Workshops

The Natural History Museum hosts two kinds of workshops: interventionist workshops based in classroom and museum settings, and community-based “Rolling Resiliency Workshops” based in our mobile-museum bus.

Our interventionist workshops train participants to take the view of museum anthropologists, attuned to the social and political forces shaping nature. They begin in the classroom with briefings by educators from The Natural History Museum and representatives from particular environmental /climate justice campaigns. They end in a local natural history museum, where participants explore exhibits and brainstorm ways to augment those displays with context from the campaigns they were briefed on. Participants learn to deconstruct the politics of display, and develop visual sketches of proposals for museum interventions.

Community-based skills trainings take place on our mobile museum bus. They are organized in collaboration with communities groups on the front lines of the climate crisis, and are facilitated by community leaders. Skills trainings include community resiliency mapping (identifying threats and opportunities), citizen air quality monitoring, climate justice literacy, community-created disaster preparedness plans, DIY solar panels, retrofitting, energy reduction, and education about community-owned energy options.