Continuing with our survey responses, the next person we will be highlighting is from someone who has done K-12 programming/outreach in pre-program and post-program. Read about the ways they collaborated with local schools!
Thank you to our survey-participants for such great answers! So many professionals are doing incredible K-12 programming. Our goal is to share these experiences with the conservation community and help inspire others to develop and/or participate in their own outreach programs. We are still interested in hearing more about your different experiences, so if you are an emerging conservator who has participated in K-12 projects, please fill out our brief survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/KKJJPL6
Please briefly describe the type of work or projects you did related to your K-12 programming, activities, and/or outreach, including where and what year the activity took place.
I work at Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries and have partnered with a local public school to have high school students come visit our Collections Care Lab. I gave them a tour and did a little bookmaking exercise with them. The last one was right before the pandemic and I have not been able to get it back up and running, though I have great interest in doing so. I also used to intern at the Los Angeles Unified School District's Art and Artifacts Collection from 2008-2010ish. I was pre-program then but in Library School at UCLA and working in the libraries' conservation lab there. We had a traveling trunk that we would take to schools all over LA and bring local history to classes in schools. It was not primarily focused on conservation, but we did discuss the care of the materials with them. We also let them touch actual art and artifacts from the collections that they would not be able to at museums. Sometimes kids were timid, but it was fun to teach them to be confident and also exercise careful handling to connect with the items.
Can you describe a moment that stood out or favorite memories when doing these projects? Can you describe what was most challenging about each project?
In every class there is always the handful of students who are so very engaged or who you get to watch discover that this is even a thing for the first time. That can be magical. A challenge is time and logistics when working with school's schedules and my own. Being prepared and organized helped. Making sure that what I was planning was achievable, given time of session and age/abilities of students.
From these experiences, what advice would you give to other conservators about doing outreach and activities with children or young adults?
Do it. I wish I could do more of it so need to take my own advice, but getting younger people aware from a younger age is better. Especially in underfunded schools where there is a good opportunity to empower young people about their heritage and their connections to it.