Museum Education
BCMA’s Brain offers a collection of learning resources suitable for museums of all shapes and sizes. Help keep our collective Brain active and growing by sharing your ideas for new resources and innovative practices here.
NEW Virtual Event Resources Toolkit
In Summer 2020, the BCMA and Heritage BC embarked on the joint research project “Future Perfect: Developing Effective Models for Digital, Physical, and Blended Conferences” funded by Canada Council for the Arts Digital Strategy Fund.
Through Future Perfect, we sought to create a comprehensive framework for a new breed of digital conferences which are more accessible, more affordable, and minimize the digital divide that impedes communities with less access to high-speed internet from participating fully online. This new framework can be adopted by other disciplines, such as performing and visual arts organizations that present and share knowledge through conferences, and other events. This project will assess existing online collaboration tools, video conferencing and cloud-based information repositories and how they could be integrated or used to deliver an excellent equivalent conference experience. We will also gather information and input on what makes digital engagement and participating worthwhile for speakers and participants. And we will explore behavioural dimensions of the use of digital tools for work during this pandemic to learn what the persistent behaviours might be beyond the present crisis.
The project is ongoing but we will update this toolkit as resources and findings from our research become available.
Our sincere thanks to our partners at Heritage BC and our wonderful team of consultants Inga Petri (Strategic Moves), Lynn Feasey (Points North Creative) and Jason Guille (Stream of Consciousness).
Tools available for download:
Fundamentals of Great Online Conferences
Online Conferences Thrive on Attendees’ Participation
Financial Considerations: Cost Drivers and Revenue Streams
Accessibility and Inclusion: Creating Better Conference Experiences for More People
Participants on Awesome Online Experiences
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts 
Museum Education Essentials
Design for Guidance and Learners guidelines
Learning with Objects: How to create object-based activities at your museum – includes four ready-to-go activity plans (BCMA Tool, 2019)
Toolbox for Museum School Programs (Nova Scotia Museums Association, 2016)
Innovate! Case studies from the field
Teaching History in 100 objects (The British Museum)
For further reading
Excellence in Practice: Museum Education Principles and Standards (American Alliance of Museums, 2005)
Building the Future of Education: Museums and the Learning Ecosystem (Center for the Future of Museums, 2014)
Museum Education Roundtable website (includes links to Journal of Museum Education)