BHS Minds the Gap

The Brooklyn Historical Society had a problem. It was struggling to find relevant ways to support and engage its surrounding neighborhood and wider city community. As a way to address its relevancy issue, it began to offer a variety of public programming in the evening as a way to attract a wider audience. The strategy worked! The BHS was successfully reinvented. However, there was still one specific demographic that was missing: families.

Enter DUMBO. The addition of this secondary BHS location offered the opportunity to specifically address the need of family entertainment that was lacking from the BHS Pierrepont location. With its various interactive exhibitions, kid-friendly informational displays and encouragement of “play” learning, DUMBO successfully filled the gap of the previously underserved family demographic.

Museums and institutions such as BHS that continually ask themselves what they can do to better serve their communities and analyze what is missing from their current programming allow themselves the agility to adapt to changing needs. As a result, they can efficiently recognize and fill whatever gaps they find within their audience engagement and programming in order to provide improved services to the community and broader public.

-Danielle