I interviewed Mike Murawski from the artmuseumteaching.net which was great, he was really interesting and full of good ideas of people to connect with. He also has a tween aged child (a son) and so was very interested in the fact I was beginning to focus in this age range. What I actually found most helpful is that fact that he was reassuring about there were people working in big institutions who were fighting the good fight as it were. He said it was easy to get jaded and feel like you’re not getting anywhere but in fact it was important to remember that people were trying to change big systems from within and that those changes do occur incrementally.
He said that “small is big” with regard to his work not only with larger art institutions but also with his own decision to step away from them himself and start the artmuseumteaching network and has own company that focuses in play and pedagogy for outdoor learning with kids (He lives in Oregon so why wouldn’t you do this!!?)
He gave me some good contacts that I will follow up on and was really nice and reassuring to talk to. I think I need to hear this narrative ore in fact. I think I can easily get caught up in the idea that everything is wrong and that there is no-one out there, in the context of big institutions etc, wanting to make change because you often see so little of it on the outside, it’s important to remember that that stuff is happening on the inside and just how hard that actually is to achieve.
I also was reminded of this in another context when having conversations with some of my group for the speaker debates project. I spend a lot of time thinking about the gaps in our education system and the things I feel we aren’t taught, especially in the context of critical thinking or some personal development. Chatting to the people in my group who were raised in China and Thailand was wonderfully eyeopening, they were so passionate about how the to them the UK had strong culture of questioning things, of challenging things and of freedom of speech. It’s really important to remember this, to not get caught up in my own personal feelings and look at the broader view, not forgetting my privilege in this situation and to remember how small is big.