaign is that it centres around two things: social media and physical identifiers. Despite its obvious downfalls, social media provides an exceptional way for museums to share themselves with the public and remain accessible year-round. In addition, the physical identifiers used in this campaign are not only cute, they are inviting! I have already had four people stop me and ask me about my button in the two days since I've had it. Those are four people who may have otherwise not engaged with the museum community that day, and, I may add, it was offline and outside of the museum walls.

If you are wanting to learn more about the museums in your area, or where you can "Meet your Museum", or engage personally in local history you can, of course, subscribe to my blog, but you can also visit the Alberta Museums Association website, Edmonton Maps Heritage, or visit the Government of Alberta Arts and Culture website.

With that being said, I'm left with two questions for you: what are some ways you like to engage with your local communities, and how could museums better connect with you, in person or otherwise?

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