Last spring, at the AAM annual meeting, the California Association of Museums enlisted CFM’s help in a marvelous project. To celebrate CAM’s 35th anniversary, we collaborated on a forecasting session to peer into the future of the Golden State, imagining what challenges the state’s museums and their communities may face in the next 35 years.

You can read a bit more about that forecasting session here. Suffice to say, it rocked, and we are looking forward to offering a similar session at the AAM annual meeting in Houston next spring (open to all attendees!) 

Meanwhile, my co-presenter, futurist Garry Golden of Oliver Kaizen, and I created a resource guide that builds on all the great ideas explored in the LA session. The result is Tomorrow in the Golden State: Museums and the Future of Calfiornia, a resource guide that presents the basics of forecasting, an overview of trends shaping California and a set of provocative scenarios to stimulate discussion. It presents resources (sample agenda, invitiation, worksheets) to help museums host their forecasting session, bringing in members of their communities. And it offers tips on integrating the resulting insights into institutional planning.

I hope you check it out—even though it is geared to California, the general framework is applicable to museums anywhere in the country. If you’d like CFM’s help presenting a forecasting session and creating a resource guide tailored to your state, region or community, drop me a line at futureofmuseums@aam-us.org. We want to bring futures studies to you…

And if you attend the WMA meeting in Portland next month, don’t miss the futurist pas de deux as CAM’s director, Celeste DeWald partners with me to present on the results of the California forecasting project. Wednesday, Oct. 20, at 2 p.m.—hope to see you there!

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