 My name is Begita Kieler-Holst. I work for the Danish Museum Association and I'm the leader of initiative called the Green Museum Academy, which I will speak on later this day. I like to begin with saying that I myself have suffered from what would you call climate anxiety or just feeling hopelessness, but recently I decided that that was just too hard. So I decided to focus on the extreme privilege it is to be part of the solution. Because we've seen report after report coming out with huge, very depressing numbers of the state of our planet and it hasn't really made that much of an impact. What does make an impact is to make people engage emotionally and intellectually and in their communities with being part of the solution. And thank you so much for Kirsten Dunlop to remind us that that is the power we have to actually engage people. I have the privilege to introduce free people here today that are already part of the solution, that are actually working with transforming their community and helping the planet. We'll do it this way. We have each presentation for the free people in the panel. They'll be sitting down there so that they can actually see what their other people are presenting and then after that we'll have a panel discussion up here. So please welcome our first speaker, Julia, from the Anchor Museum. And Julia, if you would please, just instead of me introducing you, I think you're probably better at telling people why you're here. So thank you. Good morning or happy middle of the night if you're from Anchorage, Alaska. I'm happy to be here. I'm the director and CEO of the Anchorage Museum in Alaska. Alaska is the only reason the United States is an Arctic country. We, like Finland, are a place that thinks about climate realities every day and all that we do. So in my mind, the museum has a really obvious imperative to be talking about these climate realities. But I think most importantly, repositioning the way we think to be not places of the past, but really to be instruments and helping people imagine all of the possible futures. This is the Anchorage Museum. At least this is a slice of it. I show this image because on our facade in a lot of different ways. And as you enter the building, we first acknowledge that we are on indigenous land. We are Anchorage exists on Denina land. The Denina people have stewarded the place for millennia, and we have a lot to learn from the Denina and other indigenous people. So we acknowledge that first as we talk about place and planet and people. We just opened this exhibition a few weeks ago. This is an exhibition called How to Survive, where we talk about climate change. Although we do try to resist the climate change exhibition that feels really episodic to us. We think that the way we talk about climate needs to be integrated into all the things we do and the way we are. But this is an exhibition that looks at the future of the planet through female artists, female identifying artists, women, and it really looks at how the climate crisis is going to depend on the ways we care about each other. The way we care for the planet, the way we care for ideas and imagination. So also with this exhibition, we tried to change the way we think about how we do exhibitions, everything from how the pace at which we worked. We experimented with moving slower, more slowly. We worked with new materials. We talked to artists about working in new ways. How do we design things that we can build on site with materials we have on site? So while we don't have this all figured out yet, it was a good experiment for us in real transparency of saying, okay, we're going to see what this looks like to do exhibitions in a new way and have these conversations in a new way. But I think the best part of this exhibition is that we really worked with community members on imagining it. So there's a lot of community stories within the exhibitions. People sent in their stories of place, ways they're experiencing climate change, but also ways they're addressing climate change. And these are objects from our collection. The exhibition is not collections-based, but we did pull items where you can see this indigenous way of thinking about repair and sustainability. Hundreds of years ago, they were repairing objects and keeping them thinking about sustainability in new ways. So each of these objects, you can see a visible repair. But I think I mentioned that when I think about museums, I become less and less interested in exhibitions and collections. And instead, I'm really interested in the ways people live and the ways we are going to be able to live in the future. This is an artwork by Amy Meisner of Alaska, and this is called Mother Thought of Everything. It's about ways that mothers desire to take care of children in the next generation. So she quilted these objects, these survival suits to help us all think about the ways we might care for our families going forward, also reflecting fear and hope within this work. We're also really interested in the idea of seven generations. So in indigenous communities, you often hear about not the now, but the preparing cultures and children for seven generations from now. If you think about sustainability, that's a much more powerful way to think. And we're interested in how, as we work with artists and communities and industry, how much people have lost a language for talking about the future, and how, if we think generations from now, how we can relearn or newly learn a language for being able to imagine tomorrow. We don't hear it much. We hear the catastrophic stories of today, but not really the visioning for how we might steward for tomorrow. We talk about climate change and how it impacts people, the places that they live. This is an indigenous Inuit photographer, Brian Adams, who photographs the changing places in Alaska. This is a community called New Talk that's experiencing coastal erosion and actually had to relocate the village just in the last few years. So these are kids that are hopping across these gaps that are left in the landscape as the coast erodes. To us, that's very visceral. These are our witnesses to climate change, and it's their stories we try to highlight and bring forward. We talk a lot about fish in Alaska. Some of you may know that one of our most recent elected officials for the House of Representatives from Alaska ran a whole, her whole campaign on fish because it represents so much of the ways we live, not just in Alaska, but many places. It's a food source. It's how we're caring for the land. It's what we turn into industries, what we need to think about. But the fish are really the salmon, the king salmon are really suffering in Alaska. Other species are thriving. So for us, it's this way of thinking about climate change. So instead of curators working in our galleries or working with our collections, we send curators out on fishing boats. They write stories about what they're seeing. They highlight the stories of climate change. They work with scientists on the research. We have one curator who is a writer, and this is an image from a story she wrote for the New York Times. So thinking much differently about the museum's role in what we create. If we are about creating stories or highlighting stories, then working with a platform like the New York Times really changes the way these voices go out to the world. We recently opened an exhibition about fish. So an exhibition about salmon culture and how important salmon are to places like Alaska. And this image I just took last week, because to me, this is a good example of how if you work on projects about things people care about and really about their life ways, people turn up. They talk to each other, they communicate, and they spend time together. And to us, this is how we start to transform conversations. We work with a lot of tribal leaders in Alaska, a lot of indigenous artists and policymakers. We think if we can bring different people together into the same room, maybe that conversation can start to change. I'm going to go back to fish for a second. I think one of the indigenous values is seeing abundance and scarcity. And I was just talking to someone in the museum field the other day who said that museums, unfortunately, are really good at seeing scarcity and abundance and that we need to change our mindset. So we have to stop competing with each other and thinking about the scarcity of resources and instead think about the richness of the resources that we have, which is really place in people. We do believe that while we're an international museum and we like to partner with all of you on climate realities and thinking about what's facing our global world, we don't think local first, we are not doing our job, so we are deeply integrated with our communities. This is a space, you can see the museum building behind it, but this is a space that was an abandoned empty building for years across from the museum. I can see it outside of my office. So I approached the landowner and asked if we could use this building as a space that's called seed lab to really work on climate issues with communities. And what we've learned is that by taking away a lot of those barriers of museums, which is don't touch, don't have food in the galleries, that we took this building over, we renovated it, but we kept it really humble. And there are no rules in the space and instead we host writers, scientists, energy startup companies, people looking at alternatives, envisioning the future artists. So people occupy the space and because they come from different backgrounds and different industries, they talk to each other and they share the space. And in this space we host a lot of conversations about food, food security. We have a lending library, we have a materials library that looks at alternative materials that can be used. We talk about housing, insecurity, city planning. So we work a lot across boundaries, way outside I think the typical museum universe. In the pandemic when we couldn't be inside the building, we gave the building to skateboarders who just skated inside the building. And then I think we try to be positive disruptors. So we show up to conferences that are not about museums, but about the Arctic that are being dominated by industry and economics. And we bring the people there. These are two of our curators and two indigenous artists who we sent to the recent Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik. So while everybody talked about the future of the Arctic in terms of military buildup and economic buildup, we reminded them that this is a place where people live, where lifeways are being affected, and where we see creativity as being central to our solutions and to the idea of well-being. And then I will just say that for us it's really how do we get outside of our spaces? How do we get outside of our practices? The things we think we know. Kirsten talked about unlearning, and we spend a lot of time, I think, unlearning. So we go out into public space. To us that's the space that we need to be working in, where we need to be co-creating, where we need to be better listeners. I often ask the question lightly, what if we took all of the assets that we have as museums, which are our big buildings, our beautiful buildings, the objects, the cultural belongings, the people, the people that care, that work in institutions, and then we looked at the skill set. What are the needs of the community? What do we see that the community needs to imagine the future? Then what kind of institution would we create? And I think it's not the museum that we all know. It's something quite different. And so every day we try to reinvent what that might be. Thank you. Thank you so much. Looking forward to having you on the panel and developing further on those ideas. And then next, Heidi, would you please introduce yourself as well? Hello. My name is Heidi Rosenstamm. I come from the Finnish Science Centre, Heureka. I work there as an exhibition producer. And I will tell you about how we at Heureka communicate complex issues such as climate change with our exhibitions. But first, Heureka, I know some of you will visit it on Wednesday, but for those who won't, here's the picture. We're the biggest science centre in Finland. We have both science exhibitions that we produce ourselves. We have a planetarium and we do a lot of different programming about science. And it's maybe noteworthy to say also that we think of science in the broad perspective. So we include humanities in it. It's not only about natural sciences. And our main audience are families and schools. So it's really typical for us that people come for these shared experiences and we put a lot of effort in designing them. Because we know that only less than one percent of our visitors come to us in groups. And the target of these science exhibitions that we make and that science centres make is to foster scientific literacy and foster critical thinking and we really talk about fostering science capital. But I think that these issues with climate crisis and loss of biodiversity, they are very much included in this agenda. But then when we look at why people come to Heureka, when we ask our visitors, they come because they want to have fun. They want to have new experiences and sometimes they also want to learn something new. So this is of course a challenge when you want to communicate climate change. And there are other challenges with climate change. As Kirsten also mentioned, it's very complex and the exhibition media isn't very suitable for giving out these really complex feedback loops. We haven't got the tools yet on how to do this. And there's a lot of psychological barriers. People might perceive that climate change is too distant to them for them to take action. They might perceive that the social group that they belong to, nobody else does something, so why should I do anything about it? Or it might be that you just put the short-term gains in front of the long-term outcomes. There's anxiety and there's a lot of climate crisis fatigues, tiredness of all this crisis in this time that we live in. And then there's the skepticism and the deniers, but to be honest, they don't really come to Heureka either. Anyway, we have to overcome these barriers and surprise these people somehow to get them connected. And then there's the other side of the coin. It is that the people who come to us, very many of them are really much aware of this already. And this is a picture from the Finnish youth barometer from 2021. And you can see that 90% of those who answered think that climate change is caused by humans. 6% are of the opinion that nature has an intrinsic value and that should be taken into account in decision-making. So also, it doesn't really make sense for us to rub it in to those young people who already know this and come to us. But we should really find ways to motivate. So in other words, and now I'm quoting my now retired boss, we are really in the business of motivation. We are there to light fires and not fill the buckets, and this is where emotions come in, because it's emotions that motivate us to action. And we know that emotions are powerful, converse some messages, and they're very important in reinforcing memories and learning. And we can use emotions for people to connect emotionally to things and to help them understand or relate to more complex issues or make these things, issues relevant for them. And we can do this by storytelling and we can do it by exhibits and exhibitions. And we have one very certain trick on how to get people emotionally available. And it's that people are very interested in themselves. So we really put a lot of effort in putting the visitor in the center in everything we do, in the interaction and in the center of the facts and try to show how these things relate to them. And this is also, we know that this is how things stay in the mind for a longer period of time. So just a couple of examples of how we've communicated climate change in the past years. And this picture is from the exhibition Kleemikes from 2011, so it's already more than 10 years ago, that we hosted it in Heureka, and it's a very powerful immersion, because there's 10 centimeters of water in the whole exhibition space. So it's an exhibition experience you're sure to remember. And there's literally the... You literally put on the boots of somebody else because you had to wear yellow rubber boots in the exhibition, so you also are sure to see the world a little bit differently, and it awakens empathy and understanding. Then we have the shared experiences. They are very valuable because shared experiences, they also have the possibility to create shared memories. So there are things that you can come back to years after if you visit with your family, and so they're very powerful tools. And then I have a really short story I want to tell about this ice cube, because for this exhibition it was running for the whole year, and in winter time we had ice cubes, like two square meter ice cubes, collected from Lake Puruvesi in Finland, and then we had cold containers on the backyard to keep this ice for the summer period also, and some physicists from the university had calculated that each ice cube would last for around six weeks in the exhibition. They had made these careful calculations. But the ice cubes melted in less than four weeks, and now do you guess why that was? Okay? Yeah, it was like, yeah, the physicists, they didn't take the human impact into account, so they forgot that they didn't think other people would touch and feel it. But as the CLEAN-MAX exhibition was a really powerful tool for raising awareness on climate change, I think when we, in 2022, last year opened an exhibition facing disaster, we've come a bit towards action with it, because this exhibition is really about resilience, about how communities prevail together in crisis. And there's an exhibit where you call it the Moi, it's like high-end finish, so it's like the greeting exhibit, and you can record your own greeting there in the exhibition. And there's this element of surprise where you can find yourself greeting to the whole exhibition hall, because greetings are a really good indicator of resilience, so communities where people greet each other, they're more resilient than those who don't. And we have exhibits that are simple, hands-on, brains-on exhibits on cooperation, where you help to solve tasks together. And there's also these powerful immersions in this exhibition, they're more about, more like art, visual art rooms, or immersion rooms than really simulations, but I hope, I mean, those of you who will visit on Wednesday will have the chance to see this exhibition, and those who don't, it's still open until January this year. So, in the end, when we communicate these complex issues, I think it's really important that we focus on the visitor experience and on the audience that we have, and on emotions. And this is because we really have to catch the attention of the visitor. I will think about oxytocin when I get home, but I still think that we don't have a very long period of time to catch the attention of the visitor. And then I think it's very important that we think about these complex things because the world is complex, and we try to understand how things are related to each other. But in the exhibition, we don't really need to spell out everything because it can also be more rewarding when people get to put two and two together. And I think that our role as museums and science centres is not about raising awareness anymore, but it's more about connecting these shared experiences around this knowledge and awareness because it's the shared experiences that create mutual understanding and empathy, and that's really what we need in this world. So, thank you. And last but not least, Kripspa. Would you please introduce yourself as well? Yes. Thank you. Hello, everybody. My name is Cipriane Stéphane, or the guy with the hat and the plastic bottle. A lot of you know me from the other sessions like this. I will present to you today what Astra Museum is doing and is doing since 2014 for the society. We are an open-air museum, so we say, okay, what should we do regarding the climate changes and how to make people understand the challenges and also how can we support them to understand better the solutions for the climate changes because rural areas from Romania is so huge. We still have around 48% of the populations lives in the countryside with a lot of resources, with a lot of know-how, but they don't know and they don't understand how to use those resources. And we start building programs. I won't speak about what I have on the screen because you can read it or you can have the presentations, but I want to tell you how we start. So we start, first of all, doing research program in the field. So right now, Astra Museum covered in Romania almost 30,000 square meters from the Black Sea to the High Mountains where we talk with the communities, we try to find answers, we see how the rural communities are transforming, how modern materials are coming over there, how is the deep populations, but also how is the migrations from the urban areas to the rural areas. After we receive all these know-how and also all these information, what do we have in the museum, then we start building things. First of all, we have to preserve around 400 buildings in the Open Air Museum, which needs materials, we need money and a lot of other things, but we maintain to use natural materials for all our buildings, but the most important thing, how can we reuse the materials for the objects, not using the materials or the tools that you find in the store, but recovering the information from the past, how they use the colors for the icons, for example, or for the pottery. It's a huge research, but in this way, we said we make some reducing of the energy preserving the heritage because we have like 3,000 artefacts. This is our scientific work, let's say in our duty, because we still have laws that oblige us to make the heritage, but where we find the equilibrium, the balance, how can we balance with this because this know-how that we still found in the countryside is relevant for us and it's relevant for the museums, for the Open Air Museums or enographical museums. I told you Romania has a lot of resources, but also when we talk about the SDGs, first one I think is poverty, reducing the poverty. So in the countryside, in the rural areas, we still have a lot of poverty, a lot of people with a lot of competencies, with a lot of know-how, with a lot of resources. How can we make for them a better life but also for the communities, not just inviting them in the museum and putting them to be like an exponent and to do a workshop for, I don't know how many visitors we came. No, we try to mediate what they do for the community and to make the community and the visitors understand that their object can be used because they use natural materials and their object can be used all the time in the house, in the weekends, in the holidays, and so on. We have this kind of visitors for those events is written over there and our colleagues and my team, we stay there together with them and try to communicate in another way. In this way what we gain, we gain also the craftsmen, we regain the craftsmen and we regain for them their proud because the communist period in Romania destroyed those values, destroyed the values and people are embracing when they stay in the countryside and they do a pottery or blacksmiths and so on and we make them again proud and in this way we build what? We build small engine for local development in a sustainable way in a good direction also. Educational programs is not just for the kids, it's for everybody. Everybody can come in the museum and assist to our programs because we still have a lot of vulnerable rural communities that nobody understand them. A lot of people talk about the Roma people and the problems that Roma people bring in Europe but we have a lot of good Roma people and nobody knows that. We have these problems in Romania and then we make these vulnerable communities to be understood by the visitors from all the country from all the Europe who came in our museum. When I talk about cultural animation program they are people from the countryside. They live there but how can we educate them to understand what these SDGs? How can we educate them to understand what is sustainability? They live SDGs. They live sustainable in the countryside. They just have to came back and find a proper solutions for the actual needs or the contemporary needs and that is happening in our museum. We have this movement in Romania because of the pandemic and a lot of people from the urban areas moved in the countryside and they want to build a cabin they want to build a house they want to build homesteads and is a risk to destroy the cultural landscape. So then we have a special program built for them is this cultural landscape program where we teach them how to build a fence or how to restore house using proper materials from the proximity not using modern materials destroying the landscape and also put a finger on the climate changes. This is my favorite part gastronomical programs because we talk about the waste management and this in the countryside area waste management was since the beginning they didn't throw anything okay, gastronomical program it's very good for us because we bring a lot of people in the museum who wants to taste a food like it used to be, I don't know, in 17 or 18 century using the proper instruments and tools and so on but it's not just about that it's how can we make people understand if you see a potter you can buy his products because you can cook in it and we show them the example not just offering the potter stuff or the food in a pottery can no, it's not about that it's not at all about that, it's about assuming, tasting and feel the heritage and feel these informations that will provide a better life for us in the future these resources doesn't have any paper so it's a lot of fishes here and now we are able to offer them a training we are available to offer them a certifications, a legal paper for these craftsmen and in this way they can be very well planted in the market they won't have any problems with the, I don't know, institutions who wants to see how many products they sell or things like that because now they will have these certifications of the competencies for us it's very important that those people to have these certifications of the competencies, why? because then they can build something good in the countryside and in the rural areas together with us and of course with the other open air museums from Romania what about Lobis and Advocacy? I choose those pictures why because we had in this summer a visit a very important visit by European committee of the regions we told the mayor and president of the regions in our museum and I said ok I won't make for them just a guided tour it's not about that we want to show them because we need them we want to show them how the museums offer well-being, how the museums are providers for the green transition because all our know-how adapting to the 21 century needs can provide a good solutions and better solutions for the future and we still have in that part of Europe and also in the other parts of Europe we still have the most important resources human resources it's not just about natural resources it's about also us people and we have them in the countryside and at the end what to say I don't want to be anymore a museum I want to be a positive phenomenon in the life of our communities I want to be very close to the community to educate them to understand the dangerous things that can happen in the future I want to have snow in my countryside I don't have any snow anymore snow since five years ago to do that we must reuse our knowledge and reuse everything that we have as an information in the museum to be a phenomenon all of us as the museums the communities life thank you will you please join me up here you should probably put on your mic again also while we are waiting for our third person so that we are not all women I would like to begin asking you each what part of the other presentation you found expiring and why would you start Julia well I will start with my neighbor we also have a science center as part of our museum and as we think about youth culture and how people engage with the museum we had a moment where we recognized that we were talking about general science art in a general way and really went back to the idea that we are a place based museum the way we talk about climate is just by making all of those exhibitions really about the place so when you talk about the plants it grows in the place we have volcanoes in Alaska so we talk about how that might affect the environment so just talking to kids in the same fun way but about things they are experiencing and by your presentation sorry my microphone is going in and out similar in Alaska there are very few cities so most people are in rural communities and I think that local knowledge is deep and rich and there is so much that we can learn about sustainability by being better listeners and being closer to those communities and also I think helping to mitigate the rest of the world's attention on those places in ways that's quite ignorant I think you had it by both of your museums and the way that you work in a way that you really work to be part of the social place as you said in the end and also as you noted that you really tried to get out of the museum shirt in a way to put things into action thank you it was a marvelous day today and good very good presentations and for me it was important to see how USA rich country manage these kind of issues regarding the climate change is also through the heritage to the museums I know a lot of things about Finland but I was impressed by that center and I will visit it next Wednesday because next year now NEMO challenge us because next year we'll have the NEMO in CBU and the level is very high and thank you for that on NEMO I'm looking forward to receive questions and so on thank you one of the things I think is quite great with a gathering like this is that you have a chance to network and you have a chance to listen to other people's experiences but as professionals and individuals we have a tendency I at least do to brag a little bit and there is not that much learning in that a little bit but not as much so I'm curious to know if you could share one of the things that you tried and didn't succeed with something that you really thought okay I'm going to do this with my audience I'm going to communicate this way and it just didn't didn't work and why and especially what you learned from it so please share your failures anyone want to go first I would be the last one I think there are failures all the time I think that's something that the museum community can be more open about and certainly as we work on climate change I think there's a lot to learn and one of the things we have a conversation with a lot in terms of the idea of transparency is to be really honest about where it doesn't work where we're failing where we're trying you know and to acknowledge that this is an effort this is an experiment there's places we're going to fail I also think there's a tendency to go 100 miles an hour and to think you have all the answers and then sometimes your community reminds you that you don't have it all figured out yet and so I think for us we're held accountable by our local community in a way that's really stressful and really meaningful and so if we don't do things right we will know that we didn't do things right and there's a real I think communication and learning process that's part of that and we also said we fail all the time I think my examples are more from the if I think of exhibit development that's something where you really see it and there's sometimes even though you kind of could notice that this maybe isn't working so well then people still think things because there's sort of effort put into something that's okay but we just make it a little bit better and there's some examples for example we have an exhibit that some of you can see and you can assess it yourself on Wednesday at Heureka there's this circular factory that's it was really supposed to be a game but it isn't working as well and it's really you see that you kind of get the feedback from the audience really quickly so you know you've failed and it's just like try to make things better the next time yeah we failed and I failed this year for a part of the community you know in Romania we have this political issues regarding a nationalist party which is growing it's like 25% that it's not okay and their voters you know are against climate changes and so on and also they are very aerosceptics and until now it's a key to communicate with them to see how can in which event should I involve them you know to be present there to understand that those climate changes are not just stories tell by the European Commission and so on it is a truth it is a reality and they are a lot of them also in the visitors of the museum so I failed this year but I hope next year to find the good solutions maybe I can find answers also here because we have to be very careful with that I mean the stratigraphy of our society in this way we have nationalist party I'm not a politician but I saw the stratigraphy so I have to do something as a museum as a manager of the museum to do something to also educate them and to be close to them to find their needs and also to find what questions they have about those things how they can analyze and how can they understand that we don't have to joke with the climate changes it's a reality and as a museum we have to be careful with that but I hope next year to be to be in a better position and to build on that I want to ask all of you a lot of people get sort of desensitized to the climate crisis because it's so big and it's so overwhelming and a lot of people are dealing with it to just shut it down and just neglect it have you any thoughts about how to or any experience with how to actually get through to them without scaring them too much and actually make them reflect and engage I mean I think for us we don't often just use the term climate change and say we're talking about climate change right now like that declarative statement has become unnecessary so instead we talk about food or fish or transportation or housing and we talk about those things that are what people are experiencing that's changing the way they live we bring people together to talk about how we might live in the tomorrow and think about creative ways to solve that together we work with a lot of contemporary artists who are raising issues and sounding alarm bells and then we have conversations about if this is what we're seeing and experiencing then how we create a collaborative effort to address those issues so you know I think if you say climate change people have a fatigue factor just with the phrase so we talk about it in these ways that are really about how we live I have to again agree with you Julie we also don't really spell it out loud that much anymore and it's as in the Facing Disaster Exhibition we don't say that this natural process that you see is about climate change and we have now I think in all our forthcoming programming climate change is a part of all of the forthcoming exhibitions in a way such as our life is like we're living this climate changed age now so they're an inherent part of them yeah we talk about the water right now in Romania and in Roto Fruerrias the inhabitants have normal water in their kitchen and so on but they have problems during the summertime because they of course wet the garden with the water from the system and the system failed and they are not used with that why because when they were a little and they have the grandfathers they said okay our fountain has all the time the water but right now they don't have any more water and then we have to challenge them to understand okay it's not okay to use to use water in this way and we don't talk about climate changes we need to offer them examples with the effects of the climate changes that is what we do in the museum because they don't understand SDGs most of them most of the people from the museums in Romania or in other parts maybe don't understand the SDGs the workers most of the politicians doesn't understand what SDGs are climate changes. So this is an example this is an effect using water in another proper way that happens in the future it happens right now in the future will be worse. Yeah I think highlighting solutions and pointing to things that are working and helping people see that some work is being done and the museum's platform being used to highlight those things I think is a good role. Thank you. I'm also a little bit curious how you as individual see yourself working with sustainability what drives you and what sort of makes you go on? I have the honor of working in the place that I was raised didn't always think I'd go back to my home place but to work in a place that you care deeply about where you understand or have born witness to past, present and can imagine the future I think that's compelling I'm aware that if I wasn't in a museum I'd just be compelled to work on climate so I feel lucky that museums are a place that could have a role a very pivotal role in this conversation and helping communities lead forward. It's not an easy place to be right now I think we live in a world of global activism in a way that's really powerful and in a way that's really divided so I think as people working in these complex organizations at a very complex time I think we learn new skill sets and we realize we need to be surrounded by people who are innovators and entrepreneurs and really thinking in new ways and that maybe our role I guess I speak as a director is to step back it's not about me as a human being I hope my values matter in the role I'm in but really how can you be in service to our communities and the values that those communities hold I think it's we are in a very special position to talk about these things and bring up these things in the museums and in the science center so it is I'm also very happy about being able to work there and I really see that the work that we do it has an influence and it has an impact for a lot of people so that's what well, not keeps me going because I think I would do something else but it's really great to be able to be a part of this movement I grew up in a village in the mountains area and I was a teacher when I was young to respect the nature because we live by the nature and we use things from the nature in a proper way but also I know that when God gives you some treasures, some gifts you have to give them back to the society and in our museum I have a great team a really great team and together we understand that okay for us it's not an option to travel to work in western European countries we have to do something for our country and that is our way of life right now my generation's life in Romania right now I think it's really important for society and community seeing these issues and how can we manage to fix them I would like to ask you because working in a science museum the whole thing about fake news and fake science and climate being denied as being a problem and so how do you deal with that from your professional background and the museum you represent? I must say I think we are very highly there's a high reliability on science centers and museums so we're not questioned that often but I know from colleagues in Europe that there has been a lot of different smaller incidents and issues and I think last summer there was this Exide conference for science centers in Europe and there was also discussions about this and I don't know because I was I think it's really nice when you said that you reach out to this also try to reach out to these populists which is very hard and there's like this at some places they think that you cannot really you cannot really change the way that the deniers see it and still in a way I feel that we should try to make the conversation but on the other hand it's quite hard to conversate with populists so I don't know but we don't see that much Julie, one of the things around the museum is that you work on indigenous land and you communicate, can you elaborate on how you work together with that community and how you give them the quality and space they need? Sure I will also say that I don't think there are that many climate deniers in the world I think it's a language people use in relation to power and resources but I think most people don't deny climate for us living in Alaska this is indigenous land there are many different tribes monolithic culture but many different cultures that make up Alaska but Alaska was indigenous before it was Russia indigenous before Russia so Alaska to the United States and I think we've brought western ways of thinking to and doing to a place like Alaska that's been incredibly devastating to those communities whether that's changing life ways, taking away cultural rights, taking away land or bringing disease and poverty to those places but they're incredibly resilient communities that do understand land, that do understand sustainability that do understand our own quest for rethinking sustainability and consumption and resources and all of those things so for us it's I think it would be naive to think we're giving something back to those communities I think it's a partnership and we hope to be of value but really my humble opinion is that we need to be very humble and that we are not gifting something to indigenous communities we have something to learn from them and we need to approach that with greater listening skills and that local knowledge really holds the answers to a lot of this conversation that's happening here If we focus on a sexual level I would like to ask you since the president of the network in the Romanian museums what are the biggest drivers and challenges that you think you're facing in your region? In our region it's right now we have some issues with laws because it's the resilience programs and the state wants to do a reforma in the museums and since this July the museums from the region and from the county not just from the region are focused on fixing the issues and try to convince the politicians not to destroy the museum or to act against the heritage so then they are not focused very well focused right now to the main challenges and the next year in Romania we'll have elections here so it will be tough but I think we will in the network I have a very good board and we will try to make the museums understand okay you have to rebuild your strategy to rebuild your mission and go further because otherwise we will have politicians every four years we'll have issues with them every year but the main challenges we remain and we can destroy us if we don't fix it piece by piece in the future From the speech that we heard in Dunlop she was like re-imagining the role of the museums and seeing how we could interact with other institutions which institutions if you could pick freely would you if you could say okay this institution have to work with me about this project which institution and what project would be on top of your mind educational system and also environment all of them we need because we need educational system also to be a part of the educational system also as a cultural institutions or a cultural sector but also with the environment ministry we have also to be very close to them because we have these people we know how with some informations I mean we don't have to live like they used to live 100 years ago or 200 years ago but if we won't be carefully maybe we won't be able to live like they used to live 200 years ago so those informations maybe that can help also the specialists from the environment to find better solutions for example the wood we talk about the wood the deforestation but if you do some test and you cut the wood in the proper period then you won't use too much energy to dry the wood or you can use other species of wood which grows very fast I mean those informations exist in the open air museums in the endographical museums but of course together with the other specialists you can offer better solutions or a real solutions for the future and if you were to reimagine the museums for the future how do they look that's a good question I'm thinking that we already we work quite a lot with the educational system or with schools but I think our problem in Finland in a way is that we are in the south and Finland is a big country with a lot of people also up north so somehow there is something that would disperse the information very much over overall and I was also I think it was nice with the article series that you had with New York Times so maybe that could also be a way of dispersing information I don't have a good answer to this question now maybe tomorrow I think it was a great answer I'm curious about how you was sort of like you pulled down the walls of the museum and interacted in different ways if you could elaborate a bit more about that Will you would ask about ways we work with indigenous communities and I think one thing we're working on now is removing the idea of an institution as much as we are able so we're sharing ownership of our collection we're giving things back we're thinking about sovereignty in different ways thinking about how do you share that ownership everything from objects to photographs to the knowledge for us it's really looking about different platforms not just our museum spaces but right now we're working with an artist on a project about the spruce forest and climate change that nobody will ever see so we are putting tremendous human resources into working on this project out in the forest that unless you had incredible gear you would never see this beautiful project in the forest but we can talk about that experience so trying to learn through experiences and think about ways we share Sondra's in our audience we have a whole podcast series that we do that's really trying to highlight people's life ways and creative ways of thinking about the future Sondra co-curated with us a podcast series about museums and climate change so it's trying to point out what's happening and the good thinking that's occurring I will also just say we work a lot with the startup companies because it's really exciting to see that kind of innovation and that speed of thinking so we try to highlight what those institutions are doing and through partnering with other kinds of nonprofits far beyond the museum industry or for-profits we learn to change the way we work which I think is part of what we need to do is change the way we practice since you are extending the definition of museum quite a lot do you ever have people saying to you you cannot do that because that's not what the museum should do that's a good question I think our advantage and this is probably true of a lot of mid-sized to small museums is that there's not this huge public expectation of what you are so I used to be kind of shy about that going to conferences and thinking we're not the big museum and we don't have that amazing collection with the cannon in it and instead I see that as maybe now our greatest strength is that we don't have that burden of expectation and that we can continually kind of reinvent what this place should mean to a community what would you say the biggest barriers for you to actually do what you think is necessary to communicate and be part of the solution maybe you have something barriers? there is no barriers we imagine that there are barriers but no we have to be very optimistic we need optimism I'm full of optimism really because otherwise you won't do anything so then I know there is some barriers but I don't care about them I go further, I go straight ahead thank you that's a very nice answer very difficult to follow up on I mean sometimes a barrier is ourselves I mean I think it is the way museums were trained or the deeply embedded practices and so I think it is like learning how to remove our own barriers and seeing the world in a different way I think one of the I don't know barriers but one of the problems is then that people who come to Heverka are pretty highly educated so they kind of know a lot of things that we talk about climate change so maybe one thing would be then and what we are working on also but which isn't very easy on how to reach those that really don't come to science centers or museums I'm sure a lot of you are aware of US politics you said you have an election coming up next year so do we and so for us I mean it's not a barrier but it's an incredibly divisive world to live in right now and I think our next year is really going to be thinking about empathy and how do we figure out how to bridge some of these gaps that have really developed in our globe because we won't solve these problems if we don't know how to come together in most of ways also very beautifully put I am looking down at you now is it time for questions yes it's time for questions so please feel free there's one here I don't know if I have a question I just have some of remark or a continuation of what you said usually you said that you don't think there are that many climate deniers on the planet then on the other hand yesterday huge climate denier was elected in Argentina and then in Sweden we have a far right government who was propelled into power over the discussion of petrol prices and they got the youth with them so we had like a 30% of the under 18s now support our right wing government because of petrol prices because they like to be able to drive cars and I don't say that to diminish anything you say I hear it too but I think it's an agenda it's not a belief system that's what I wanted to hear from you thank you we're in the back there if you have a question and you know it you can like put up your hand and we can get a mic to you a bit faster hi as a software producer what are you expecting from museum software what are the deliveries or what are the expectations that we should meet your requirements regarding climate change open source everything thank you a question for I think Julia and Cyprian you are both really advocating for your communities that you let's say try to represent with your museums or museum networks really advocating also part of safeguarding the intangible cultural heritage but we also must admit that some of the intangible cultural heritage is not really like climate proof or climate friendly or however you want to phrase it so raise these issues with the communities that you work with and how does that go how do you manage to have that dialogue and what is the outcome intangible heritage in Romania and the people who still have these competencies is very friendly and friendly with nature because we're talking about the craftsmen craftsmen using traditional materials organic materials and so on so there is where we meet them together with the communities and with the visitors and we as a specialist in the museum we mediate and we communicate in a different way their resources and their knowledge their know-how and how those products can be used by them by the visitors in those days exemplifying them in our cultural programs in the museum but of course there are also issues with the problems with a lot of for example we have an UNESCO site in Romania it's Horazu, south part of Romania ceramics but a lot of ceramics came from China over there so there is an issues and it's very difficult to manage it because there is a huge interest by the businessmen to have this import of the ceramics in Horazu in that village to sell it and so on here we have to make another step to have the GI for these people who have this competence on intangible heritage craftsmen and so on to make the geographical indications to protect the products and to protect the area but it's not easy at all in this moment I would just say we don't have to raise it with communities they raise it with us these are communities that are experiencing it in a way so for us it's just making sure that we see the ways that it's impacting communities we do work with communities in Alaska that are facing climate change in really acute ways there's an indigenous community called Quinnahawk that is seeing erosion that is starting to reveal hundreds of year old cultural belongings so it's become an archeological site around the world have gone to see what is being found in the earth as these things get revealed and this will be happening not just in our place but many places around the globe I think and so instead of acting as a museum that would think these objects we should have them in our collection instead we think about what skill set does the museum have that could be offered to this community and be of value and so we send our collection staff to that location and help communities create a museum if you want to call it a museum a place there to house that knowledge and those objects and lend our skill set about how you can care for those objects into perpetuity and share and try to be a support system to those efforts rather than thinking we are the Bing institution that should take and hold so I have a very practical question to Julie you talked about this building that you saw from your window and decided that you need it and you got it and you were able to renovate it so my first question is where did you get money for the renovation project and my second and more important question is that were you able to use arguments that like when you I guess you applied money for that and I was thinking were you able to use some arguments that were related to the climate change or I don't know local communal democracy or something when you applied money and what if so what were the best arguments in your opinion yeah we could talk at lunch too I mean I'm a great believer that the funding universe should follow the best idea so I think often I go to funders and say I don't actually know what the outcomes are which is something I think in a way we need to be better at that if we bring people together we know that that outcome will be something transformative but are we going to pre-define that I think that's really problematic so there was a local foundation that helped fund the renovation of that building it was a humble renovation we just wanted the building to be usable and then we also received a public art challenge from Bloomberg philanthropies to use the building and to work with the creative community to think about how we can transform cities but yes climate change and what we call sustainable communities were at the center of the narrative from the beginning and we really wanted to think about can we take all of these conversations that are really stuck in our community and just by changing the place and the space and the ways we talk to each other can we actually see change and I think we called Seed Lab for a reason I think we've seeded some change-making conversations there Hi Julie, my name is Hannah I'm from Manchester Museum in the UK and I wanted to hear about Seed Lab because we're also developing a co-working hub in the top floor of our museum which is inviting community in with a real focus on environmental action and social justice so I guess I'd also love to follow up with you and find out more about the process because we're going through a lot of learning but I wondered if you have any reflections so far on how that has informed your own working practices within the museum having that kind of interdisciplinary cross-sector type approach I mean I will say that I think we've had to learn a whole new skill set and the way we define our jobs and the skill sets for those jobs is radically different than we may have defined them ten years ago so we're really looking for those soft skill sets of peoples that know how to work and listen with people that can really co-create and it takes a lot of time and a lot of patience and a much different skill set than the linear skill set we often know as museum workers so I think maybe it's an overused phrase but it's really a lot of unlearning to figure out what does it mean to deeply listen to the needs of community how do you bring people together in a way that doesn't feel prescriptive to those communities about us imposing ideas on them we really had to learn that one we have a lot of ideas and we're pretty much excited about all of them and we really had to learn to just stop and think about how we can be better facilitators and that can lead to doing and making and all those things that we love but that really that's the last skill set that we use so we have a landscape designer on our staff who does really transformative community work because he was trained in listening the design field is really interesting and how they see the client so bringing in people from outside the museum field in a way has taught us that soft skill set that I think is going to be really important to all of our work going forward I actually have another little question for you are we radical enough what you're doing just what is possible right now or are you right at the edge are you pushing it enough if we are pushing it enough I'm sorry I'm thinking we just had this wonderful presentation by Kirsten and she was telling us to really reinvent our museums and so we have a tendency to stay in our comfort zone how can we get out of our comfort zone how can we ensure that we are radical enough one thing is that when people start saying you cannot do that if you haven't reached that are you then radical enough I think we are not radical enough but I think it's our imagination that we have to let free it's not other people standing in front of us but we don't really always know the way so how to go there and I was thinking about this Klee Mike's exhibition for more than 10 years ago it was really a it was pretty radical to put the whole exhibition all with fill it with water and do this kind of but it's also a lot of with exhibitions it's about timeliness and today it wouldn't have said so much it would have been radical for what in a way but we have to take it more into action and try to provide also ways for people to go on with these things and provide maybe not we don't have that many solutions and answers but also at least give like ideas of how you can handle water so that responsibly in a way and so I think our work should be about imagination we should we're entitled to imagine the future also do you think you're radical enough not enough we still have things to do and we will do that because when the community will assume the museum doesn't assume the heritage assume the directions of the museum so then when the community is strong the museum is strong then the decision makers should listen carefully to us because you know a lot of power is in their hand because we can do things a lot of things but not so many if they don't listen to us because when they say something we have to influence them we have to make people understand ok this is the proper direction to do that the community should assume the museum and to understand that that museum and the heritage is their legacy what to do with this legacy legacy is not just the objects it was happens in the back of the objects in the story what story should we tell for the future then we are strong but we have to do more of course it's not enough that's the question over here yes I'm Lena Hannula and I'm a friend of her and she's from Alaska do you know her I do yes and so she has been collaborating with me a little and I've also seen those things you have done you know for the climate change those books very beautiful aesthetic and informative but then there were also these small things you know concrete things like those sticks when you go and eat somewhere you can have your own spoon and knife in a nice little parcel and I was thinking about museum pedagogy and pedagogy at all how you talk to children you can't take very big areas you have to start from the beginning so I would like to hear a little bit about this very logical approach for small children how you have started to do not necessarily to frighten but you know or scare but to support what would you like to start first to tell about climate change I guess I'll say the same thing which is that we learn from them I mean they know how to have this conversation long before we probably think they do we have teen climate change communicators so we work with teens a lot and they create projects with us and with the community for younger children if we bring them into an art gallery and we show them a painting of a glacier and the educators ask how do you think this has changed over the years or we talk about indigenous land they do know those answers we learn from them I was talking to a former museum professional who's now in Switzerland the other day and he said that we need to change the way we feel to children when they come into our institutions that they can feel really restrictive and we give them a lot of don'ts and that he tells a story of a child that went into a museum and then asked the question why was so everybody so unhappy there so I think how do we maybe not talk about climate change are we going to care for each other museums are amazing places to start to build a new empathy and a new kind of connection I think that's our pedagogy going forward we write climate change curriculum for our school districts we write art curriculum for our school districts and we really try to work in informal education but to me it just really comes back to the how are we humans with each other and if we could start there so there's a question here yes I'm interested about impact my name is Marie Wiekholm I'm also here from Finland and I would like to know do you have some kind of measurements so how do you know that we are doing the right things how do we know that our actions really affect to people's mind and awareness and their actions should we start over here I think the answer is in what we receive from the public and also if I'm speaking about our museum which is an ethnographical open-air museum you know I thinking on to the past you know how they use the materials to build the house they use wood they cut the wood in the proper period they use all the elements from the wood they didn't throw anything how they use the land for agriculture to survive to have the food so I think we have those answers because to the other answers I don't have any competencies to tell it but I know that 200 years ago or when they start to make these measurements you know, metrological measurements you know the heating of the planet wasn't so tough and I remember I'm only 40 years old what I remember when I had 14 years or 10 years old I had a lot of snow in my region now I don't have any more snow in my region in the mountains region so the answers is in the past the past, the heritage and everything that we receive from the past can be a solution for the future if we are able to find it and to look to find it not just to find it, to look very carefully we have the answers the heritage and the museums can have a lot of answers this is my opinion yeah, I think it's to measure the long-term impact of a museum visit I think there hasn't been even that many tries and it's hard to distinguish from a visit what is about the exhibition and what is about the company that was there and so forth so we don't really know but we do this visitors studies four times a year and of course according to like if we have special exhibitions we ask of them but that's a very short term short term answer personally I really got the feeling that that my work matters in a way when I worked with an exhibition on mental health 10 years ago and I still get emails about it how it affected people and also the exhibition is now in the US circulating there so there was one museum who after having hosted it changed their whole strategy to involve mental health in their museum strategy and mental well-being so then I felt that we really make a difference or we have the power to make a difference beautiful I guess I'll just say museum metrics are broken and need to be reinvented they're very transactional ideas of success who comes in your door and whatever those things are not impact so I think those are conversations we need to have with the whole ecosystem that makes up museums for us we quit thinking that it was all about what difference are we making but how can we support a broader effort around climate change and communities so we started thinking about how can we create metrics for our community to measure how we're thinking differently about climate change are we meeting each other in different spaces are we connecting in different ways so we started working with some evaluators to think about how we could again sort of lend a skill to think about how do you evaluate impact on a much broader scale rather than having to prove our own worth as a museum Yes please. Hi, I'm Salana Sarkola from the National Museum of Finland and we have been discussing about here being radical enough and I would like to know if you didn't have any restrictions in your museum what would you do to tackle this issue and bring it to the audience in the most effective way so you don't have to think about finances or anyone giving you money just like using imagination I think I'd quit the exhibitions where we build the house and then take it down three months later that kind of pace of building and making I think could be put to better use in terms of if we have those buildings as our assets they're amazing community spaces and sometimes I think oh if I left the museum and did climate work somewhere else I think I'd crave the museum like it's an amazing platform in a vehicle or it should be and so if we can radicalize the museum or rethink our work these are incredible set of tools for reaching people it has trust it has people working within it that care it has a community that will come and seek each other out in these spaces so I think all of the assets are there to be radical and so I think we have to think about what structures can we remove or rethink to allow us to actually achieve those radical goals sometimes I have to remind myself that if I'm too radical or my pace is too radical it doesn't really do any good if I'm just barreling out front like you do need to have those conversations how to bring people along together like how do we do this together we're not our own engine we're part of a part of a whole ecosystem that needs to move forward together yeah not so much time to think about this answer but maybe it would be an exhibition free for everybody where you would first be in the plus four degrees scenario and leave that for a while together with people or you would maybe see your grandchildren living there and then you would have this space where you leave the future in a sustainable way according to indigenous knowledge and that kind of something from that I didn't know if I understand the questions I don't know if I understand the questions but if I don't ask for properly then you have to translate me the questions okay so I'm I have a great team in the museum and sometimes they have to choose not me because it's not good for the institution sometimes only me to choose so they choose yeah was that okay we have to finish up we might have I just have one last thing for each of you because I believe in regenerative actions so if you could just mention one thing each that has inspired you or sort of made your brain go pop to share with the audience there is a mention today about the land being the museum and I was inspired by that the land being the museum like what if I think it was Kirsten what if the indigenous land was the museum itself and well I'm really inspired about how as I already said also how you work with your communities in both places I feel the vibe really I really feel the vibe so that is most important things to feel when you feel you transmit and I feel it from both of you well thank you so much it was very lovely having you here and I'm sure that if you have more questions these people are very approachable thank you everyone