The Creative Economy and 21st
Century Skills
Marsha L. Semmel
Deputy Director for Museum Services and Director for
Strategic Partnerships
Organization of American States
Fourth Inter-American Meeting of Ministers of Culture
and Highest Appropriate Authorities
Bridgetown, Barbados
November 21, 2008
Ambassador
Quinonez, Chairman Blackett, Vice Chair Cabayo, ministers
and colleagues. I am honored to be part of the U.S.
delegation to the OAS Inter-American Meeting of Ministers
of Culture and Highest Appropriate Authorities.
I represent the United States Institute of Museum
and Library Services (IMLS), one of the U.S. government’s
cultural agencies. IMLS is a federal grant-making agency
that is a major source of federal support for and research
about the 17,500 museums and 122,000 libraries in the
United States of America. Most of these are SME’s
(small and medium-sized enterprises). In my role at
IMLS, I direct our many programs that are designed to
strengthen the capacity of museums to serve their communities.
We focus on three areas: sustaining culture, heritage,
and knowledge; enhancing learning and innovation; and
building the skills of museum staff and volunteers.
I also direct our Office of Strategic Partnerships,
which works with museums, libraries, other government
agencies, NGO’s, and the foundation and corporate
world to achieve our mission. My remarks will focus
on the roles of cultural organizations, especially museums
and libraries, as powerful partners in education and
economic vitality.
We heard much yesterday about the creative economy,
our rapidly changing and interconnected world, and the
needs and opportunities for new skills and new models
in business, education, and culture.
Today, collaboration, innovation, imagination and creativity
are recognized as essential qualities for economic success,
individual achievement and fulfillment, and vibrant
communities.
We also heard yesterday about the United States government’s
cultural agencies’ funding strategy, an approach
that places a premium on a peer-review system and emphasizes
user-friendly access to a variety of grant programs
that contribute to our cultural infrastructure. In proactive
and responsive ways, our cultural agencies support many
partnerships and alliances that build the capacity of
our cultural organizations, use the expertise and talents
of individual artists and scholars, enrich school offerings,
encourage civic engagement, create and promote innovative
technologies, and help build livable and economically-healthy
communities.
Let me cite some examples:
To develop the imagination and critical thinking skills,
early training for youth is critical. The Philadelphia
Museum of Art’s Art Speaks partnership
with the Philadelphia School District works with thousands
of fourth graders throughout this urban school system
to promote literacy by looking at, discussing, and writing
about works of art. At Appalshop, in rural Kentucky,
the Appalachian Media Institute offers documentary arts
film and radio workshops for high school students to
engage and develop their creative skills.
The Quilt Index Project is a partnership of Michigan
State University’s MATRIX digital humanities center,
one of that university’s museums, a grass roots
crafts alliance, and more than 25 museums, libraries,
universities, and other organizations. By 2010, this
landmark cultural heritage project will contain digital
images and history for more than 50,000 quilts, creating
web-based tools to promote dissemination of this traditional
art form, oral histories, materials for schools, and
exhibits and programs for the general public.
A new program in “Cultural Entrepreneurship”
developed by the State University of New York’s
Cooperstown Graduate Program in conjunction with the
Museum Association of New York and the New York State
Historical Association will train mid-career museum
professionals in leadership and best practice in the
creative economy. And an enhanced web site and online
member services for the national Association of African
American Museums is leveraging digital technology and
networking to create a more effective and connected
community of practice among these typically small and
geographically dispersed organizations.
We know that our cultural organizations provide jobs,
generate local revenue, and bring in tourist dollars,
and we continue to support research to measure this
economic impact. In Massachusetts, the Center for Creative
Community Development’s “Museums in the
Neighborhood” project is working with museums
throughout the United States to develop and apply new
methodologies for measuring the economic and social
impact of a museum on its community. Initial findings
have documented profound results: in several communities,
the economic impact of the museum far eclipses that
of other economic sectors, including retailers, hospitals,
and restaurants.
The recent IMLS-Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Partnership for a Nation of Learners, operating
on the principle that our museums, libraries, and public
non-profit broadcasting system stations are important
and accessible “public hubs” of the knowledge
society, supported a series of partnerships that brought
museums, libraries and broadcasters together to address
such community challenges as childhood obesity, asthma
management, science literacy, cultural heritage preservation,
water use, and substance abuse.
Now we have embarked on another project, Museums,
Libraries, and 21st Century Skills. The project
responds to the calls of U.S corporate leaders, educators,
and governing officials for a workforce and citizenry
equipped for today’s challenges. In a world where
most repetitive, routinized work can and will be done
by computers, our museums and libraries have joined
this national conversation and have much to contribute.
Twenty-first century skills include learning and innovation
skills, such as creativity, critical thinking, problem
solving, communication, and collaboration; information,
media, and technology skills; and life and career skills,
such as flexibility and adaptability, initiative and
self-direction, social and cross-cultural skills; accountability;
and leadership and responsibility. Among the 21st century
“themes” are global awareness, civic engagement,
and understanding of such pressing and timely current
topics as the environment, health, and finance.
The IMLS effort responds to other U.S. initiatives.
For example, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills
(P21) is a public/private partnership comprising 33
corporations, non profits, and service organizations,
including Intel, AT &T, Microsoft, Apple, Junior
Achievement, the National Education Association, and
the American Association of School Librarians. P21,
as it is called, focuses on kindergarten-12th grade
and is dedicated to bringing 21st century skills to
every child in America. Much of its work occurs at the
state level; as of mid-November, ten of our fifty states
have made formal commitments to become a “21st
Century Leadership State,” and others are in process.
Our project, developed with a task force of practitioners,
will yield an interactive, online self assessment tool
for museum and library professionals that will enable
them to determine where they “fit” on the
continuum of 21st century skills, as well as a report
for policy makers, corporate leaders, and NGO’s.
Our goal is to give increased visibility to museums
and libraries in the learning landscape of 21st century
skills and to promote effective partnerships and collaborations
among these organizations and with other sectors. We
believe that there are many ways in which these organizations
promote the “social development, sustainable economic
growth, job creation, and income generation,”
called for by the OAS.
Museums and libraries are trusted and valued centers
of community life that recognize and encourage education
as a lifelong process. Many take on special responsibility
to serve underserved and at-risk audiences, especially
youth. In our country, the assets and resources of these
institutions include their ubiquity and diversity, their
accessible and welcoming physical facilities, their
rich and evocative collections, their knowledgeable
and committed volunteers and staff, their participatory
programs for all ages, and their increasingly innovative
online presences. They are places of social inclusion
that promote curiosity, learning by doing, and discovery.
In them, we learn about ourselves and meet and learn
about others. As such, they generate enormous emotional
resonance that contributes to empathy, tolerance, and
understanding.
Finally, like most cultural organizations, they are
natural partners with each other, and with schools,
universities, private enterprise, and local governments.
In conclusion, today, as never before, none of our
sectors can afford to operate in isolation. And, just
as the individual artist and scholar have profoundly
important roles to play, our cultural organizations
are key to building the knowledge society, narrowing
the divide between the information “haves”
and “have nots,” battling illiteracy, fostering
civic participation, and increasing global cross-cultural
understanding.
To fulfill their potential, these cultural organizations
need support. We need to ensure that they have the capacity
to keep up with the changing world, to be responsible
stewards of the cultural heritage resources in their
care, and to convey and embody the 21st century skills
that we will need to create vibrant learning communities
for all. Let us work together to unleash their power.
Thank you very much.
