The Louisiana Children’s Museum (LCM)
in New Orleans was planning a festive celebration of its 15-year
anniversary on September 15, 2001. After the terrorist attacks
of September 11, LCM Executive Director Julia Bland decided
to refocus the celebration on families and on ways to help
the Children’s Museum of Manhattan (CMOM).
“We all felt the need to help in whatever
way we could,” Bland said. On LCM’s birthday,
children and staff at LCM folded 1,000 origami cranes for
peace,
created a huge, colorful banner, and collected $4,500.
“Little kids were literally emptying
out their piggybanks,” Bland recalled. LCM Education
Director Erin MacInnes, who had two sisters living in Manhattan,
packed the paper birds, the banner, and the donation into
a big box and hand-delivered it to CMOM Executive Director
Andrew Ackerman and his staff. This was the first contact
CMOM had had from outside of New York City, and it forged
a strong bond between the two museums and its directors.
“They were so incredibly generous. Support
from the Louisiana Children’s Museum emboldened us so
much that we dropped the admission charge to the museum for
the month of September,” Ackerman said. A year later,
Ackerman thanked LCM by lending it a wildly popular interactive
exhibit called the Body Odyssey, waiving the $45,000 rental
fee.
Fast forward to August 2005: Hurricane Katrina slammed into
New Orleans, causing $1 million of damage to the Louisiana
Children’s Museum.
“Andy called and told me, ‘I know
what you’re going through. It’s going to be tough.’
He was really there for us in every way,” Bland said.
In 2006, CMOM received a grant from the Toy
Industry Foundation (TIF) to develop PlayHelps, a program
to help children and families living in the midst of extreme
hardship. The program was based in part on CMOM’s PlayWorks
exhibition, a project funded by a 2006 Museums for America
grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
CMOM and TIF chose New Orleans as the first
recipient of the three-month program. Children Pre-K through
sixth grade engaged in block building, painting, storytelling,
puppetry, and music in three colorful domes located on the
tennis courts at the Andrew Jackson Elementary School. The
high-performing school is located in St. Bernard Parish, the
most devastated parish in New Orleans. CMOM trained onsite
staff to work with the teachers so the program would complement
the school curriculum.
“In New Orleans, every family was in
crisis. PlayHelps was like oxygen to the kids and staff. The
domes were a safe haven where they could be kids again,”
Ackerman said. During weekends, PlayHelps held toy-making
programs at LCM.
“Their program has had enormous therapeutic
value,” said Bland. PlayHelps ran seven days a week
from Dec. 1, 2006 to Feb. 28, 2007, and served 1800 children
a week. LCM is replicating the PlayHelps program in six library
trailers this summer.
LCM also worked to restore the well-being of
its children and families through a program called, Re-Connecting,
Re-engaging, Re-Building, which was funded by a 2005 Museums
for America grant from IMLS. The high-quality play programs
have helped children deal with anger problems and with the
ongoing stress of living in cramped trailers.
“The children lost all their toys and their artwork
and their lives are filled with so much work,” Bland
said. “Play is a rare thing. It’s a privilege
to bring laughter, joy, creativity and imagination into their
lives.”
The art that has come out of these children
is amazing, Bland says. A little boy filled his journal with
stories about the beloved dog he left behind. A crew of pint-size
city planners has rebuilt the city with extra skate parks,
recreation centers, and pools. Children draw new homes for
their families, always including a room of their very own.
And, as the children have started feeling better, parents’
moods have improved too.
“It’s so rewarding. I’ve never
worked so hard but I’ve never felt so satisfied,”
Bland said. “Children’s museums attract giving,
selfless people. Plus, anytime anything happens around the
community, we share it. This high degree of camaraderie has
helped us weather the tough times.”
Directors of the Children’s Museums of Manhattan
and the Louisiana Children’s Museum
Share Lessons on Dealing with Disaster
How to deal with the initial
shock. Remember that you are a professional, but
you are also dealing with your own personal shock. You have
to determine what your role is in the community. After major
disasters, children will be in crisis for three to five years,
said Children’s Museum of Manhattan (CMOM) Executive
Director Andrew Ackerman. “After 9/11, families came
to the museum and told staff, “We trust you to be an
emotionally safe place for the kids,” he said.
In times of crisis, people
need to tell their stories and be heard. Museums
are in a wonderful position to work in disaster areas because
museums are all about story telling, said Ackerman. Set aside
enough time for individual stories and responses to them.
Be willing to scrap your own ideas and schedule.
Be relevant. Staff
members at the Louisiana Children’s Museum (LCM) realized
that they had to focus on mental health issues because the
children and parents were traumatized. LCM now has a child
psychologist on staff three days a week. LCM made a decision
not to refer to the hurricane at the museum, but it comes
out in the children’s artwork, Bland says. The museum
needs to be a constant, safe, and cheerful place.
How to deal with staff
burnout. Set up a safe room for staff who are working
seven days a week under enormous pressure, Ackerman said.
CMOM had a partnership with psychologists, therapists, and
graduate students from New York University to help deal with
psychological issues.
Use your group’s
association as a centralized information station.
After the hurricane, LCM Executive Director Julia Bland contacted
the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM) to let them
know that her house was flooded and that she had evacuated
to Nashville. Bland’s staff got in touch with her though
the ACM national office. Before the storm, LCM had 40 people
on staff. After the storm, staff members were in 40 different
places. Through the linkage provided by ACM, LCM was able
to organize its first post-Katrina staff meeting at the Children’s
Museum in Houston in October 2005.
Use your group’s
association as a brain trust. ACM convened member
museums to help guide LCM through the tough time. The Please
Touch Museum in Philadelphia had developed a brochure after
the Gulf War on how to help children deal with trauma. In
coordination with ACM, they sent LCM copies of the brochure,
which are also posted on the LCM Web site.
Build capacity.
LCM is developing programs so it can reach more people. Children’s
museums are town squares where people of all ages and backgrounds
mingle together, Bland said. It’s a natural setting
for families to reconnect. In July 2005, LCM’s director
of community engagement created a new initiative focused on
the well-being of families. The plan celebrated the diverse
cultural heritage of Louisiana’s arts, music, and literature
through play and play therapy. With Hurricane Katrina’s
impact on New Orleans, the program was timely and desperately
needed. LCM focused on cultural heritage because Louisiana
is not a melting pot, it’s a gumbo where you can taste
the okra and the shrimp, Bland said. Each month, museum programming
has a different ethnic focus. LCM has connected to community
cultural experts and artists and has invited them in record
numbers to share their talents and paint a full picture of
Louisiana’s cultural heritage.
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