Impact and Approach
Making Across Montana addresses a key challenge for museums serving large, predominantly rural states: how can we both respond to rural and tribal audiences’ unique needs and interests and also effectively serve a large and diverse array of communities? This project takes a two-pronged approach to this challenge by:
- Collaborating with rural and tribal partners to develop a mobile making and tinkering exhibition and education program designed to travel to K-12 schools statewide to directly engage students.
- Collaborating with K-12 teachers to build schools’ long-term capacity for making and tinkering.
Project at a Glance
Making Across Montana (2020-2024) launched at the height of the pandemic, requiring nimble and creative modifications to the original project vision. Learn more about our timeline and milestones.
Year One
Making Across Montana's design phase took place virtually at the height of the Covid-19 stay-at-home orders. Unable to gather in person with our community advisory groups, we moved to Zoom and adapted with digital tools such as Mentimeter and Google Jamboard.
Year Two
The project team piloted the Montana Makers exhibition at spectrUM Discovery Area, EmPower Place at Missoula Food Bank and Community Center, and rural Montana schools.
Year Three
The Montana Makers exhibition continued to travel to rural and tribal Montana schools, while the project team also delivered professional development workshops and a peer learning community for educators.
Year Four
The Montana Makers exhibition and educator professional development continues to roll out to rural and tribal Montana communities, while the project team shares approaches and lessons learned with the informal science and museum fields.
Co-Design with spectrUM's Advisory Groups
Two of spectrUM's community advisory groups--the Bitterroot STEAM Advisory Group and SciNation on the Flathead Reservation--played a critical role in co-designing the Montana Makers exhibition to be relevant to Montana K-12 students and families, particularly in rural and tribal communities.
Bitterroot STEAM Advisory Group
SciNation on the Flathead Reservation
Co-Design Tools and Resources
Our co-design work with rural and tribal Montana communities was guided by the goal of developing exhibits and programming that are relevant to and reflective of our audiences. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to co-designing exhibits and programming with communities, our process was influenced by the following resources:
Values Mapping Grid (Maker Ed)
The Big Idea
Jamboard
Padlet
Mentimeter
Bookshelf
spectrUM collaborates with K-12 teachers, community partners, and our advisory groups on an array of making and tinkering initiatives that the Making Across Montana project builds upon. Read more about our experiences and findings:
Design Elements from a Rural, Multi-Organization Collaborative
Breaking Down Silos...and Moving in Together
Co-Creating Transformative Change
Lessons Learned
spectrUM's evaluation of the Making Across Montana project requests feedback from advisors, teachers, and parents/guardians via online and paper surveys. Responses are effusively positive and include valuable insights about what participants value and how the project can further develop.
Learning From Advisors
Advisors appreciated the opportunity to collaboratively envision, while allowing spectrUM to transform their initial vision into the realized exhibition.
Learning From Teachers
In consistently positive survey responses, teachers shared that the exhibition’s activities are engaging for Montana audiences of various ages.
Learning From Caregivers
Parents and guardians had robustly enthusiastic feedback. They loved connecting with their kids during Family Science Nights.
Learning from Advisors: Implication
Collaborators are busy! spectrUM strives to balance openness to fresh ideas while constraining how much is asked of collaborators.
Learning From Teachers: Implication
Educators saw opportunities for additional integration into the exhibition of Salish and Kootenai culture and importance of STEAM in our lives.
Implication: Learning from Caregivers
Intergenerational community engagement sustains positive partnerships among spectrUM, schools, and wider communities.
This project was made possible by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (MG-245982-OMS-20).The views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this website do not necessarily represent those of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
