Baltimore Street Museum Workshop with Michael Burns

For museum and cultural heritage professionals, artists, storytellers, and community culture-keepers of all kinds:

Join us for a collaborative project and grant-planning workshop on Friday December 1 from 2-5pm at The Peale, 225 Holliday St. in downtown Baltimore, catty -cornered to City Hall. We’d like to join forces with local area museums neighborhood organizations artists and creators to develop connected cultural experiences that will bring visitors to Baltimore’s cultural attractions and neighborhoods, in particular during the Alliance of American Museums (AAM) and Association of African American Museums (AAAM) conferences in May and August 2024. 

The working title for this initiative is “Baltimore Street Museum” because we aim to create cultural experiences beyond institutional walls in the public spaces that connect our communities our stories and our collections. The purpose of this workshop is to generate some ideas for cultural engagement projects that we can activate together in public spaces around the city. At the same time we will forge alliances and partnerships among museums neighborhood groups and individual artists of all sorts to bring our project ideas to fruition in 2024. 

The workshop will be led by Michael Burns (pictured above, center) our partner at Quatrefoil Associates and founder of the Omnimuseum Project. Michael helped The Peale when we first started up again in 2017 providing tools and tactics for gathering and sharing Baltimore stories beyond our walls. Quatrefoil is now using The Peale as a Lab for next-gen museum experience and exhibit design research and development. 

As you may know the Baltimore National Heritage Area (BNHA) is currently offering grants of up to $5000 for Neighborhood Placemaking activities. BNHA’s mission is to promote cultural heritage tourism in Baltimore so we think that many of the ideas that will come from our workshop will align perfectly with their grant criteria. I imagine each of our organizations will apply for their own grant award but that our projects will also connect – strengthening all of our proposals and creating greater impact together.

The agenda for the Dec. 1 workshop will include:

1. Introductions – please be prepared introduce yourself your organization or work and your stories/collections
2. Introducing the Street Museum – concept tools and tactics with Michael Burns 
3. BNHA Neighborhood Placemaking Grant – info and Q&A with BNHA staff
4. Collaborative brainstorming to generate Street Museum project ideas
5. Project team formation – find partners for your project and grant application
6. Scheduling next steps
7. Grant-writing support Dec 1-15
8. February and April 2024 follow-up meetings
9. Target Street Museum installation dates