Families and History: Past Times, Present Places, and Imagining the Future

FAIN: GE-50248-10

Chicago History Museum (Chicago, IL 60614-6038)
D. Lynn McRainey (Project Director: August 2009 to May 2011)

Planning to develop a museum-wide framework for family learning about Chicago and urban history, incorporating exhibitions, programming, and digital products.

To identify the methodologies and build a practice that creates meaningful and sustained relationships with family audiences, Chicago History Museum (CHM) proposes Families and History: Past Times, Present Places, and Imagining the Future, a planning project that will draw on a national panel of humanities scholars and programming experts, colleagues at local cultural organizations, and an experienced audience researcher, to work closely with museum staff in developing a model "whole-museum" approach to family learning experiences, engaging audiences on-site at the museum, in their homes, and throughout the city by means of programming, exhibitions, digital products, messaging, and customer service. Three broad but interrelated dynamic relationships serve as humanities themes informing this exploration: place and identity; innovation and imagination; and time and narrative.