Why are the insights and experiences of youth critical to the success of the Courage Museum?
Lauren Trout, Senior Program Associate, WestEd:
In designing educational programming for the Courage Museum, in examining this kind of larger ecosystem of museum experiences and educational programming in museums, and doing research and landscape scans, and thinking about, you know, what is, not only what is innovative, but what actually sets up these conditions for courage. That it’s not just something that’s intellectualized through the museum, but experiential. We knew that we just needed to bring in young people’s voice and perspective as well as educators, right? That in thinking about these complex ideas that the museum is offering around courage and what it means to envision a world without violence, we knew as an educational programming team that we were gonna need to design an experience and resources and opportunities that preceded the museum experience, included and was embedded in the museum experience, and extended the museum experience.
This museum experience starts long before they step into the Presidio, right? It’s in classrooms, it’s in curriculum, it’s in conversations, it’s in relationships. So, how do we support people coming to that work and not having it be just one more thing for them to do? And so, in thinking about that, bringing in young people’s perspective, not just through feedback, but through different elements of like co-design and constructivist pedagogy, we have really been thinking about what is it that young people are asking for? What is it that’s important to them? And having their perspective and voice infused into those conversations for us has been really critical.