National Collaboration Provides Network of Support
We’ve been purposely vague on outputs and outcomes in order to let it be shaped by delegates. But that in and of itself says a lot about our objectives: that this is about movement building across cultural memory fields, and in essence to begin moving toward cultural heritage in a diverse, inclusive and welcoming America. We’re inviting particular delegates that are organizing around cultural equity in the museum, library, archive, and scholarly fields; focusing on issues ranging widely from curation to hiring, and moving toward policy and strategy, and measurable impact.
While we do not want to ascribe particular outputs to the delegates, we will be pushing toward: 1. policy and strategic directives that can be broadly applied to a wide variety of cultural heritage organizations large and small; 2. formation of new cross-field collaborations that pledge to work together toward agreed goals; 3. new creative initiatives that create and highlight best practices and new standards for curatorial and participatory cultural heritage practice.
As far as outcomes, we expect to see increased communications and stronger networks across the cultural heritage fields, as well as the creation of metrics to start benchmarking equity in cultural heritage, building off of some of the quantitative research coming out of the museum field looking at diversity in arts institutions.
We will keep a live blog of proceedings which we’ll aim to publish shortly after the Summit for dissemination.