Alliance Road Trip Will Gather Stories from Museums and Schools in Southeast

Posted on Jan 5, 2017

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 5, 2017

Photo: Sage Morgan-Hubbard — Sage Morgan-Hubbard

ARLINGTON, VA–New, innovative, and even disruptive models for museum-school partnerships are the object of a 13-day, 10-city road trip by two fellows from the Center for the Future of Museums, an initiative of the American Alliance of Museums (AAM). Starting January 7, AAM’s Sage Morgan-Hubbard and Nicole Ivy will embark on a tour by van of the southeastern United States, visiting more than 20 museums and several schools in seven states to collect stories and examples of museums that play a starring role in their communities’ PreK-12 education programs.

“One of the best things about museums is the in-person experience,” said Morgan-Hubbard, who joined AAM in August 2016 as the Ford W. Bell Fellow for Museums & P-12 Education. “There is no replicating the face-to-face interaction. And when it comes to education that really engages our young people and transforms lives, that’s something you need to witness firsthand, too.”

The southeast road trip is the first of several planned by Morgan-Hubbard over the coming months, all of which will focus on museum-school partnerships and programs. Ivy, a Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow and Museum Futurist, will join the southeast trip to engage in discussions of educational inequalities and the future of work in the museum field.

“We have three main themes that we’re gathering stories on: innovation, education, and labor practices,” said Ivy. “We all hear a lot of sad statistics about the quality of public schools in the South. But it’s not that simple. For example, five of the Top Ten high schools in the United States are in the South, according to rankings published by US News & World Report for 2016. The South is not a monolith. Raleigh is not the same as Jackson is not the same as Charleston, etc.”

Planned stops on the road trip include Charlotte in North Carolina; Marion and Charleston, South Carolina; Atlanta, GA; Montgomery, Selma and Birmingham, Alabama; Memphis, TN; Jackson, MS; and New Orleans, LA.

Morgan-Hubbard and Ivy will chronicle their visits via photos, video, social media and Facebook Live. Follow their road trip on Twitter via #AAMRoadTrip and via their web page.

About the American Alliance of Museums

The American Alliance of Museums has been bringing museums together since 1906, helping to develop standards and best practices, gathering and sharing knowledge, and providing advocacy on issues of concern to the entire museum community. Representing more than 30,000 individual museum professionals and volunteers, institutions, and corporate partners serving the museum field, the Alliance stands for the broad scope of the museum community. For more information, visit www.aam-us.org.

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