Summer Institute for Changemakers
Are you ready to build your practice and skills as an agent of change?
Hey Changemakers!
Last week, I told you about a new Summer Institute for Changemakers that I am launching this July and August.
I want to thank everyone who filled out the survey that I shared this past week. Thanks to your feedback, I am now ready to officially share all the details and open up registration!
2022 Summer Institute for Changemakers
Change is a constant – yet how do we as professionals, leaders, staff, and students learn to not just respond to this change, but become shapers of it? How might we see ourselves as strong advocates for positive change within our organizations, especially with regards to advancing equity, inclusion, and accessibility in our work?
The 2022 Summer Institute for Changemakers is a 3-week experience where we will dive deeper into key aspects of transformation and change.
During a series of three interactive, discussion-based online workshops, we are going to examine what it means to be a more human-centered organization. We will identify key changes we can make in our organizations, challenge some “business as usual” assumptions, and develop strategies we can enact right away to become agents of change within our own work and beyond.
Each workshop in this Institute will be about 2 hours long and hosted through Zoom. This is going to be limited to a small group, so this time includes a lot of discussion, reflection, sharing, and asking questions that are immediately relevant to each participant’s change practice and the barriers they might be facing.
The workshops will include individual reflection, small group breakout rooms, and large group discussions with exercises designed to:
reflect on our relationship with change
build empathy within our institutions
prioritize the human connections within our work
grow our support network to catalyze collective action.
Your registration also includes:
membership in a private Substack group created specifically for the Institute only
additional opportunities to connect with others in the group to share challenges, successes, and burning questions
reflection prompts, practical tools, and ongoing resources to support your change practice.
Institute Dates and Times:
Tuesday, 7/19, 10:30 am-12:30 pm Eastern (7:30-9:30 am Pacific)
Tuesday, 7/26, 10:30 am-12:30 pm Eastern (7:30-9:30 am Pacific)
Tuesday, 8/2, 10:30 am-12:30 pm Eastern (7:30-9:30 am Pacific)
You'll receive a Zoom link and follow up details shortly after you sign up. Registration will be capped at about 15 participants, so we can focus on getting to know each other, learn from each other, and build a community of changemakers that we can stay connected with after the summer ends.
Finally, please don’t hesitate to contact me at murawski27@gmail.com if you have any questions!
Looking Beyond Summer and a Word About Pricing
I received a few inquiries in the survey about whether I would offer this Institute again another time of year such as this fall. I can’t say anything for certain, but that is certainly my goal.
If and when I do, the Institute will likely build on the foundations that we will develop together as a community in the first Institute this summer.
And with this in mind, I also want to say a little bit about why the Institute is priced the way it is this summer. It’s hard for those of us who work in nonprofits to talk about money, but I think, as changemakers, this is part of the conversation we need to be having, too – especially after so many museum professionals have exited their full-time roles within institutions to pursue independent work.
When I came up with the price for this first Institute, I wanted to keep the cost as reasonable as possible.
The registration fee you do pay covers all kinds of things that are part of the labor of work that we do. Independent workers like myself have to pay for their own office spaces, printers, Zoom registration, online subscriptions, and other types of administrative support and materials that those in institutions may often take for granted. We also pay for our own health insurance and do not have benefits like sick leave or paid vacation hours. And, of course, when you pay for anything with a consultant, you are also paying for all the experience, expertise, time, and work they put in.
Finally, if you can’t make it to the Institute this summer but want to find another way to work with me, don’t hesitate to reach out. My work includes one-on-one change mentorship and coaching, as well as facilitating workshops with staff, volunteers, and leadership teams in museums, professional associations, university programs, and many types of organizations.
I also work with my partner Bryna Campbell on a variety of projects at the intersection of art, nature, and place through Super Nature Adventures (and full disclosure, she helps me a lot with Agents of Change, too). We recently updated our list of services (link), which include school partnerships and training for volunteer programs. To get a better sense of some of the kinds of things we can do, check out one of our most recent projects with Monument Lab, a Museum Field Trip Guide (more on this in a future post, for sure).
Here is the link to the Summer Institute for Changemakers registration. Spaces are limited, so I encourage you to register soon if you are interested.
This work of transformation requires that we build community, and work together in community to support each other. That’s why we need to come together as a collective of changemakers to bring focus and intention to making change happen.
We all have a role in solving our current crises because I believe that we absolutely can transform museums and nonprofits. We can have hope for a better future and begin building that future right now. It is up to us to choose to step up, be a solution to the problems we’re experiencing, and make this change happen together.