My youth engagement practice includes a real commitment to research and evaluation. Understanding impact, defining “success”, learning from “failure”, working with curiosity and a commitment to capacity building and knowledge sharing - these principles underpin my approach to every project I undertake.
Significant research projects I have been involved in can be found below, including:
The Walker Art Center Minneapolis’s Museum Teen Educators Peer Learning Community, 2021-2023
Impact Evaluation of the National Gallery of Australia’s National Summer Art Scholarship Program, 2022-2023
‘By Young People, For Young People - A Report on the Impact of GENEXT at the MCA’, 2019
Case study: Embedding Peer-to-Peer Learning in Education Resources, ‘People Like Us’, UNSW Galleries, 2014-2015
MUSEUM TEEN EDUCATORS PEER LEARNING COMMUNITY, 2021-2023
WALKER ART CENTER, MINNEAPOLIS
In 2021 I was invited by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis to participate in a Peer Learning Community with museum teen educators from across the United States. The program was led by the Walker’s then-Director and Curator of Education and Public Programs, Nisa Mackie; Walker Teen Programs Convenor, Simona Zappas and academic Dr Yolanda Majors.
Other educators came from institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, MCA Chicago, ICA Boston, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Seattle Art Museum and Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, amongst others.
Some of the goals of the PLC included:
Build stronger working relationships across art museum teen programs educators/staff
Deepen peer-to-peer learning and problems solving in the administration, design and facilitation of art museum teen programs
Connect art museums across the country to the Walker’s recent research in developing a systems learning design that incorporates social justice, art, and critical thinking
Facilitate input and sharing of best practices for a teen programs toolkit to be published in 2022/23
The PLC ran for six months with online zoom sessions every three weeks and sessions included presentations, discussions, readings, applied activities and reflections.
One of the outcomes from the PLC has been the publication (2023) of the Museum Teen Program How-To Kit. It is a comprehensive book of essays, activities and reflections that look at complex pedagogies, social justice, group dynamics, teen subcultures and institutional complexities.
This free publication will be available to download in late 2023.
IMPACT EVALUATION STUDY – NATIONAL SUMMER ART SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM, 2023
NATIONAL GALLERY OF AUSTRALIA
In 2022 arts consultant Morwenna Collett and I were commissioned to undertake an impact evaluation of the National Gallery of Australia’s National Summer Art Scholarship Program, which has been running since 1997.
The NSAS is an annual, week-long intensive program for 16 Year 11 students from across Australia who are interested in a career in the visual arts. Over the course of the week, participants go behind-the-scenes at the Gallery and meet key staff across the organisation, as well as participate in a range of hands-on making and learning activities designed to give them a breadth of understanding and experience of all facets of the art world – from conservation to curating, education, public programming and art-making.
Observation of the National Summer Art Scholarship Program at the National Gallery of Australia, December 2022.
Looking at both the immediate and long-term impacts of the program, for both participants and the Gallery, together we:
Developed an evaluation framework and project plan
Benchmarked the NSAS against other national and international youth programs
Undertook a desktop review
Undertook fieldwork that included eight in-depth stakeholder interviews, two focus groups and program observation of the 2022 cohort both online and in-person
Presented two case studies of NSAS alumni
Gathered quantitative feedback via an online survey to alumni, staff and high school visual arts teachers
We then drafted a report of our findings and recommendations, which we shared in an interpretation workshop with key Gallery staff, before finalising our report in May 2023.
This report, which included sections on Program Background, Program Elements, Program Impacts and a section on Looking to the Future, is due for publication in late 2023.
BY YOUNG PEOPLE, FOR YOUNG PEOPLE - A REPORT ON THE IMPACT OF MCA GENEXT, 2019
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART AUSTRALIA
From 2017-2021 I was the Young Creatives Coordinator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, where I was responsible for the Museum’s Young Guides, Youth Committee and GENEXT, the Museum’s flagship event for young people aged 12-18 that is programmed and run by the Committee.
In 2018 the MCA commissioned cultural research agency Patternmakers to help evaluate GENEXT, asking: “What impact does attending GENEXT have on participants, now and into the future?”
This significant project evaluated both the short and long-term impacts of participation by young people in the program, which at that stage in its 13-year history had welcomed over 30,000 young people to the Museum.
Past and present MCA Youth Committee members were invited to help co-design the evaluation framework and in my role as MCA Project Lead I was also a contributing author to the final report, which was published in June 2019 and can be downloaded from the MCA website here.
Key findings from the report included:
That GENEXT is a safe space that welcomes young people from different backgrounds
74% of past attendees say GENEXT helped them express their identity
8 in 10 feel GENEXT positively impacts their overall wellbeing
GENEXT is creating a new generation of art lovers
Peer-led programming is critical, and could be expanded
GENEXT is playing a role in developing diverse arts audiences
CASE STUDY: PEOPLE LIKE US - eMBEDDING PEER-TO-PEER LEARNING IN EDUCATION RESOURCES
UNSW GALLERIES
In 2014 I was commissioned by UNSW Galleries to create a series of educational resources for the new media art exhibition People Like Us. Curated by Felicity Fenner and commissioned by Museums & Galleries New South Wales, the show toured 14 of Australia’s regional galleries between 2016 and early 2019 through the National Exhibition Touring Scheme.
CREATING A PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITY FOR TERTIARY ART EDUCATION STUDENTS
One of my main objectives in developing what would become the exhibition’s Education Kit was the chance to work with UNSW Art & Design students to develop the content. As an exhibition curated by UNSW Galleries it presented a unique opportunity to engage with future visual arts educators and integrate a secondary level of learning into the wider process of creating these resources.
One of the education kits we examined as part of the research and development process.
Dr Kim Snepvangers, then Head of Art Education at UNSW, was instrumental in supporting the development of this professional development opportunity, which formed an official part of an academic course in participatory practice and working in partnership with communities.
In working with these students, I adapted a model of socially engaged practice and peer-to-peer learning that I first used while working at the South London Gallery on the Louis Vuitton Young Arts Project. I’d been looking for an opportunity to work in this way again because I knew it to be a successful way of learning and developing ideas in a collaborative and positive way.
The three students—Natika Newing-Stern, Emma Desira and Grace Toiava—and I met several times over the course of several months, researching best practice models of education resources, talking through questions and our own uncertainties about new media art, and brainstorming how we might talk about the artists and their works. This was measured against the students’ direct experiences of being in the classroom or gallery and having to develop and deliver activities.
As a group we each independently developed biographical and related information about each artist and devised a collection of learning activities for each work under the agreed headings of ‘Explore’, ‘Discuss’, ‘Create’ and ‘Compare and Contrast’. Kim and I then checked and edited these to ensure they were rigorous, appropriate and engaging.
DEVELOPING AN EDUCATION RESOURCE
The Education Kit was first resource to be created for the exhibition and given that each state and territory has its own curriculum, the Kit was deliberately conceived as an ideas platform, rather than a rigorous address of any one visual arts curriculum. So; the resource had to be both broadly useful and adaptable to each audience and occasion.
It starts with the most obvious question – “What is new media art?” – and subsequent content is placed within a series of frameworks that connect our understandings of art and the gallery-going experience with our everyday experiences of these technologies. Some of these frameworks or questions include: “How has new media developed historically and art historically?” “Where do we encounter this kind of technology in our every day lives?” And “how does all that change the art viewing experience?”
THE PRODUCTION OF SHORT FILM RESOURCES
In addition to the formal education resource, I also produced a series of short films featuring curator Felicity Fenner and selected artists, which explain some of the ideas explored in the show. These were designed to give an insight into some of the working processes of the artists but also how a curator approaches an exhibition brief and curates a show accordingly.
A SOCIAL AND CREATIVE EXPERIMENT USING TUMBLR
The final resource was the creation an ambitious crowd-sourcing project using the micro-blogging platform and social networking site Tumblr.
Tumblr allows users to create, share and re-blog different kinds of digital content from a browser, phone, desktop or email around particular themes, interests of ideas. A number of international museums and cultural institutions use Tumblr to successfully engage with their young audiences and artist audiences. MOMA Teens, Tate Collectives and SFMOMA are all brilliant examples.
The People Like Us Tumblr project.
The People Like Us tumblr project was envisaged as part exhibition, part social and creative experiment. It was designed to offer students and communities an opportunity to engage with some of the ideas in the exhibition in creative and personal ways.
The Tumblr project asks people to create a work of art—in a classroom, at home, in a gallery workshop—that responds to a broad brief exploring notions of belonging, difference, self and others and community. People can interpret the idea of ‘people like us’ using their own distinct visual vocabulary and skills. While anyone anywhere in the world can respond and engage with the project, we hope that as the exhibition tours Australia, the content will grow and respond according to the different communities that engage with it.
It was undoubtedly an ambitious experiment but it seemed fitting that in an exhibition about experimental technologies, interactivity and human connection there should be some way to explore and express these ideas using technology itself.