Saturday, October 4, 2025

Learning Format: Active Learning

How do you meet your community? Pop-up exhibits and programs at community sites are one way to take museum expertise and resources to the community, and develop sustainable long-term relationships with the community. Hear how museums are bringing people together at community watering holes to engage with curators, educators, exhibit planners, culture bearers, scientists and artists. With colleagues plan your own pop-up exhibit or interactive program.

Learning Format: Active Learning

The California Collections Resource Center at the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) houses the largest collection of California-focused art and artifacts in the state. We'll share the steps of recent internal partnership-based projects that have increased access to art, history, and natural science collections items for a wide range of people, including OMCA staff, researchers, Native American tribes, other institutions, and the general public.

Learning Format: Active Learning

Recent executive orders have changed the landscape of arts organizations. Funding sources, grant institutions, research and community representation have all been impacted. You - the audience - are the panel for this moderated discussion. Please come ready to share how your museum or organization is responding to policy changes, and addressing challenges we are all facing. This conversation will leverage the strength of the WMA community to build collective resilience for the communities we serve. 

Learning Format: Active Learning

Learning Format: Conversation

Through the summer of 2025, WMA members will convene virtually to share, discuss, debate and determine their approaches to America 250. Based on these rich virtual dialogues, the WMA Programs and Innovation Committee will provide key takeaways and materials created to continue the conversation through an engaging and interactive conference session building upon last year’s initial informational session.

Learning Format: Active Learning

This tool talk is nuts…and bolts! Whether a seasoned professional or new to the responsibility, we all find ourselves responding to the media at one time or another. Sharpen your skills for offering an engaging interview and learn to respond effectively in a crisis. This workshop will offer tools for presenting yourself as a professional spokesperson with the most exciting of messages while strategically responding to difficult or uncomfortable situations.  

Learning Format: Conversation

How can you help your exhibits deliver “more” for your visitors? We will explore case studies of how exhibits have been developed as platforms for both unfacilitated and facilitated learning opportunities. How do we turn neurology puzzles into a sensory brain bar? A story nook into a community conversation spot? A playful roleplay spot into a cultural heritage moment? We will then break into mediated roundtables with participants to explore exhibit/program scenarios suggested by attendees.

Learning Format: Conversation

You have conducted an inventory of your collections and now have a pile of objects with no identification, how to proceed? This roundtable will provide a time to discuss procedures to locate identities. Though each state has its own laws governing found in collections items, the processes and procedures of trying to locate an item’s identification can be similar. Let’s share ideas, struggles, and provide support for each other as we tackle this giant puzzle.

Learning Format: Active Learning

Working in museums and non-profits is often a labor of love. We do it because it matters – and often, we pour everything we have into that work. But what do you do for yourself? How do you refill your inner well of ideas, passion, and creativity? In this session, we’ll explore lots of ways to elevate your self-care practice by slowing down, breathing, writing, moving, and creating – even when it feels impossible.

Learning Format: Active Learning