 Hello everyone and welcome to NEMO's webinar where today we will be having a conversation about the role museums play in supporting their communities. My name is Elizabeth and I work for NEMO. At the network of European museum organizations, our main activities are advocating for museums at the EU level, providing training opportunities, providing a platform for museums to exchange and learn from one another and helping museums to cooperate across borders. Today we are looking forward to our new approach to a webinar. We are having a conversation today sparked by John Folk and Judith Koch. Dr. John Folk is the director of the Institute for Learning Innovation and Emeritus C grant professor of free choice learning at Oregon State University and Judith's career combines audience and learning research with museum leadership, building a better understanding of the changing role of museums today. So this conversation will explore the ways in which museums can build relevance and relationships with the different communities that they serve. Towards the end of the webinar, you will be invited to join our conversation directly. If you have a question or something to add, please alert us via the chat and we will be inviting you onto our virtual stage. If you're not comfortable joining on camera, you can also submit your questions in the chat and then I will present them to our speakers. A recording will be made available after the presentation. And so without further ado, I'm going to hand this over to John and Judith to get started. Thanks so much. Good morning and thank you. And on behalf of the people that are here from North America, I just want to start with an acknowledgement that we are on the land of many First Nations and Native American tribes and we thank them for their stewardship of this land. But we're really excited to be here this morning. The concept of wellness is something we've been thinking about a lot at the Institute for Learning Innovation and particularly with John's leadership as it's the topic of his new book, The Value of Museums Enhancing Society of Wellness. So in planning this session, we thought that over the last 14 months, we're probably all a bit tired of Zoom meetings with PowerPoints. And so we thought we'd have a conversation. John and I'll speak together first to introduce the topic and then we'd like this conversation to include all of you. You know what's happening in your museums and in your communities and I'm sure there's much wisdom across the group. So as we speak, if you like to think about your thoughts or questions or put them into the chat, that will help to inform the second half of this of this conversation. So first of all, good morning, John. And I know you've been thinking about wellness very deeply. Why don't you tell us what you think about when you think about wellness? Well, I'm actually not thinking of wellness per se. I'm thinking of well-being. Well-being. That's okay. And it's important to appreciate that when, at least when I'm talking about well-being, I'm defining it quite differently than the way it has come to be sort of used in the vernacular, which is totally from a psychological perspective and almost the notion of well-being has almost come to be seen in popular culture as a synonym for happiness. And although happiness is part of well-being, it doesn't do justice to the concept. So I view well-being as first and foremost an evolutionary mechanism, a mechanism that we, along with every other living creature on earth, has evolved to provide survival-related feedback. Feedback that in a Darwinian sense allows us to assess the fitness of our actions. So it's not just people that perceive well-being. It's also ants perceive well-being, oak trees perceive well-being, and even bacterium perceive well-being. Now, obviously, they're not conscious, and each organism perceives well-being in its own way, but it's a feedback mechanism. So obviously, let's talk about humans. So for example, humans have emotions and have feelings like pain and pleasure. And the evolutionary purpose of those emotions is again to give us feedback about our actions. So we learn to avoid things that cause us pain and make us feel bad. And by the same token, we actively seek out situations that we believe based on past experiences or occasionally recommendations by others that are likely to make us feel positive, feel good. Things like being loved by somebody, being given congratulations or being respected. Those are things that feel good. Actually eating a good meal feels good. And so these are fundamental aspects of what it means to be human. And the relationship between these perceptions of trying to avoid pain and suffering and trying to actively do things that make us feel comfortable, secure sense of belonging, we've associated all kinds of behaviors with those kinds of things. And the reason that we do those is because actually over time, over evolutionary and cultural time, the people who avoid things that are bad and the people who manage to do things that feel good actually survive longer. They live longer, happier, healthier, more successful lives. That's called evolution. And again, unlike this sort of notion that is pervade in the popular culture, that well-being is something you can attain almost as if it's something that you get once and for all, if we could only get there, we'd be great. Well-being is something that we're constantly striving for. And it's an ephemeral thing that we achieve well-being and it feels great. And then, you know, we have to keep doing it because it fades. And so it's an ongoing process. And we'll come back to this idea of well-being. But speaking of definitions, one of the other definitions in our title is community. And so Judy talked to us a little bit about community. Yeah. The community is another word that we all use and maybe mean something differently by. It can also, particularly in North America, it can also be a cold word for those people who don't come to our museums. And so by community, how I use the word community derives from Peter Block, who had a very influential book called Community, The Structure of Belonging. And he really defines a community as the experience of belonging. And that core sense of belonging has two meanings. It's about having a sense of relatedness and being part of something. But it also means having a sense of ownership or being a co-owner of that community. And so I think about this definition of community a lot as I think about museology and the work of museums in their community, creating that sense not just of welcome, but of exchange and power sharing. So if museums are really thinking about their community's well-being, we need to start by asking them what well-being means to them, what they need to thrive. And a project that John and I are involved in called Science Museum Futures. We did a community scan and we talked to people across the United States, actually, and asked them about their community and what their community really needed to thrive in this moment. And what we heard was needing a sense of safety, of work-life balance, now that work has moved into our homes to a great deal. We've heard about ongoing learning. I and my community want to continue learning about the world and myself. We heard a lot about people wanting to be good parents, both in terms of exposing their children to learning, but also in terms of having a healthy earth for future generations. We talked about, we heard about equity, people wanting a less politically charged world and people wanting a higher level of science literacy, understanding viruses, understanding climate change. People talked about, obviously, financial security. People talked about access to and engagement in nature. And they talked about wanting to participate in a community, to give to the community, to help build that community. So that, can you talk a little bit, John, about museums and how they might think about these things that people, that communities are asking about and asking for? Sure. So all these things that people were talking about are, I would argue, expressions of different aspects of well-being. So that people are talking about their security, which is related to their physical well-being, they're talking about trying to gain more knowledge about viruses that relates to their sense of control and their intellectual, their intellectual control over events, that's their intellectual well-being. People are talking about their families and trying to do what's right for their children, which relates to their social well-being. And then people are also talking about trying to have better work-life balance, trying to have a better sense of understanding of themselves, which relates to their personal well-being. And it turns out that people go to museums for all these reasons. Because it ultimately, all these types of well-being, as I suggested, ultimately relate to fitness, to their survival, to their sense of being able to be successful human beings, both within their own families, but also their communities and across their lives. So in a museum context, people say things like, museums relax and recharge me, or I learned a lot about myself today, or they say that exhibit on X really satisfied my curiosity about that topic, or my visit helped me build a stronger bond with my children. These are all examples of enhanced well-being, which again I've categorized into these four dimensions of personal, intellectual, social and physical well-being. And it turns out that this confluence of what museums, what people take away from museum experiences, and the data that we collected from some roughly 200 people across the United States through interviews have all converged on these four distinct categories, because in fact, these are the four basic categories of well-being that all people strive for, that all people need. And the good news is that museums support those needs, although not necessarily in the same percentages as the people in our interviews indicated. We have a tendency to emphasize the intellectual well-being, which is fine. And most people are very interested in their physical well-being and their social well-being, and to a degree their personal well-being, often to the exclusion of their intellectual, but that's okay. So that's the good news. We, whether on purpose or not, museums have gotten quite good at supporting and enhancing people's well-being. So let's segue there, and Judy, tell us a little bit more about how these ideas might relate to today's realities. Yeah, it's really interesting because we're not just talking anymore about people coming to our spaces. If anything, the pandemic has really forced us, as museums, to connect with people in virtual spaces. And in fact, I wonder if school visits will actually ever be the same. A lot of the teachers and school leaders that I've been talking to really are speaking to the need for these virtual visits so that we don't have to take time out of the classroom. And even if there is a field trip, bookending it with a before-and-after virtual activity. I think museums have been working in this space of well-being in the virtual world, particularly in this time when we have children at home and we're all feeling the angst and the stress of the pandemic. This isn't entirely new. The Museum of Modern Art in New York has been doing online studio classes for 15 years, and they've actually been revenue-generating for the museum. There's a museum here in Toronto called the MyZM, which doesn't have a physical space, and so is in the community all the time. And they're doing their work, which is around building community for the city of Toronto, having conversations across difference. They're having that exchange in virtual spaces. Another example is the Children's Museum of Long Island, which, because we're encouraged to go outside right now in small groups, has been posting a lot of family activities to do outside to explore the natural world. For people that are interested, there's actually a great list that's been put together at least of North American efforts on the Museum Computer Networks website, and that reference will come at the end of this discussion as well. So Art Museums have a well-developed program for Alzheimer's patients and their caregivers. So if you think about an individual with Alzheimer's and the person who is supporting them, their life is filled with loss on a daily basis, and being able to come into the museum for an art in the moment, they're usually called program, where visual art triggers memories and is a pleasant exchange and a discussion, is a real moment of positive exchange and bonding for people at a difficult time. I was just going to say that actually there's some wonderful examples of programs like that in Europe as well, which I know there's some important ones in the U.K. I know Demgamblubu in Denmark has been doing, recreated a 1970s space where individuals with dementia can spend the better part of a day basically being in spaces like when they were younger, and it's had some amazing positive effects on the well-being of those patients. It's, you know, and it really is if we start with the visitors or the community and think about what they are looking for and need to enhance their well-being, and then we think about our mission. I think we can find a lot of intersections between what the community needs and what the museum has to share as a resource. I'm wondering too, though, about business models. So this also has to be sustainable in the long term. So do you want to talk a little bit about how you think about it with business models and sustainability? I would be happy to do that. Yeah, so I've been doing quite a bit of work in thinking lately about this whole issue of business models, in particular, this whole notion of demonstrating the value of institutions like museums. And to the extent my belief is that if we can understand the real value that museums provide, which again I would argue is enhanced well-being, then we can, it should be possible to frame that in terms of policy makers and funders and governments can understand. And as it turns out, the way to make that understandable is not merely through anecdotes and nice, warm stories, but to convert that value into the language that policy makers and funders speak, and that's money. So the museum sector has long argued that they're essential organizations that deliver genuine value to their communities. And it's not for lack of effort on the part of museums trying to make that case, but recent history would suggest that the way we have tried to make that case in the past has not been all that persuasive. And as I say, for better or for worse, decisions related to value worth ultimately revolve around or perhaps more accurately devolve into issues of money, specifically policy makers want to know whether the benefits that accrue from the funding of a particular institution are truly worth the cost. And this calculus is typically referred to as return on investment. So return on investment, just to explain for a moment, is one of the most common ways that investors and policy makers and funders evaluate the efficiency of a monetary exchange. And it's a standard way to measure performance. And it's basically a pretty simple model. It basically says that you create a fraction, you can create a formula. And the top number, the numerator is how much it costs to create that program or experience or to run the museum. And the bottom number is the value it generates. And actually, it's the other way around. The top number is the return on investment. And the bottom number is the cost. And obviously, the bigger the number that results, the bigger the return on investment. Now, in the business world, any return on investment of 10% or better is considered good. And that's generally true in the nonprofit world. Anything over 20% is considered amazing, which means that if you spent one euro, for every euro spent on a project, you would hope to get at least one euro, 10 cents, one euro, 20 cents back on that investment. So what I have done with colleagues here and abroad is a pilot study to try and figure out, can we calculate the return on investment? Of the value, the enhanced well-being that is generated by participation in museum experiences. And this initial pilot study was done with six different types of museums across three countries. There was an initial pilot study that was done with six different types of museums across three countries. There was an indoor outdoor nature and science museum in the US, a visual arts and cultural museum. That's actually my zium in Canada. A living history museum in the US, a state historical museum in the US, a zoo in Canada, and an interactive science museum in Europe, which was Heddecah in Finland. And importantly, the first pilot study was done with six different types of museums across three countries. And so, it's really, unlike the way this value has been measured, this monetization efforts have been done in the past, I felt it was really important to collect data through two independent sets of data from users. And I can go into detail why it's important to use two data sets. But the first data set measured the benefits framed in terms of museum users felt perceived they derived. And by and large, on average, people felt that they're that they did, in fact, have enhanced personal, intellectual, social and physical well-being. And of course, the the relative ratio of those varied from museum to museum. But interestingly enough, on average, people felt that not only did they have enhanced well-being, but that enhanced well-being persisted on again, on average, for at least a week or more. So going to a museum enhanced their well-being, not just in the short term, but over an extended period of time. Well, it turns out when you actually ask people separately, what is that worth to you? The longer you have enhanced well-being, the more value it has. And that if you combine those data, you can begin to see how you can convert perceptions of the value of well-being and the value of well-being enhanced directly to measuring the value of a museum experience, which on the on average, was about 345 euros per user per use. Well, think about that 345 euros of value generated per use when the average admission charge to a museum, it may be free, or maybe it's 10 euros, maybe it's 20 euros, but people are getting 345 or 350 euros in value back. And so when you start calculating out the return on investment, you get amazing results. So in interest of time, I'll just share three examples. So first, the History Museum in Nebraska, History, Nebraska, which was the smallest museum with an annual budget of about $600,000. And, you know, with an order of magnitude of a couple hundred thousand visitors a year, they generated $10 million in value for those visits with return of investment of 16,677 6667%. That means for every dollar spent on History, Nebraska, they were returning $166 in value. The return on investment for Herica was 12,741%. So again, with 11 million euro budget, they were generating 127 euro plus for every euro invested in that institution. And interesting too, Myseum, I mean, most of those examples were for, you know, a long visit. But also because Myseum was a virtual museum and runs virtual experiences, was able to calculate this for a couple hour workshop that they generated. So they did this workshop on First Peoples and they ran the workshop twice. Now, it cost combined a relatively modest, roughly 3,500 Canadian dollars to put these two workshops on. And although it only served 197 people, the return on investment from that those two workshops was $211 Canadian dollars for every dollar spent. That's a huge return on investment. Anyway, you get the idea. And if you're thoughtful about the true value that museums generate and how we measure it, we can demonstrate that they deliver significant value and that they can stand up to comparison with virtually any other experience in a community, including public health, including public education. And this is a strategy that we can use to argue the case for the value of these institutions. But maybe we should stop here and see if others have some questions or comments. We've talked for about a half an hour. Yeah, open this up to a conversation. I just wanted to point out to you, John, I thought it was such an interesting observation. Stephanie Dragon, and I hope I'm saying your name properly, but she suggested return on engagement as a as an expression that she had in return on investment makes a lot of people understand what that is. But I kind of loved the return on engagement. Yeah, let's open the floor. Questions, thoughts, what, what, how would you like to build on this conversation? So the question I asked in the comments was, it seems like there's a distinction between museums that are functioning on an attractions model and more of a service model in terms of whether it's what you're looking at as government funding and grants as the basis for the return or an admissions charge. And I'm wondering how that affects your understanding of where the value is in terms of those two models. Sure. So first of all, in terms of calculating return on investment or return on engagement, what what you're looking at since you're converting this to money is the total benefit derived as a function of the total income required to create that benefit independent of how you generated the income. And so whether it's through government funds, which in fact, in the case of the museum was the case, or if you're talking about admission charges, which in a case like Herika, a good percentage of their income comes from admission charges. So those are those are independent. And although I didn't talk about the the inner workings of this calculation. The fact is there are two ways to generate value. Value increases both as a function of quality and as a function of quantity. And so it's not either or it's both end. And so you can increase the value generated. You can have a minimally valuable experience that lots and lots and lots and lots of people have, which is more of an entertainment model. Or you can go the other direction. You can create an amazing experience that people feel generated unbelievable value for you, for a relatively small number of people, which is what the museum did. Now, obviously, you could try and do both, which museums claim they try to do, but it's really hard to do both, right? Okay, thank you. Thank you very much for this excellent presentation. And I would like to I'm a little bit familiar with your work. I mean, reading as much as I can, but I have not found this report with the details on the estimation on the return of investment. So it would be lovely if you could, I'm sure this will be on the references later on. And my question is actually very specific on the learning part. I really appreciate your discussion on learning and how, if I understood correctly, we learn what we are ready to learn. So it's a process of continuous learning. And when you go to the museum, whatever your mind is ready to catch, that's what you will take with you. And I'm really curious about this process and particularly, I'm thinking of museum shop. So how is your experience on the objects provided in the museum shops in terms of their educational potential, and perhaps, you know, this continuation of the museum experience? Okay, so three questions. Let's see if I can remember them. So first of all, this is new. So literally there was a blog, I've been writing in the series of blogs. I've been trying to be totally 21st century about this and spend less time writing academic articles that all of 50 of my nearest and dearest friends read and trying to communicate more through blogs as well as books, which have a broader audience. So if you go to the Institute's website, you will see this return on investment as well as a couple other blogs that I've written over the last six months that begin to talk about these ideas. And then as Judy mentioned, I have a book forthcoming into this year, which will lay out these ideas in more detail. So that's the plug for that. So learning, as many of you may know, I have spent the better part of my career, which is rapidly pushing a half a century now, I dare say, framing the museum experience through a learning lens. And that was the prevailing paradigm and still is a major paradigm. I have come to believe that learning is a means to an end. It isn't the end. People learn because it enhances their fitness, to be honest. It brings them pleasure, which is fitness. It gives them a leg up in the world, which is fitness. It provides opportunities to them in terms of their relationships and their professions, which again is about fitness. So museums do support learning. But I think the deeper purpose of that learning has to do with their well-being. But that said, museums clearly support learning, but it is like the proverbial you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. People learn what they find engaging and interesting and intriguing to them. And obviously museums invest a lot of time and energy, as appropriate, in introducing people to ideas and topics. And they have an obligation to do that. But you can't force people to learn things that they're not ready or interested in. But you can make it. You can open people's eyes and engage them in ways they hadn't thought about. So it is it is a dynamic. It isn't the old traditional model. You know, we just open somebody's head and pour the knowledge in. But you can create pathways to learning. You can make it easier or you can make it harder. And it begins with creating connections to people's lives so that people can see how these new information and new experiences can connect to their interests, to their lives. And so obviously I can talk about learning further. But let me get to your third question. And again, I don't know if I've done justice to your second question. But shops shops too are a way for people to satisfy their well-being. And they provide sometimes long term durable experiences for people. I interviewed a woman about her museum experience and she told me about because it was salient to her because she just recently worn a scarf that she had bought at a museum a couple years earlier. And that scarf turns out it was a Frank Lloyd Wright scarf. It was given to her by her husband as a gift after they visited a Frank Lloyd Wright house. And every time she wears a scarf, it brings back memories, memories of the museum, memories of her husband because it was their anniversary, memories of they were visiting her sister and her family. And so again, we tend to minimize the gift shop, but it's a really critical way of building relationships. And potentially if we played the game, this game Wright and think of it not merely as, you know, the for-profit people do as a way of generating money, but we can think of it as a way of extending the experiences that we want to create the well-being that we want to provide to the public. Welcome, Martin. And just before we jump to your question, there is a question in the chat about thinking about value on the community scale. And this work's been very early and we've been starting with individuals. But I'm assuming that if you can establish a value on average across a group of individuals, you could then use the attendance as a multiplier for the community. Is that what you're thinking? That is correct. And again, I think it as we begin to think about the future of museums and begin to think about the value that we create not merely by who shows up at our front doors, but how how we extend into those communities and try and take the skills that we've developed at enhancing people's well-being and reach out to increase the well-being of others, including those who don't just come to our institutions, but as a tool that we can provide to enhance the well-being of particularly the most needy in our communities. I think this could be a great thing. Yeah. Yes, Shane Clark, I hope that that got to your question. And Martin, why don't you jump in? Thank you very much, Judy, than John. And thank you very much for going into this question. I think it's very important that our value is actually measured that measured so many things. And and why don't we start measuring this a bit more? And, John, I would like to ask you if you could elaborate a bit more how you came to these three hundred and forty five euros per wizard and and what is how how strong is the method and can use as a how can we say anyways that somebody maybe could argue against the method you have had you could just elaborate a bit more how you have figured out that is the value of a museum. Sure. Thank you, Martin. And lovely to see you. And of course, Martin is the person who is responsible for the for the good works at Demgamblibu, which I gave a plug to in terms of patients with dementia. Well, so first of all, I guarantee there will be people who have problem with my methods because no matter what method you come up with, no matter how you slice and try and quantify whatever it is that you're trying to quantify. It's there are imperfections, but I believe that the approach that I've taken is sound. So without spending an hour on the method, the gist of it is saying, first of all, historically, the way people have measured well being there are significant flaws in the approach, first of all, because the way people have traditionally measured well being has been based purely on I would argue a flawed model of well being this notion of happiness, for example. And and people are often asked, so tell me, you know, there are annual surveys of well being. So tell me, you know, what's your well being like for this past year? And I'm here to tell you, you can't answer that question. I can tell you what my well being is today. And if you really push me, I'll give you an answer of what how I felt yesterday, but well being because it's ephemeral is always relative. So it's a question of how I feel today compared to how I felt yesterday. So generic answers are not very useful. So what I strive to do is look for metrics of well being that are not generic, but are specific to museum experiences. And the good news is that we actually have a really, really good data set for that. We haven't framed it that way. But as you know, I and many others over the last couple of decades have spent a lot of time trying to understand why people go to museums and what people say are the benefits they take away from them. And inherent in that, I mean, those statements I read, you know, it made me feel comfortable. I learned more about myself. It made me feel good about my kids. So those are the very concrete kinds of dimensions that we can actually measure as enhanced well being because those are the direct benefits that accrue from these experiences. So using those methods, I was able to fairly accurately, I believe, unreliably measure the outcomes of museum experiences and ask people to assess the duration that those that those kinds of feelings persisted an hour, not at all, an hour, a day, a week, a couple of weeks, whatever. But then you can independently ask people. So what would that be worth to you? What would an hour of feeling safe and secure be worth to you? What would a day's worth of being safe and secure be worth to you? What would a week worth of feeling safe and secure be worth to you? What about two weeks? And although that's difficult, people can put a dollar euro value on that. And then actually you can combine those two sets of data to get to this, which is how I've that that's basically just the approach. Thanks. Hi. Thank you so much for your talk. It's been so interesting. And so my question was if you would consider approaching the climate change as a social well-being and also what would be the best approach through the communities to tackle this issue? And actually now I have a third question that is, do you think there will ever be financial return when we are talking about climate change if museums will ever have any financial return on that? Good question. So so when I again, what I would argue and again, people can disagree with me on this is that if we think of our institutions first and foremost as institutions committed to enhancing societal well-being, then climate change is an example of societal well-being that we need to focus on. And so what that then says, how do we do that? Now, I'm not prepared to answer that in 20 words or less. But again, I would make the case that it is totally appropriate as a goal for the institution to take a problem like that and think about it through the lens of well-being and think about the contribution that a museum can make to that. And it's important to frame it as a contribution. Museums are not going to solve climate change, but they can contribute to that. And so the question is, how do you contribute to that? And I believe and this is really the premise that I began this whole process and how I came up with trying to figure out a way to measure and then ultimately monetize this. If you can define what it is you're trying to do, if you can define how you contribute, then you can find a way to measure that contribution. And if you can measure that contribution, then you can also put a dollar value on that. None of that's easy, but it's all doable. And it is the kind of thing that we should be doing and how we should begin to use information like this to change the focus and, in fact, the mission of museums. I agree. Thank you so much for your answer. That's very inspiring. Thank you. There has been some talk in the chat, John, about about people with really serious needs for whom learning and nurturing creativity, you know, they're still worried about clean water and and particularly the example given was First Nations groups here and in Canada. But I feel like you sort of responded to that in terms of saying we can't be the problem solver, but we can be the we can be a contributor. Yes. But Katarina, nice to see you again. Hello, John. Nice to meet you. Thank you very much. I have a question for you. I would be very interested for your opinion. There is a growing field of research on health, humanities and arts in health and the well-being part being connected with mental health and the therapeutic part therapy and the therapeutic values of collections and museum objects. Have you made any research from that perspective? Well, again, I think these are clearly examples of how museums have worked to try and support at least one aspect of well-being and I can't this kind of research that I'm talking about is in its infancy. And so I certainly haven't specifically collected data on that. There is data on that shows that museum experiences can increase people's sense of physical health and well-being, which is, I think, evidence and support of what I'm trying to say. I will say that historically, again, you know, take it with a grain of salt. But my opinion is that often the way we have measured even things like physical well-being have been problematic in the past. We've traditionally used a deficit model. People in the health profession talk about well-being as the absence of illness as opposed to being more of an asset-based approach that actually you never are. I mean, health again is always relative. I am healthy or unhealthy compared to how I was yesterday, not the way I was 30 years ago because how I was 30 years ago or even a year ago is irrelevant because it's a moving target. We all, you know, life is a dynamic thing. And the goal of life is not to live 30 years. The goal of life is to survive for another minute, for another day. And so we should be thinking about well-being as the efforts and value of the things we did today that supported the quality of our life today. And that's a really different way of looking at it. So if you do that, then it puts some perspective on the programs. So what we should be that you're talking about. So if we made people's lives better today and a little bit better tomorrow, then we are making significant contributions to people's well-being. And again, that's what we should be striving for. And that's what we should be measuring. Thank you very much, John. Could I could I ask one more question in terms of how we can measure well-being? For example, UCL has a well-being toolkit that they use in their programs. There is generally an effort to develop such kind of toolkits in order to measure well-being. Would you recommend to make any suggestions on that? Well, first of all, I am not. I can't claim to be familiar with UCL's well-being toolkit. It's just an example, an indicative example. And so so I can't specifically talk about that. I know the work, much of the work that's been done in the UK has attempted to create correlations with their annual well-being surveys. And again, I'm not a big fan of those. I think because if that UCL toolkit is predicated on those kinds of measures, then I think they're flawed. They're better than nothing. But I don't think they get at the heart of what I'm talking about here. OK, would you recommend any tools to further research? Explanations? I think stay tuned. We're working on it. But I don't to be developed. OK, thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you. Interestingly, someone did raise the question of the of measuring the opposite. So, you know, what what is life like with less culture, the absence of culture? So it's sort of an interesting yeah, comparison. Yes, and I mean, the only thing I would say in that respect is that if you take to heart the model that I'm proposing that the pursuit of well-being is an inherent a fundamental human quality. All humans strive to for enhanced well-being. And by and large, we're all pretty damn successful at it because if you believe in evolution, every one of us, every person on this call as well as virtually every person in the world is the product of ancestors who achieved well-being because, on average, they were the fittest and they survived because if they didn't achieve well-being, they wouldn't have survived to reproductive age and they wouldn't have reproduced. And we wouldn't be here today. So we are all the progeny of people who managed to achieve at least a necessary level of well-being. People seek well-being in different ways. Now, we tend to believe that our well-being can be enhanced by museum experiences. And most of the people who show up at our institutions or partake in our programs share that value. But not everybody shares that value and they look for well-being in other ways and other places. And so how we... So we need to be more asset based and rather than deficit based. So just because people don't share our perception of culture and well-being doesn't mean they don't have well-being and they don't achieve well-being. And so if we want to expand our audiences, we need to find out how other people perceive well-being and what it is that they they have done in the past to achieve well-being and how can we support that? And it may or it may not look exactly like what we've done with our current audiences and our current publics. Great. Chris, welcome. I think we have time for one more question. Yeah. And you get it. And you get it, Chris. Great talk. Thank you very much. You're talking about the big picture and I fear I'm going to talk about the granular, maybe. Not to lower the tone of the conversation, but I'm curious about how in museums, the use of foreign languages, use of multiple languages within a museum can draw in a more diverse community. And the utility of this and what's the maximum number of languages? I should specify that I'm a translator myself and I have students who seem just totally fascinated by museums, would like to specialize in museum translation. And I would like to know what kind of things I can give them to read. Are there statistics available about greater community use of a museum? I know I've set myself in museums and watched people using the museum and seen that oftentimes people don't necessarily read. Yeah, I was going to say this is a great opportunity for bookends. This is Judy's question. Yeah, so Chris, there is research that shows particularly in communities with high numbers of certain language groups that having materials available in alternative languages increases that sense of belonging, right, that sense of, oh, I see myself here. There's also, however, events that, and I'm sorry to say this to a translator, but that translation isn't always the best approach that a native speaker recreating the key messages rather than translating from one culture, just exchanging language, isn't always the most effective approach. So that's what our research has shown. So thank you for that question. But I I think we're at the end of our time. I think we are. Yes, we could go on, but we won't. Yeah, but so it was so great to have a conversation. Yes, it was fun and you can you can be honest. But do you have just two minutes because there was someone who put a question in the chat and I promised to verbalize it? Of course, two extra minutes. OK, because I also personally found this question very interesting. And it said here, I'm interested in the notion of well-being, and it seems that it's mainly been talked about as an individualized notion given that museums are civic, social and public spaces. Can we think of well-being in a more collective way? We can, again, I would say that at the moment the approach that I have particularly focused on is more at the level of the individual. But the wonder of the way humans, in particular, are focused, but other living things have been we tend to create these super organisms, which you know, you can think of a beehive, a community of bees or ant colony. And certainly humans are super social. And I. I think it would be great to begin to think about how we could begin to define well-being in more of a community and social context. And I would be happy to talk to anybody about that topic. And again, I wouldn't claim that that I have the answer, but I'd love to think about that with others. And it should be absolutely possible to frame this in terms of collective well-being rather than just individual well-being. I completely agree. I think it's also I think it opens up so many interesting avenues for, you know, discussing the collective well-being, especially in cases where museums are dealing with difficult topics. For example, just I don't know. I think, yeah, we could go on. But as you said, can't. But this this was really a fantastic conversation. It was such a pleasure for us hosting you here. And I mean, it was very clear from the questions coming in. I think everyone got a lot out of this. So yes, thank you both so much for your time and for sharing this wonderful conversation with us. You're welcome and thanks for making it possible for us to do that.