Museum of Art and History Some of our courageous team. We are strong together. I’m in my final week at the MAH. It’s everything I hoped and feared: sweet, exciting, sad, poignant, and full of delicious treats and surprises from my loving, zany colleagues. We talked Abbott Square, community issue exhibitions, surfing, and the beauty and struggle of community driven change. If you’re curious to hear more about what I’m most proud of in my eight years at the MAH, I hope you’ll check it out. I was proud to work with amazing colleagues to lead major change at the museum. We made it a more inclusive, relevant, and successful place. It was not easy. But it was needed. And it was worth it. iphone 7 8 plus hoesje My favorite bague argent style gourmette question Geoffrey asked me was about engaging with people who were critical of the transformation of the MAH. Here’s his question and my full answer (which was edited down for length in the published article). Not everyone liked how we, and I, led the collier ras de cou o MAH. But as a leader, I have to weigh those small number of critical voices against the hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic people who got newly involved including many who had never felt welcome in a museum before. For every critic, there were literally a thousand new people telling us how grateful they were for the changes. In a lot of ways, I embarrassed I spent as much emotional energy on those critics as I did. I had to remind myself that every minute I spent worrying about someone who didn like what we were doing someone who was never going to like what we were doing! was a minute I wasn spending on someone who could and would benefit from being involved. Over time, I learned to bless and release those critics, so I could focus on the people who were ready to engage. iphone 6 6s hoesje When I think of the loudest critics of our work, I think of people who wanted the MAH to be a more exclusive, elitist, academic place. I think that the wrong vision for a public institution. I think it the wrong vision for Santa Cruz. For a museum to survive and thrive today, it must be relevant and meaningful for many people from many backgrounds. It must sway to the pulse of the cultural community in bague argent apm monaco which it resides. It must be radically inclusive, constantly working to invite new people to connect for new reasons. That what we tried to do at the MAH. And these changes were not just my doing. The board hired me with the specific mandate to make the MAH thriving, central gathering place. I hired community organizers and creative convenors. We made it bague argent ancienne topaze our mission to open the museum up. To younger people. To Latinx people. To people who were unsure if their story, their art, their voice mattered in our community. We made the MAH a museum of art AND history, participation AND contemplation, loud Friday nights and quiet Tuesday afternoons. The friction, the hybridity, different people from different walks of life colliding through art and history and public life that what building a more connected community is all about. People often are afraid to lead change because they know that some will resist that change. That true. But it also true that if you are changing an organization to be more inclusive and relevant, many, many people will fall in love with the change. They will thank you for the change. They will push you to keep changing. I don see leading change as hard or painful. I see it as a great privilege and I feel lucky to do it. Fifteen years ago, my boss kicked me under the table. I was a small fry at a big museum, volunteering for a project I had no business taking on. My boss and mentor Anna often encouraged me to stretch the limits. cover iphone 7 plus She protected and supported me in leading projects far beyond my job description. We had a push pull relationship; I ask for opportunities, she say yes but also help me understand how far I collier ras de cou pull and bear could safely go. And when I went too far over the edge, she give me a well placed kick. I didn have the words at the time to identify what Anna was doing. She was being a spacemaker for me and for other creative risk takers on her team. I learned this terminology later, from Beck Tench, who studies, mentors, and leads institutional change in public space. As Beck once put it, risk takers need oxydation bague argent “space makers” to provide them with the support, the creative license, and the encouragement to try new things, fail, and get up again. As a young professional, I identified as a risk taker. I was proud to be seen as a maverick. Success to me looked like taking bigger and bigger risks, and being recognized as the person who had created the project or made the initiative happen. My ego was tied up with making the thing and forging the path. It was only later that I started to feel that the greatest impact comes when you stop bague argent femme fine pas cher focusing on what you can create and start imagining the space you can make for others to create. I realized my potential limited to my own creative abilities finite. But if I used my abilities to empower and make space for others, the opportunities were infinite. It took three things for me to change my perspective on this. First, a deep and growing conviction that community participation is valuable every person can make a meaningful contribution to an effort if given a well constructed space in which to do so. Second, growing confidence in myself my achievements would not be belittled nor diminished by the participation of others. And third, recognition of the privileges I enjoy, and the sense that it is my responsibility and joyful opportunity to share those privileges and related power with others. When I think back on the work I been proudest of over my past bague argent tout le doigt eight years leading the MAH, the projects that come to mind are those where I made space for others to lead us to new bague argent t 64 heights. In some projects, like Abbott Square, I was in the driver seat but invited hundreds of community partners, large and small, to take a turn at the wheel. In others, like the Community Issue Exhibition process, I was there as a fundraiser, networker, and sounding bague argent 2 perles board for our brilliant team as they went deeper and further with community than tourmaline bague argent I knew how to go. cover iphone 6 6s In bracelet cuir homme soldes all these projects, I had to take a risk. I had to put my own credibility on the line. I wasn leading from behind. I was leading to clear space. As time went on, I felt more and more confident doing that to empower others rather than doing it for myself. My favorite moments at the MAH are small, immediate surprises. I walk in on a day off and there something weird and wonderful bague argent allemande happening that I had absolutely nothing to do with. A bonsai festival. A harp concert. An bague argent chouette empathy fair. I know these things are happening because of our amazing, generous, risk taking staff and community partners. And I know I have a small part in it as a spacemaker who carved out room for the idea that it was OK for a museum to be all these things to all these people in our community. I come to think of spacemaking as a form of allyship we can all practice with anyone whose growth and creativity we want to support. We make space when we ask, what bracelet cuir homme pour montre do you think We make space when we say, back you up on this no matter how it turns out. We make space when we find the money and the materials and the partners to make someone big dreams real. We make space when we define its limits, with a helpful redirect here or a kick under the table there. And we make space when we hold the hands of risk takers, take a deep breath, and step over the line alongside them. I have some big news to share. custodia iphone cover In mid 2019, I will transition out of my role as the executive director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art History (MAH) to focus full time on leading OF/BY/FOR ALL, an emerging global movement to build more inclusive community institutions. We’re planning for a slow bague argent zirconium bleu and thoughtful transition; you can read more about it on the MAH website. Here on this blog, I wanted to share more of the personal side of this decision and what it means for me. It has been my great privilege to lead the MAH since May of 2011. When I started as executive director, I was 29 years old. I knew nothing about management. Nothing about fundraising. But the museum needed a new direction, and the board took a risk on me. I knew something about community participation. I knew something about taking risks and making space for others to do so. I knew that Santa Cruz County my beloved chosen home was full of creative, curious people eager to connect in a new kind of institution. And so we made the MAH bague argent poison that institution, full of diverse, brilliant humans coming together to build a stronger, more connected community. The MAH today is profoundly different from the museum I was hired to run in 2011. The budget is bague argent 4 rangs up 4x, full time staff is up 6x, and visitation is up 9x. We’ve built a community plaza, hosted hundreds of community festivals, and co created exhibitions that spark action on social issues. We now have a wholly community rooted model, working with over 2,000 local partners annually to plan, produce, and share exhibitions and events. Our visitors and partners reflect the diversity of our community. And the reason they participate is not fundamentally to learn about art or history. People come into the MAH every day to make art. To make history. And to do it together, with friends and strangers alike. So why would I start to make plans to leave at this time of strength and beauty Over the past year, I’ve worked with the MAH board to incubate OF/BY/FOR ALL, a global movement to help more organizations do the kind of community involved work we do at the MAH. When OF/BY/FOR ALL started, we imagined bague argent femme ciselee it would grow big one day. We had no idea how quickly that day would come. In the past year, OF/BY/FOR bague argent gravé homme ALL has gone from a good idea to a full fledged nonprofit startup. I’m thrilled that so many people around the world want to work with us to build more inclusive institutions. custodia samsung cover I’m full of gratitude for the amazing staff at the collier ras de cou a nouer MAH who have made it possible for me to spend more time online and on airplanes. But I see that this won’t be sustainable for too much longer. I see the incredible potential for both the MAH and for OF/BY/FOR ALL, and I believe that each will soon need focused, committed leadership. This sent me into an honest assessment of my own skills and passions and where I could do my best work. I’m an entrepreneurial, experimental, opportunistic leader. Those skills made me a great fit to turn around and grow the MAH to the amazing place it is today. But I see that these same skills could make me a liability to keep the MAH strong and growing. I’ve learned and grown a lot duo bague argent as a manager and leader as the MAH has evolved. But the institution is growing beyond my “zone of genius” as a risk taking spacemaker. The MAH doesn’t need someone to break it open and rebuild it. It needs someone to deepen and strengthen it. This was not an easy decision to make. I’ll be leaving a place that has become home for me. I have brilliant colleagues who make our office joyful, zany, and loving. They teach me new ways to be true to our community every day. I have the best board, full of thoughtful, diverse community leaders. And then there are the people walking in every day ready to get involved, their pockets spilling over with passion and ideas. I love how open the MAH feels and how open it has made me. But I also see what a big opportunity lies ahead for me with OF/BY/FOR ALL. I see what a big opportunity exists for the next director of the MAH. I have often thought of my job at the MAH as that of a spacemaker. I create and hold space for our community to flourish in all its creative and cultural diversity. With OF/BY/FOR ALL, I’ll be able to take that spacemaking to a global stage, helping empower organizations and communities all over the world to grow stronger together. I’m moving forward with hope towards that abundant future for our community, our museum, and our world. Two years ago, our team at the MAH embarked on our most challenging co creation project ever. We partnered with foster youth, former foster youth, artists, and community advocates to create an exhibition that used art to spark action on issues facing foster youth. Short story: bague argent et emeraude brute we learned a lot. We wrote a toolkit about our process. You can download it for free right now. What did we learn This project wove together many different participatory threads. We co created it from start to finish with community partners. There were over 100 partners. We commissioned new collaborative artwork. We invited visitors to take real action in response to what they saw. The exhibition evolved after it opened. The lead partners were youth who had been marginalized and exploited by institutions. There were trust issues. Complex power dynamics.
