IN THIS ISSUE:
WHERE FAMILIES COME TOGETHER | WINTER 2020 VOLUME 8, ISSUE 2
New species of ancient fish discovered?
pg 4-5
People of Thanksgiving Point: José Saiz
pg 6
Homeschool Days
pg 8
Social Impact Study
pgs 12-13
presented by
Thank you for helping Thanksgiving Point celebrate our 25th anniversary! Luminaria returns for its 5th season this year.
Gazette THANKSGIVING POINT
TO MAKE A DONATION ThanksgivingPoint.org/give
Hello Friends,
TO SCHEDULE AN EVENT 801.768.4947 TICKET SALES 801.768.4900 Toll Free 888.672.6040 MEMBERSHIP INFORMATION 801.768.7478 membership@thanksgivingpoint.org ThanksgivingPoint.org/membership EDUCATION 801.768.4971 GENERAL INQUIRIES 801.768.2300
PUBLISHER Erica Brown Thanksgiving Point 3003 N. Thanksgiving Way Lehi, Utah 84043 801.768.2300 EXECUTIVE EDITOR Josh Berndt Rachel Olsen
ART DIRECTOR Jeremy Andrus CONTRIBUTORS Stephen Ashton, Ph.D. Josh Berndt Austin Brown Rick Hunter Caitlin Larsen
2020 started with grand plans for an amazing 25th anniversary of Thanksgiving Point. Unfortunately, 2020 had other plans and things like the inaugural Tulipa Thanksgiving Point scented tulip for the Tulip Festival, our annual Imagine That! Gala and Discovery Cup Golf Tournament fundraiser, and hosts of other planned celebrations were delayed, substantially changed, or canceled. Closing for the annual Tulip Festival was one of the most difficult decisions we’ve made. Thankfully, our venues and offerings have reopened and are welcoming you back safely with a focus on the public’s health. This will be the fifth year that Luminaria has been hosted in the Ashton Gardens. We’re grateful to invite you to this event and while we won’t have the same exact experience because of COVID-19 precautions, I promise the show will be more magical than ever. A brand-new music and light show at Merry Mosaic will leave you inspired and a new section, Himalayan Heights, hosts Luminaria’s very own Yeti. Some safety precautions we’ve taken include a new separate exit, so guests don’t have to go back through the Visitor Center, one-way paths, and reduced capacity. In other exciting news, Luminaria will no longer be a hidden gem as it is being featured on ABC’s Great Christmas Light Fight reality show in December 2020. This program showcases the best Christmas lights in the country, and we invite you to tune in to cheer Thanksgiving Point on in the competition.
VOLUNTEER INQUIRIES 801.768.7426
ASSISTANT EDITORS Emily Duffy Jodie Fisher
FROM THE PRESIDENT AND CEO
Amanda Lundberg Kari Ross Nelson, M.A. M.S. Laura St. Onge José Saiz Rilee Scoresby
SOCIAL MEDIA
@thankspoint / Thanksgiving Point
WEBSITE
ThanksgivingPoint.org
2020 has had some other great highlights I would like to share. One is Thanksgiving Point’s participation in Museums for All program, which began late 2019. This impactful national program allows our underserved community a chance to visit our museums and venues at a greatly reduced price with a SNAP food benefit card. Since beginning this program, we’ve welcomed more than 2,000 new visitors. I mentioned that our Tulip Festival was greatly changed due to the pandemic. In spite of missing crowds, the tulips still bloomed. Our team created a virtual festival which included a wide array of videos, how-to’s, and even tulip bouquet deliveries to bring just a sliver of spring to essential workers and into as many homes as possible. I’m happy to say that this “Tulip Team” was recognized as a 2020 Hero from the Association of Fundraising Professionals Utah for Utah Philanthropy Day. We also recently wrapped up a virtual Dia de los Muertos event which partnered with Safe in Utah to share public health messages to keep our community engaged and safe. This is just a sampling of the goodness that is a part of our lives and community. As we leave 2020 in our rearview mirrors my hope is that 2021 keeps you safe, healthy, and happy in whatever phase of life you might be. I hope you are able enjoy the holidays and have a wonderful start to the New Year. Thank you again for keeping Thanksgiving Point a treasured gathering place in our community Sincerely,
Thanksgiving Point Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit farm, garden, and museum complex that draws upon the natural world to cultivate transformative family learning.
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Mike L Washburn
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NE W DI S C O V E R IE S
A POSSIBLE NEW SPECIES OF ANCIENT FISH DISCOVERED IN CENTRAL UTAH Rick Hunter, Paleontologist It has been said many times that, “many important scientific discoveries are made by everyday people.” Such was the case in 2017 when the Chevalier family of Herriman Utah happened upon a partial fossil fish while collecting paving stones on their grandfather’s property in Sanpete County Utah. The fish was discovered when one of the stones split open exposing the fossil. Being Thanksgiving Point members, they brought the find to the paleo lab at the Museum of Ancient Life to have it identified. The initial assessment revealed that this was something quite different from the usual fish species we see from that time and place. After telling the story of the discovery and learning that it might be something special, they decided to donate the specimen to the museum. The fossil needed to be prepared, meaning that the matrix or rock covering the bone had to be removed. This required about 60 hours of meticulous work using carbide needles and a dissecting microscope. The bone was very fragile, and every detail needed to be exposed so that a complete study could be done (fig. 1). The skull was even removed from the rock so that elements that were not visible on the top side could hopefully be seen on the bottom side. This was very difficult because fish skulls are fragile and composed of many individual elements that are usually crushed completely flat during the fossilization process. However, it proved to be worth the effort as it helped to identify the family group that the fish belonged to. The initial preliminary study revealed that the fish belongs to the family Esocidae, which include the Pike and Pickerels and to the genus Esox, the same genus as the modern living Northern Pike. Pike are voracious predatory fish that would eat almost anything including other fish, frogs, snakes and even waterfowl. They were well equipped for this task as is evident by the many sharp teeth in the mouth of this specimen (fig. 2) and its modern-day counterpart the Northern Pike (fig. 3).
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fig. 1 - Fossil Pike from Sanpete Co. Utah after preparation.
fig. 2 - Pike skull (Rt. side) showing lower jaw with teeth after preparation.
fig. 3 - Extant Northern Pike. Photo by David J. Stang / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
This fossil was discovered on an outcrop of rock known as the Green River Formation located near the small town of Moroni in Sanpete County (fig. 4). This rock unit represents sediments laid down by Lake Uinta, an Eocene age freshwater lake that was part of a large great lake complex that persisted for well over 10 million years. Radiometric dates obtained from the outcrop near the discovery site place the age of the fossil at around 46 to 44 million years. This is only the second known fish from the order Esociformes to be discovered in the Green River Formation. Although the specimen is incomplete, consisting of a nearly complete skull and only 8 vertebrae, current research suggests that it probably represents a new species.
fig. 4 - Eocene great lake complex with the location of the Pike discovery site.
The fish fauna from Lake Uinta sediments are poorly understood and lacking in both numbers and species, especially when compared to the rich and diverse assemblage from the Green River Formation of Wyoming. Most of the work to date in Utah has been geological in nature and has focused on the rich oil shale zones within the formation. Much work is still needed to help with our understanding of the relationships between the organisms and the longest-lived freshwater lake system in earth’s history. THANK YOU to the citizen scientists who have not only made an important contribution to science but have also helped bring us a little closer to that understanding.
Pictured above: Citizen scientists - The Chevalier family.
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T E A M ME MBE R A P P R E CI AT ION
PEOPLE OF THANKSGIVING POINT José Saiz, Farm Country
If you’ve visited Farm Country in the last two-and-a-half decades you’ve been affected by José Saiz. José has been working on the Farm Country grounds since the Fox Family owned the land in 1993. He then stayed on following the Ashton’s purchase of the property and has been a staple of Farm Country since day one. Other than José’s work ethic around the farm, the trait everyone notices is his smile. “My work, I love it here,” he stated. “The time each day, it goes too fast. 6 am I arrive, feed the animals, milk the cow, check on the chickens and rabbits, all of them. Then I do some sweeping up and get ready for tomorrow.” José was born and raised in farming in Mexico, and farming was his family’s profession. “My father was a farmer,” he said. “We had cows, horses, all of them.” For 12 years he worked back-andforth from Mexico to Idaho on farms before finally coming to Lehi, Utah in 1993.
“
Working with animals is what I love, I have always loved the animals.
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”
José has worked with or around thousands of animals in his time on farm, but what is his favorite animal of all-time? “It was a cow named Minnie, he said. “She’s gone now, but she was such a nice cow. Today, it’s Heidi (the milking cow) and her calf. They both know me and are always very nice.” If you are lucky enough to bump into José while he is working throughout the week ask him to do some of his signature roping tricks. There’s a gleam in his eye when the kids say “Mommy, look it’s the cowboy!” People like José Saiz have helped create memories for kids and parents alike for 25 years. It’s people like him that have made Thanksgiving Point a place for memories and will continue to be for 25 more years. “Working with animals is what I love, I have always loved the animals. I have worked in the old Greenhouse, at the (Ashton) Gardens, I’ve worked everywhere (at Thanksgiving Point). But Farm Country is number one,” he said with a huge grin. “I hope people come see me soon!”
Thanksgiving Point needs your help. During this trying year, we ask you to help us Share the Light this holiday season. From December 1, Giving Tuesday, through January 2, 2021, we are seeking a donation to help us continue our mission of providing opportunities for transformative learning.
Buy seeds for the Learning Garden: $5 Help purchase bulbs for the Tulip Festival: $10 Support our Museums for All program: $25 Send a child to summer camp: $50 Feed all the Farm Country animals for one day: $75 Send a classroom on a Thanksgiving Point field trip: $120 Support the mission of transformative family learning: $250 Be a rainmaker for Thanksgiving Point: $1000
Thank You to Our Corporate Partners 1-800 Contacts
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97th Floor
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Arthur J Gallagher
Oakdell Eggs
Utah Broadband
Bank of America
Kahlert Foundation
Podium
Utah Valley Magazine
Best Buy
Larson & Company
Riley Blake
Built Bar
Lehi City
Visible Supply Chain Management
Chick-Fil-A
Les Olson Company
Sorenson Legacy Foundation
Coca-Cola
LHM Family Foundation
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Little Giant Ladder
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Walmart Zions Bank
STACK Real Estate
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L E A R NING A ND E NG A GE ME N T
HOMESCHOOL DAYS Rilee Scoresby
School Programs Lead Across the nation, more than 18.5 million children have switched to homeschool, increasing homeschool enrollment in the US by 500%. This pattern is not shy to Utah; Utah public schools are seeing a decline in enrollment for the first time in 20 years. With over 2,000 children switching to homeschool, there is a great need for programs and resources designed for home educators. For 25 years, Thanksgiving Point’s mission has inspired families to learn together by connecting with each other and the world around them. Even during the closure earlier this year, Thanksgiving Point worked hard to provide parents and families with educational content. Through Facebook live and YouTube videos set in the museums and other venues around the property, Thanksgiving Point provided hundreds of families support and learning when everything went online.
This school year, each venue at Thanksgiving Point will invite home educators to come to the venues at a special discounted rate. There will be educators providing special activities on those Homeschool Days which are: November 4 (at the Museum of Ancient Life), January 6 (at the Butterfly Biosphere), March 3 (at the Museum of Natural Curiosity), and May 5 (at Farm Country). The Wonder Club program will also be expanding and begins again in the spring of 2021. The Wonder Club program is a hands-on STEM learning program that gives homeschool students the chance to learn together, analyze data, develop models, and design solutions. This spring phenology (learning about nature’s cycles), and microscopy (taking a close look at geology, biology, and more through microscopes) classes will be offered.
Thanksgiving Point is a venue for My Tech High students. Students who attend My Tech High classes Thanksgiving Point recognizes the need of both at Thanksgiving Point participate in hands-on maker seasoned and new homeschool parents for excit- activities with a group of homeschool students. ing content that is both educational and engaging. Thanksgiving Point has recently set programs in place Thanksgiving Point is also working to develop for home schooled students, such as Homeschool new programs for home educators. These programs Days and Wonder Club. With the major increase in include producing more resources and support for homeschooled students, Thanksgiving Point is putting parents of homeschooled children. Make sure to check a special focus on expanding current programs and out ThanksgivingPoint.org/education/families to developing new programs for home educators. stay updated.
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HOMESCHOOL DAYS Dates to remember
JANUARY 6
Butterfly Biosphere
MARCH 3
Museum of Natural Curiosity
MAY 5
Farm Country
GR E E N T HUMB S , F UL L HE A R T S , C A N ’ T L O S E
JUNIOR MASTER GARDENER PROGRAM at Thanksgiving Point Caitlin Larson
Learning and Engagement Staff 2020 was a unique year for the Junior Master Gardener (JMG) program. JMG is one of the many education programs at Thanksgiving Point that was affected by COVID. This youth 4-H* gardening program, designed for kids ages 8 to 12 years old, provides a love of gardening, develops an appreciation for the environment, and cultivates the mind. Our class began, but quickly had to adjust to changing circumstances. When Thanksgiving Point reopened we were able to meet together at Farm Country again but with safety procedures in place. By collaborating with families and following government guidelines we created new procedures for classes. The kids quickly grew strong friendships that helped them navigate the complicated year. JMG became an outlet for the participants. Their creativity was evident in their continually shared innovative thoughts. The JMG kids offered their ideas about what they wanted out of the program, additional class activities, and even how to improve Farm Country. The JMG kids wanted to help Thanksgiving Point draw in more guests. This led to many novel ideas. Several of these ideas grew throughout the year, one of which was Chicken Run. Chicken Run is a forward-thinking design where chickens are released throughout the farm. Guests would chase the chickens gaining exercise while also having fun. The JMG kids developed, drew, and even presented their Chicken Run design. Brainstorming and designing their ideas helped the class cultivate their friendships. Though Chicken Run has not been implemented, they are hopeful for next year.
JMG will begin its first of three sessions in March of 2021. Sessions are priced at 60 dollars each and run for six weeks. Sessions can be taken as a stand-alone program or consecutively. All three sessions can be taken for just 165 dollars.
JMG participants have the opportunity to plant, care, and harvest the crops at Farm Country. This year the kids grew tomatoes, basil, peppers, and more. Every class spends a portion of time maintaining F o r m o r e i n f o r m a t i o n a b o u t J M G p l e a s e v i s i t the gardens. One focus of JMG is learning where our food comes ThanksgivingPoint.org/JMG or email jmg@thankgivingpoint.org. from. The kids harvest, take home a portion of the produce with Or for information about any other Thanksgiving Point education recipes to try, and sell the rest at the Farm Country farm stand to programming visit ThanksgivingPoint.org/Education to browse raise funds for their program. (Produce is available for purchase the wide educational options we offer at Thanksgiving Point from June to October). throughout the year. Despite the odd year, we were able to have some great experiences like participating in the annual Harvest Festival. The kids were excited to sell the produce they grew and make custom salsa using blender bikes. By making signs, helping with pricing, and practicing their entrepreneurial skills the JMG kids sold 140 dollars of produce and salsa. JMG helps kids learn gardening skills and more. This year our classes included everything from recycling to insects to plant propagation. We’re already planning for next year and are excited to continue growing the program. In 2021 some of the topics will include beekeeping, diverse planting methods, and much more.
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presented by
Photo courtesy of Amber Dehaas
Austin Brown
Director of Signature Experiences Since July of 2020 we have been asked countless times on the status of Luminaria. 2020 has created a lot of challenges of planning events at Thanksgiving Point. After many meetings and discussions, we can answer that with a yes, Luminaria is back…thankfully! We have met extensively as a team and continue to make sure this experience is safe for all guests. Luminaria is an experience unlike any other. Each year, we aim to amplify your senses during this fully immersive experience. We are proud to share some new elements to the 2020 Luminaria season. As you walk onto the back porch of the Ashton Gardens Visitors Center you will see our iconic Merry Mosaic show. This show is a light and music spectacular that is truly the heart of Luminaria. The hill of 6,500 programmable luminaries lead up to the 120-foot tree. This show for 2020 will feature six new songs with unique programming of colors, shapes, and images. Our nod to our annual tulip festival is a beat called “Blossoms of Light”. This area features more than 1,000 dancing LED tulips setup over 5000 sleeping tulips planted underneath. For the past several years, we have invited any and all Yeti’s to take up residence at Luminaria! To lure a Yeti, we transformed the colorful caverns to make him right at home at “Himalayan Heights”. We have good word that the Yeti will be making his arrival in time for opening night on November 20. During your walk in Luminaria you will have to keep your eyes peeled to see little hints to spot him along the path. Do not worry, the Yeti is super friendly but please, no feeding any Yeti’s. They really love those mini donuts.
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Then, as you embark on your new Yeti Expedition, you will notice more changes along the way. New songs and scents throughout the 25 different “beats” in Luminaria. Luminaria Village is the halfway point of your journey where you will find food options, fire pits to warm up or roast a s’more, a warming tent, and even some interactive games. After you’re sufficiently warm from the fires you will be able to do some seasonal reflections in the Light of the World sculpture garden. This area features 15 scenes of the life and miracles of Jesus Christ. Continue your holiday stroll by visiting Reindeer Woods. Santa’s reindeer make a special visit for the season. At reindeer woods we added a second warming tent and additional fire pits to warm up. Luminaria 2020 will be one for the books. It has been a challenge to make this happen. We know this challenge is well worth the effort and hope you, our guests, enjoy it. Our gardens crew is second to none and work tirelessly to make this event experiential for all. We know those who come to Luminaria this year will feel that special holiday spirit that we all love. We believe this experience will be something to look forward to during this tumultuous year. Thanksgiving Point is proud to present Luminaria for the 2020 season.
COVID-19 Luminaria Precautions Amanda Lundberg
Signature Experiences Manager Thanksgiving Point’s Luminaria event will be featured on the upcoming season of ABC’s The Great Christmas Light Fight, which shows some of the most impressive holiday displays in the country! Get your first sneak peek with Amanda Lundberg, a Signature Experiences Manager at Thanksgiving Point, to get some details on the filming process.
How long did filming take? The actual filming took place over three days, but the whole process started in summer 2019. We auditioned in August, met the production team about a month before filming, and then we filmed mid-November.
Did you have to do a lot of work behind the scenes?
of the series. There was hours and hours of filming, so it will be fun to see what direction the editing team takes!
What’s the hardest thing about being on a TV show? The filming schedule was pretty time intensive! Because we only had three days to film, and a big majority of the filming needed to happen at night, we had very long days. Many shots required multiple takes, so we were on-site until very late. In fact, when we had the Luminaria “reveal” walkthrough with Carter (the host/judge), it was so late by the time that we got to the Light of the World section that all of the candles had started to turn off, since they run on timers. We had to hurry and re-program all 700 candles before we could film there!
Short answer – yes. Filming happened before Luminaria opened to the public, What’s one of your favorite so we had less time to get everything moments from filming? set up than we usually do. With such a There were a lot of highlights! Working big display, every minute of set-up time with the production crew was really fun, counts. On the nights we would film and we got to know our producer pretty for the show, we would still come in to well over the course of the process. But work that morning to continue setting by far the coolest part of the whole up to make sure we were ready in time! experience was meeting and interacting with Carter Oosterhouse, our In addition, there were many meet- judge. He had no prior knowledge of ings, phone calls, and emails with the Thanksgiving Point or Luminaria, so production team before the filming even we walked him through the experience began! Even things like our wardrobe and explained the creative process and how we set everything up. He was so needed to be planned. personable and kind, and he had SO What’s the most surprising many questions and seemed genuinely thing about filming a TV show? mesmerized by the display. Walking I had absolutely no idea how many with Carter just breathed a whole new airplanes flew over the Ashton Gardens life into Luminaria for me. Instead of until we had to film. We paused multi- looking so granular at it, I was able ple times—mid sentence—to wait for to take a step back and view the event a plane to fly over so that the sound of through Carter’s fresh eyes. Luminaria the planes didn’t come through on the is always magical, but there’s something footage. It was strange because then special about experiencing it for the we’d have to do another take and start first time that was rekindled in me. over with what we were saying when If you want to catch Luminaria’s the airplanes interrupted us. 15 minutes of fame, tune The other surprising thing was how into Season 8 of the Great much filming we did for what will be a Christmas Light Fight, airing relatively short feature on one episode Wednesday nights, beginning December 9th on ABC.
Thanksgiving Point is dedicated to the health and safety of its guests, employees, and community. Luminaria will implement the following precautions to control the spread of COVID-19: • Masks are REQUIRED. For more information on our mask policy, see HERE. • One-way pathway with separated event entrance/exit. • Tickets are limited and must be reserved online. • The number of guests is limited by each half hour to allow for social distancing. • Outdoor queuing area for guests to prepare their tickets and meet other guests before entering the Garden Visitor Center. • Team members will wear face masks while working, in addition to temperature checks upon arrival. • Additional cleaning and sanitation measures as well as educational signage are being implemented to facilitate safety. • Guests and team members are asked to wash hands frequently and stay home when ill.
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S OCI A L IMPA C T
STRENGTHENING THE SOCIAL FABRIC OF THE COMMUNITY: Studying Social Impact at Thanksgiving Point Stephen Ashton, Ph.D. & Kari Ross Nelson, M.A. M.S. Introduction
Thanksgiving Point Study
Does having a museum in your community make it a better place to live? Like museums around the country, we’ve been wondering about this. Hi, we’re Stephen and Kari, the Audience Research and Evaluation Team at Thanksgiving Point. Our job is to conduct research and evaluation to support Thanksgiving Point’s mission of transformative family learning. The question of the social impact of museums is one we’ve been exploring for a few years now. What started as a study to understand the social impact of Thanksgiving Point is now being scaled to a national level, and we’re excited to be part of it!
In 2016 we partnered with Eva Witesman, a professor at BYU, along with her class of graduate students in the Masters of Public Administration program. Together we developed a plan and tool for measuring Thanksgiving Point’s social impact. To measure the impact, Thanksgiving Point invited families who had never been to Thanksgiving Point before to come, free-of-charge to each of our venues. At the time that included the Museum of Natural Curiosity, Museum of Ancient Life, Ashton Gardens, and Farm Country. Over the course of about three months these families came and experienced what Thanksgiving Point has to offer. At the end of their visits we sent the families an extensive survey that helped us measure changes they had experienced in several categories, such as family relationships, personal health and wellbeing, and higher educational attainment. About 60 families completed the study, meaning they visited four times with their family and then took the survey.
When museums talk about making an impact, that often refers to the educational, economic, and social realms. Typically, economic impact studies document the impact of salaries, business to business spending of operational costs, and visitor spending in the community as extensions to a museum visit. In fact, did you know that museums contribute more than $50 billion into the U.S. economy annually, We were thrilled with the results of the study! We measured 95 support more than 726,000 American jobs, generate $12 billion in indicators that were separated into those categories we listed above. Of tax revenue, and spur tourism from around the world? Educational those 95 indicators, 67 of them (71%) showed statistically significant impact studies document the number of students, schools, and districts positive changes. In other words, families that visited Thanksgiving served. One study found that children who visited a museum during Point had experiences that led to strengthened families, a greater sense kindergarten had higher achievement scores in reading, mathematics, of personal health and wellbeing, and higher educational attainment. and science in third grade than children who did not! Findings from these kinds of studies are often used to make a case for funding and Open response items revealed that the most meaningful aspects of partnerships. Social impact is a little harder to pin down: we define it participant’s experiences were spending quality time with family as the effect of an activity on the social fabric of the community and and children, and the appeal for multiple age groups. Additionally, participants expressed surprise at Thanksgiving Point’s quality, size, the wellbeing of the individuals and families who live there. beauty, and variety of experiences. Stephen Weil, a long time legal expert in the arts and a museum administrator, said in 2006: “Over time, the museum field will need We used the results of this social impact study along with the results to develop a vast arsenal of... more persuasive ways to document of a separate economic impact study to demonstrate to the Utah and/or demonstrate the myriad and beneficial outcomes that may State Legislature the impact Thanksgiving Point was having in the occur for their individual visitors and have impact on the community community. This helped Thanksgiving Point receive significant beyond.” Ten years later, museum analyst and planner John Jacobsen funding to support the building of the Butterfly Biosphere. pointed out “the field still lacks accepted ways to measure impact.” At Thanksgiving Point we’re working to meet this challenge as part of an Institute of Museum and Library Services grant awarded to the Utah Division of Arts & Museums.
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Statewide Utah Study
Upcoming Study
We were excited to share the positive results of our Thanksgiving Point social impact study with partners and colleagues, including the Utah Division of Arts and Museums (UA&M). UA&M is the art and cultural agency responsible for regranting National Endowment for the Arts funding across the state in addition to providing technical assistance and professional development opportunities to Utah’s hundreds of cultural organizations. UA&M wondered if the study could be adapted, scaled, and implemented with several museums in the state of Utah. The hope was to not only document the social impact of individual museums but to seek to understand the collective social impact across the state.
Building upon the work done at Thanksgiving Point and with UA&M, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) recently awarded our partnership over $500,000 to take our work to a national scale. IMLS is a federal funding agency charged with advancing, supporting and empowering America’s museums, libraries, and related organizations. We’re calling the project Measurement of Museum Social Impact, or MOMSI for short. We’ll be recruiting 30 museums from across the country to deploy a survey—based on surveys used in the Utah studies—to their local visitors. Findings from those surveys will help us meet our first goal: documenting the social impact museums bring to their communities. The experience of those 30 museums will help us meet a second goal: developing a survey tool museums can use independently to document their own social impact. This will be an important tool to help museums evaluate and improve their work, as well as advocate for themselves.
After partnering with UA&M, we started modifying the study to take it statewide. This included refining the questions and expanding some of the categories we were studying to include intercultural competency. In addition to learning if museums strengthened relationships, encouraged education and learning, and promoted health and wellbeing, we wanted to know if visiting museums led people to be more sympathetic towards people who were different from them. To conduct the statewide study UA&M recruited seven museums to participate. These included the Clark Planetarium, Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum, Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Red Butte Gardens, Springville Museum of Art, Tracy Aviary, and Utah Museum of Fine Arts. Each museum recruited visitors to join the study. In total, 392 subjects from the seven museums completed the end of experience survey. We at Thanksgiving Point were responsible for conducting and analyzing the research. Again, we were thrilled with the results of the study. Of the 104 indicators measured, 100 of them had a statistically significant positive increase across the study’s long-term outcomes for the seven museums combined! This means museums across the state are also having a positive social impact in their communities.
Conclusion We here at Thanksgiving Point have been proud to participate in these studies and have appreciated our partnership with UA&M. We look forward with optimism as we hope to demonstrate the positive social impact that museums are having across the nation. Museums have been severely negatively impacted by COVID. Attendance and revenues are down significantly. Many museums have had to close or lay off their staff. There’s never been a more important time to demonstrate the value of museums. We hope this study will help to demonstrate the vital role museums play in strengthening the social fabric of their communities.
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A part of what we love to do at Thanksgiving Point is to learn! We do this learning with our hands and eyes mostly, right? With Christmas time upon us how about a do-it-yourself Christmas experiment? Here’s the things you’ll need and your instructions:
Water
Vinegar
Olive Oil
Candy Canes
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Fill 3 glass cups with the same amount of liquid in each glass— be sure to make observations about your experiment prior to putting the candy canes into the liquids, take some notes. How long will a candy cane last before it dissolves? Will the liquids turn a different color? Will the candy cane smell be in the liquid? What other ideas do you have? When you are ready—drop your candy cane into the glass of liquid.
What did you notice? Where your original observations correct? What was the end result? We want to see! Post to social media and tag @ThanksPoint to show off your candy cane experiment! VO LU M E EI G HT | I SSUE T WO
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