Identifying the Strengths of a Localized Approach to Community Climate Resilience at the Science Museum of Virginia
Client: Science Museum of Virginia | Location: Richmond, VA | Funding: NOAA
We evaluated the impact of the Science Museum of Virginia’s new NOAA-funded climate resiliency public forums and explored the community partnerships that were essential to shaping and carrying out the project.
OVERVIEW
We partnered with the Science Museum of Virginia to evaluate its three-year NOAA-funded initiative to develop climate resiliency public forums in partnership with community organizations across Richmond, Virginia. The goal of the public forums was to support participants in understanding how and why climate change is affecting their communities, and the strategies that exist to help their communities become more resilient to climate change.
This initiative was inspired by similar public forums developed by the Museum of Science, Boston, which used fictionalized towns and people to illustrate climate resiliency strategies and decision-making processes. Building on this idea, the Science Museum of Virginia wanted to experiment with creating a program that featured local people and places in Richmond to see if this resonated with participants (particularly residents of historically underserved Richmond communities, who are on the frontlines of climate change threats facing Richmond).
APPROACH
We designed an evaluation that included three phases:
A Social Impact Framework to clearly articulate the social problem the project sought to address and its goals for participants and community partners
A formative evaluation of the public forums, using pre- and post-forum surveys to understand participants’ experiences and shifts in perspectives, and to identify ways to strengthen future forums
A summative evaluation exploring the significant role of community partnerships to the project and measuring the overall impact of the project on participants and community partners
CLIENT TAKEAWAYS
The social problem and outcomes defined in the Social Impact Framework in the first year of the project served as both a planning tool for the forums and a framework for the formative and summative evaluations. The formative evaluation found that participants appreciated the local framing of climate resilience strategies in the forums and opportunities for discussion and debate with other community members. And, significantly, the forum shifted participants’ perspectives about local leaders devoting resources toward addressing climate threats in their communities. Kera also identified some opportunities where the museum could better support participants, such as clarifying instructions in the forum’s main activity and helping participants commit to next steps toward local climate action.
The summative evaluation focused on both participants’ experiences in the forum as well as community organizations’ experiences partnering with the Science Museum of Virginia and one another on the project. We found that the forums supported participants in outcomes related to knowledge and awareness around climate resiliency, and could be strengthened by offering concrete tools that help move participants to action–an ambitious and challenging goal to reach for any project. Regarding the partnerships with community organizations, we found that intentionality, moments for trust-building, strong project management, and upfront funding to partners strengthened the relationships between the Science Museum and community partners. As with any time-limited project, the challenge for the Science Museum of Virginia will be sustaining and nurturing the relationships it has built with community partners moving forward.