matters to you that you wish mattered to
more people
maybe it’s your business maybe it’s a
political movement maybe it’s an art
form you love today I want to share with
you a bit of what I’ve learned about how
you can invite people who are outside
your circle into that thing that matters
most to you I run this museum the Museum
of Art and history in Santa Cruz we call
it the MA and today the MA is a thriving
cultural center for our community but
when I showed up as its new director six
years ago it was in trouble we did not
matter enough to enough people in our
community and that was causing two
really big problems the first was money
we didn’t have any the day I walked in
the door as a new director we had
$16,000 in the bank we had thirty six
thousand dollars in unpaid bills and
there was no magic philanthropist ready
to bail us out we were talking about
closing the doors of the museum at the
same time though we had an even bigger
problem and that was a problem of
relevance there were more people in
Santa Cruz County who knew that this
building used to be the county jail that
knew that it was now a museum and it had
been a museum at this point for 20 years
we had to find a way to matter more to
more people in our community we had to
make the museum relevant but how do you
do that we couldn’t just display
relevance by Fiat people choose for
themselves every day what we think is
relevant to us and what we think isn’t
what we’re going to attend to and what
we’re going to ignore how do we make
those decisions research shows we asked
ourselves two questions to decide if
something’s relevant how much meaning am
I going to get out of this experience
and how much effort is it going to take
for me to have that experience we ask
these questions every day how much
meaning will I get out of seeing that
art exhibit is it worth the effort of
figuring out when they’re open buying a
ticket finding a friend to come with me
how much meeting would I get out of
volunteering in my community is it worth
the effort to find the right place where
I really feel like I’m making a
difference how much meaning would I get
out of going into this bar would it be
fun and what would it take to get me in
the door at the
we knew that people were not walking
into our door they didn’t see the
meaning there and I’ve started thinking
about this not in terms of physical
doors but metaphorical ones this idea of
relevance as a key that unlocks meaning
if there if you think about that thing
that you love living inside a
metaphorical locked room for you
you know there’s value in there and you
have done the effort to get that key you
walk in again and again to the good
stuff inside but for an outsider they
don’t see the good stuff all they see is
a locked door and they have to decide is
there meaning for me on the other side
of that door is it worth the effort for
me to figure out how to get in or should
I just pass on by at the mall we knew
too many people were passing us by and
so we went about the work not of selling
people the door we already had but
working with outsiders to open new doors
to meaning in ways that worked for them
you don’t believe surf history should
live inside a building great let’s take
it to the beach for you art is a
celebration wonderful let’s celebrate as
we worked with more and more Outsiders
we learned what made art and history
meaningful for them and we learned that
the meaning inside our room wasn’t
really about art and history it was
about using art and history to build
community building bridges across our
differences and coming together opening
these new doors with Outsiders changed
our Museum in my first five years as
director we more than tripled our
attendance and we went from that $16,000
in the bank to 1.6 million dollars with
which we could extend our impact in our
community and we did it thanks to all
these outsiders all these people who
five years ago didn’t even know the
museum existed and are now coming in and
supporting what we do I’m not going to
suggest that bringing in these outsiders
was easy it isn’t I think we sometimes
have this fantasy that the way we’re
going to invite Outsiders into the
things we care about is just by opening
our existing doors wider we’ll start
with the insiders we have the experience
we have and we’ll just open that door
wider and more people will come in this
doesn’t work
because outsiders are the ones who are
choosing to pass by those doors you
already have in our experience growth
more it looks more like this and to
achieve this kind of growth we had to
take some perfectly nice walls of our
metaphorical and physical building and
turn them into construction sites
opening new doors to new people in new
ways now say most of our insiders most
of our purple circle people stayed but
they stayed as we were turning the place
that they loved into a construction site
opening new doors in ways that were
unfamiliar or even uncomfortable for
them let me give you an example this is
a flyer from the first ever pop-up
Museum in Santa Cruz County it was the
night before Valentine’s Day and the
theme was F my ex we invited people to
bring objects from failed relationships
to a bar put them out on tables hand
write their own labels for them boom
pop-up Museum I think you could probably
imagine looking at this flyer how for a
certain kind of person in Santa Cruz
this was a key to a door that they did
not know existed right they looked at
this flyer they said well I didn’t know
we had a museum in Santa Cruz this looks
cool I’m gonna come I think you can also
probably imagine some of our insiders
who were distressed by this flyer a
little marketing tip here I do not
recommend putting the F letter alone on
a poster but more seriously these
insiders said you know the irreverence
of this program the ephemerality of it
it runs counter to what I think a museum
is all about they were asking why did
you have to tear down that perfectly
nice wall and put a neon pink door over
there who is it for and the answer is it
was for outsiders who would find meaning
in this kind of cultural museum
experience differently than in a
traditional one and the new outsiders
who walked in weren’t just people who
were attracted by posters like this
there were people who saw the meaning
changing in the wake of this flyer gate
we had this guy who wrote in and he said
you know I’m closer to the stodgy
traditional museum supporter than to the
audience’s you’re currently trying to
reach but I strongly support your
efforts and outreach and attempts to
involve new communities he said because
of this outreach I finally became a
museum member last year there was no
reason for me to do so before because
the museum was doing nothing
this is so fascinating because here you
have a guy who’s saying I’m like an
insider but I walk past that insider
museum in fact I thought it was doing
nothing now he’s involved he donates
because he sees the meaning of what
we’re doing and bringing our community
together if you want to open new doors
to outsiders they’re going to be neon
pink they’re going to be uncomfortable
because relevance fundamentally is not
about you telling somebody what you’re
about it’s about you empathizing with
how it feels to be outside that door
trying to figure out if it’s for you
remember this bar my guess is there are
some people here today who look at this
bar and see an invisible welcome sign
above the door right it looks fun it
looks intriguing you want to go in my
guess is there are also some other
people in this room we’ll look at this
bar and see an invisible keep out sign
above the door
it looks scary it looks dirty you want
to pass by we see these invisible
welcome and keep out signs everywhere
and it’s part of how we decide if
something’s relevant to us so at the
amah the approach we’ve taken is to work
with partners across our community here
are just a few of the hundreds of
partners we work with every year
Outsiders who can help us see what says
welcome and what says keep out for them
I look at this picture and I see tech
entrepreneurs I see farmers I see
community activists all of whom who can
say hey for my community this looks like
welcome so let’s frame out this new door
over here like this outsiders have
really become my heroes in this work and
they’re people like Betty Reed’s özkan
Betty is the oldest park ranger in the
National Park Service she’s just over
the Bay in Richmond California and one
of the many amazing things about Betty
is that she doesn’t just wear this
uniform when she clocks in at the park
she wears it when she’s off duty in the
streets of Oakland and Alameda and Betty
says when I wear my uniform on the
streets of the city I am announcing to
young people of color a career path and
an opportunity that I didn’t know
existed until I was in my 80s and lord
knows I don’t want other people have to
wait that long to figure it out Betty’s
using her uniform as a kind of welcome
sign standing at the door to the park
and saying to her community hey come in
this is for you too but every community
is different and what says welcome to
one can say keep out to another this is
another one of my heroes in the National
Park Service this is cam Juarez
he works in Tucson Arizona at saguaros
National Park and it’s Cam’s job to
invite Latinos into that Park and one of
the first things cam said when he got
this job was you know for my community
for Latinos living near the border this
uniform you all are so proud of it is
not a welcome sign it is a keep out sign
the hardest part of working with
outsiders is not finding them it’s
listening to them when they say to you
hey that uniform you’re proud of that
door you love it’s a keep out for my
community what do you do that’s the
challenge that faced librarians at the
State Library of Queensland just a few
years ago next time you’re in Brisbane
Australia do yourself a favor and go
visit the State Library of Queensland
it’s the most beautiful library I’ve
ever seen
white gleaming contemporary open plan
really amazing and I was there shortly
after its opening as part of a group who
were designing an indigenous knowledge
center a coral doggin for this library
so there we were architects designers
librarians and Aboriginal elders here in
this white gleaming space to design this
indigenous knowledge centre and the
first thing that the aboriginal elder
said was you know for us sharing
knowledge doesn’t happen primarily
through books
it happens through music and dance it’s
intergenerational and it’s got to be
colorful it can’t be so sterile like a
hospital and you could see the
librarians looking at their white
gleaming space with new eyes
and then and then the indigenous elders
said you know and the most important way
we share knowledge is around a fire I
don’t know how many librarians you know
but this was one of those moments of
truth right they had to decide were we
for real when we said we wanted to
welcome indigenous people to share
knowledge and build community in this
library or were we secretly hoping they
would be grateful to walk through the
white gleaming doors we’ve already built
and to their great credit they were for
real and they took one of those white
gleaming spaces and they made it a
colorful space for families and music
and dance and even more impressively
they built a fire pit outdoors so that
groups like this indigenous World Youth
Congress could say the
is the place where we want to share
knowledge and build community because
this library feels welcome to us it
matters to us now and so I invite you
one more time to think about that thing
that matters most to you and the
metaphorical room in which it lives what
are the doors to that room like who do
they say welcome to who do they say keep
out – as you work to think about how you
might invite outsiders into this place
that matters to you I urge you not to
think of this as a marketing exercise
sure you can paint a fake door on the
side of your wall and Outsiders will
come once but after they’ve slammed
their head into the wall and walk away
feeling that sense of disrespect and
mistrust they’re not going to come back
instead I invite you to open your hearts
to the outsiders you most want to
involve in your community and work with
them get to know them and then
generously courageously work together to
build new doors that’s the way to matter
more to more people thank you [Applause]