Putting E Pluribus Unum into Practice: Collaboration in the Age of Coronavirus
By Made By Us Program Manager, Caroline Klibanoff
To power a better tomorrow, it’s never been more important to harness lessons from the past. History has been unevenly written and unevenly shared, but even if we never arrive at a singular “truth” or telling of our story, it is our aim to do better, to make the tent bigger, to understand a more multifaceted perspective. Made By Us is a beacon, a collective effort and guiding force that provides historical context and perspective to inspire action. We use our Medium presence as a forum for exposing more of our process, our perspectives, and the people doing the day-to-day work behind our projects.
I grew up in a newspaper household, my father a lifelong print journalist. As a “digital native,” I had the unsettling experience of delighting in the wonders of the web, instant messaging, Geocities, AOL Kids — against a backdrop of tense conversations around “buyouts” and “restructuring,” the threat of the Internet looming over my family’s livelihood. By the time 2008 came, it was a perfect storm: the financial crisis only exacerbated the struggles newspapers already faced to adopt digital formats, to keep subscribers, to attract enough advertising money or find other profit models.
The financial crisis marked the end of the golden age of newspapers. But from my perspective as a young person witnessing it, newspapers had already spent years battling the tech industry well before the market crashed. The press and the Web should have entered the 21st century together, prepared to re-invent the “fourth estate.” Instead, newspapers prioritized print, believing that if you put the news online right away, no one would subscribe to the paper (for museum people who work in online collections, this may ring a bell). Perhaps they thought the trust and loyalty they had built up with their audiences for decades would prevail. (Again…museum folks nodding).
But newspapers finally had to face the choice that had always awaited them: evolve or perish.
In the last several months, as I talk to people at museums and history organizations — like so many of our great Made By Us partners — I hear similar concerns about the future. Even before the spread of a global pandemic brought these issues into stark relief, some museums were already asking:
How will we survive financially?
How can we “go digital” with our limited resources?
What can we do to reach and engage more young people?
What if trying new things disappoints our current visitors?
Who will care about our work enough to advocate for us?
My heart goes out to these institutions in the midst of COVID-19, because we’re not prepared for this — no one is. And yet we are called to serve in the moment, to provide crucial access to the comforts and examples of history, as we live through a historical moment ourselves. Just as museums began to tackle issues like digital fluency, sustainable revenue sources and broader visitor engagement, COVID-19 hit, leaving us no choice but to react and evolve.
In the wake of the pandemic, museum workers and leaders stepped up to share information and ideas through Zoom calls, crowdsourced spreadsheets, and webinars with thousands of attendees. We have started to see not only an embrace of collaboration but a reliance on it. The only way forward is to look out for each other, to share what we can, and to lead with humility, expecting that we won’t always have the answers.
The nine leading history organizations who teamed up to develop Made By Us long recognized that historical context, delivered via the right medium, is essential to informed, vibrant civil discourse. But they also saw that no single museum alone could figure out the future. It is not so easy for a historical society to go digital-first practically overnight, let alone use the latest platforms and tools. It is not a simple thing for a museum to respond to events in the news, let alone meet the broad and varied needs of the public during a true crisis. Who has the time to test out new interactive approaches, nail every trend on social media, think about the needs of all the visitors you’re not getting, and somehow find funding for all of the above — while maintaining regular operations and standards?
Not one of us can do it all. But all of us, working together, can add capacity and flexibility to the whole.
I have been a squeaky wheel for digital innovation in cultural heritage organizations, not because I love the Internet so much (although I do), but because of what the digital sphere represents to me: its expansiveness, its additive nature. There is always MORE to explore. It can connect disparate parts of our universe together with a single click. There is always space for more voices. There is always room for “AND.”
When I was brought on as the program manager for Made By Us, I immediately saw what a collaboration of this scale could do, to make room for “AND.” I had worked in the civic engagement sector, where organizations sought to become more tech-savvy, more participatory and more youth-focused. In other words, many of the same goals shared by museums today. By embracing collaboration across institutions and disciplines, the civic engagement sector was able to spin up more ideas, more quickly, to be responsive, to use digital tools effectively, and to reach and engage younger generations. They pulled in contributions from academic research, media, dialogue and community groups, politics, advocacy organizations and college campuses, resulting in more effective work. Even when they got it wrong, they were able to fail fast, learn and evolve, thanks to the power of many hands.
Unlike museums and newspapers, most of these organizations didn’t have the benefit — or the burden — of being storied institutions with centuries of history and practices. How might history institutions hold on to our credibility and public trust, AND add more nimbleness? It’s not just about a “mindset” of abundance, as is often referenced; it’s putting in the work to create that abundance, which comes from collaboration. It comes from letting others in, from sharing what we know, from using our imagination, insisting on bolstering the “AND.”
This is the work we do through Made By Us. By bringing history and civics organizations together to work together on the challenges of our time, we build capacity across the field. Instead of institutions working in isolation, vulnerable to being a single point of failure, we strengthen the ties between institutions and the public, building resilience, a fortified body prepared to respond with more agility to changing demands.
By re-orienting to focus on the needs of young people — over and above the needs of donors and curators and museum directors — we ensure that we are always useful to the people we serve. We listen and evolve to meet their needs, a focus that frees us from “how it’s always been done.” We’re a bridge, bringing history from glass cases and textbooks to bar stools, backyards and the ballot. Not in competition with traditional history museums — with and through those institutions.
For inspiration, and as an unlikely counterpoint to print journalism, we might look at libraries. If libraries had clung to their stated purpose as book lenders and information databases, they would have faded into obscurity amid the rise of Google and Wikipedia, not to mention fast and cheap online booksellers. Instead, we’ve seen libraries pivot into community centers and resource hubs, serving the immediate (and changing!) needs of people online and in-person. Today, Millennials are most likely to use public libraries, and it’s all because libraries meet the real needs of the real public.
Made By Us has been in the works for several years, and in total transparency, we had a perfectly orchestrated project launch slated to go live March 30. I can’t think of anything that better demonstrates our values than this: given recent events, we’re letting go of the plan and pivoting to how we can serve now.
We have no desire to be precious about how “it should have been.” We respond to real needs. These are unprecedented times, so we must meet them with a different approach. We’re holding off on our first (super cool, interactive, still-coming-soon!) project for a few weeks because of the needs we see all around us, from institutions and the public, and instead we’re joining the conversation on social media and Medium. We’re growing our coalition and spinning up new ideas and we want to hear from you.
Like our nation’s motto, e pluribus unum — out of many, one — Made By Us demonstrates the power of collective effort. We aim to be a friendly guide in a complex world, facilitating connections among those who want to shape the future for the better and embrace history as a catalyst. Sometimes, we act as a switchboard operator, listening and connecting the public to the institutions that want to serve them. Sometimes, we’re the light that says someone’s home, thinking about this stuff — and why don’t you come on in and talk about it?
We don’t claim to have all of the answers, but we invite you to come be a part of creating them.
Get in touch here, at our website, or on social media.
