Are you interested in engaging your local community to combat climate change? We’ve heard from our members that many institutions are looking to start or deepen their involvement in co-creating solutions to climate change and other environmental issues. In response to this growing priority across the field, our most recent additions to the Community Science Resource Library are focused on inspiring and supporting collaborative work on planetary health and climate change. This focus was inspired, in part, by another of ASTC’s major initiatives – Seeding Action. Seeding Action supports science centers, museums, and public engagement networks in cultivating a culture of hope and action to improve planetary health. Any organization committed to cultivating positive planetary health is invited to join the Seeding Action network.
New Community Science Resources
Inspiring Stories of Action at Science Centers
Climate & Urban Systems Partnership (CUSP)
The CUSP Project brought together a range of educators and experts to bring high-quality climate change education to residents of Philadelphia. The Franklin Institute supported network partners with mini-grant funds, ultimately supporting 38 collaborative projects. This workbook provides overviews of each project, grouped by theme: Health, Art, Urban Sustainability, Youth Education, Train-the-Trainer, and Digital Media.
In 2020, the Science Museum of Virginia partnered with Groundwork RVA to launch a community science partnership to engage teens in studying local air quality. This case study synthesizes findings from interviews with people involved in the project and provides some generalizable recommendations for other science centers looking to enter community partnerships.
Tools to Support Climate Action
This network is built around the philosophy that “to heal the planet, we have to collectively heal ourselves.” On their website, you can find a range of tools, programs, and support to help manage the emotional impacts of climate change. The Climate Emotions Wheel is a great place to start for anyone who is looking to name and validate the feelings that people have in relation to climate issues.
Tools for Equitable Climate Resilience
This toolkit from The River Network is a step-by-step guide on how to effectively engage with community members to understand climate impacts and develop resilience strategies. The toolkit focuses on methods for collecting action-oriented data and is ideal for museum practitioners who are new to research.
Yale Program on Climate Change Communication
This is a rich resource based on scientific research into public climate change knowledge, attitudes, policy preferences, and behaviors. The Climate Opinion Maps provide data on these public opinions down to the county level, which can be used to help inform outreach and education activities. They also provide a range of tools and resources to help you and your visitors learn more about climate change and American’s understanding and opinions of related issues.
Academic Articles on Museum-Community Partnerships for Planetary Health
Citizen Science, Civics, and Resilient Communities
This article discusses a framework that combined participatory data collection with public deliberation to establish a sustained practice of public engagement on climate change. The article provides evaluation results from the project that informed the framework and advice for how these findings can be applied to work at other science centers.
A “Watershed” Model for Community Engagement in Museums
This article explores the complexities of working relationships between museums and community organizations using the analogy of a watershed. This article can be used to examine and prepare for some of the challenges inherent in these relationships and includes critical questions to consider about power imbalances within and external to the museum.
Coming up: Working ethically with data
Our next round of community science resources, coming this fall, will focus on ethical data collection, management, and communication. This topic is important to any community science projects that gather data, including those that are only gathering it for evaluation purposes. The way that data is handled in these collaborative projects can be a major component of making – or breaking – community trust in your project and institution.
If you’d like to stay informed about the Community Science Initiative, you can sign up for our mailing list, and join our next Community Science Clinic to meet and discuss with like-minded professionals working on Community Science projects around the world.