THE ART OF USING MUSEUM AND SCIENCE COLLABORATIONS TO TEACH ABOUT CLIMATE

Picture This!

Francesco Fiondella Rebecca Fowler Elisabeth GawthropInternational Research Institute for Climate and Society

ESIP Federation Foundation for Earth Science

International Research Institute for Climate and Society

@fiondella @by_rebecca @egawthrop

Nicole DaviWilliam Paterson University, Lamont-Doherty Earth Obs.

@nkdavi

PARTNERS

THE MOTIVATION

➤ ICP: Desire to expand public programming; needed content

➤ ICP: Exhibit launched during Climate Week 2014

➤ IRI/LDEO: Opportunities to create new scicomm/sciart projects

➤ BOTH: Reaching and engaging new audiences

CLIMATE WEEK KICKOFF

Sept. 2014

GREEN MONDAYS-EXPERT PANELS

Activities

Visualizing Climate Change Greening the Economy

Confronting Climate Change

DOCENTS FOR AN EVENING

Activities

ActivitiesDOCENTS FOR AN EVENING

INSTAGRAM TAKEOVERS

Activities

INSTAGRAM TAKEOVERS

Activities

INSTAGRAM TAKEOVERS

Activities

OUTCOMES➤ Work and mission of all 3

institutions presented to new audiences: painters, dancers, theater actors, musicians, photographers, law students, climate activists, entrepreneurs, other scientists outside of Columbia community, students, journalists

➤ Added new subscribers to newsletters

➤ Increase in social media followers and traffic to our pages

OUTCOMES➤ Partnering among the

institutions now has precedence

➤ Hopefully beginning of fruitful, long-lasting relationships with a cultural institution. More opportunities to create new scicomm/sciart projects

➤ Knowledge exchange among communications/outreach professionals

➤ Met heroes!

➤ Happy scientists!

A R T H U R L E R N E R - L A M , D E P U T Y D I R E C T O R , L D E O

The inherent majesty of landscapes - breathtakingly captured by Salgado - is what attracted me to earth science… Landscapes instilled in me a

personal desire to understand them, and to augment their beauty with a rational understanding of how they came to be…Touring a gallery as

intimate as the ICP and vocalizing my impressions to a receptive audience is the next best thing to being out in the field. It never gets old.

T R E V O R W I L L I A M S , M A R I N E G E O L O G I S T, L D E O

“Being a scientist, I’m often stuck in an office or lab, and this opportunity provided an interactive forum where I could share my exciting fieldwork experiences with lots of people…It’s also good professionally, too, as a

way of fulfilling the broader impacts requirement.”

N I C O L E D AV I , D E N D R O C H R O N O L O G I S T, L D E O

I felt a connection to the photographer—we are both trying to understand these beautiful places better and communicate something about their

significance. I was surprised I could discuss so much of my science around just one photograph. These images provided a great entry point into paleoclimate.

KEYS TO SUCCESS➤ Buy-in from leadership of

all three institutions. Permission and space to operate.

➤ Mutually beneficial activities

➤ Activities made sense.

➤ Each institution considered the collaboration valuable for their outreach and development.

NEXT TIME…➤ Make sure communications

people from both are on board

➤ Define roles and responsibilities early on. (who’s managing the program? who’s leading on communications?, etc)

➤ How can members of public act on newfound knowledge?

➤ Collect detailed baseline metrics…Post-event analysis

➤ People move jobs!

WHAT YOU CAN DO➤ Be creative. Look at your

community institutions and see where you it makes sense for you to partner

➤ Make the first move. But build in time to get familiar with workplace/culture differences

➤ Be known for taking chances, experimenting. Collect examples of sciart collaborations.

➤ Involve scientists who have strong interest and are naturally good speakers

SPECIAL THANKS

Pauline Vermare ICP Associate Curator

Philomena Mariani ICP Director of Publications

Arthur Lerner-Lam LDEO, Deputy Director

Photographs in this presentation courtesy of ICP

THANK YOU!

@Climatesociety

@LamontEarth

@ESIPfed