Week 2 at HistoryMiami- Lina Fernandez

This week I continued to do research for my tour, which I will begin presenting next week. In the morning I shadowed tours given to camp groups to learn what did and didn’t work and take notes on what I could incorporate into my own tour. One of the things I learned is that interactive elements help make a tour more engaging and allow the participants to feel a shared sense of agency in the tour, transforming it from a lecture into a dialogue. Asking questions and giving space and time for people to share their own thoughts and interpretations is vital. 

In the afternoon I learned more about the history of the places I’m going to be highlighting in my tour, decided on supplemental photos and documents I want to use, and practiced the tour with the other interns and educators to get feedback. I realized that my tour will be very different based on my audience, so I’m going to start by asking “Where are you from?” to get a feel for whether or not the crowd is local. If they’re from Miami, I don’t have to explain as much about these communities and the tour can be more of a dialogue. If they aren’t from Miami, I can’t assume that they know about the different perceptions and reputations of places I’m talking about so I have to make sure to provide context. I hope I get more Miami people than not because i think it will be more fun to have this conversation with people who are as invested in the topic as I am, but I think I will also learn a lot from out-of-town people and can learn about the places they are from to draw parallels to Miami.

Throughout this week I have also been able to meet with people working in different departments in the museum to get an idea of what their role is. My favorite person I have met was Vanessa, the resident Public Folklorist. I specifically requested to meet with her because public folklorist sounds like the coolest job on the planet (spoiler alert: it is). Talking with her gave me a bunch of new ideas for possible areas of study and career paths because public folklore combines so many of my interests. For a long time I wanted to be a professional Cultural Anthropologist (I took a course in it at Brown two summers ago and loved it) but I didn't like how stuffy and academic it felt and that the work largely seemed removed from the public sphere. Public folklore is cultural work, but it is specifically in service of the public. In her role she also curates the Folklife gallery and handles public programming, bringing community members who practice living traditions into the museum to share their work. This is also really exciting because as I’ve been interested in museum work for the last two years, I’ve oscillated between curation and education, and her job involves both. Learning about the work she does has definitely had an impact on me: I’m looking into taking an anthropology class next semester and also researching some of the internships the Smithsonian Center for Folklife offers. 

On Friday I participated in an outreach event called Liberty City Reads. We had a table set up and I assisted in packing bags to give away and answering questions about the materials we brought (including but not limited to a Bear skull and a replica mammoth tooth) and general questions about the museum. It was amazing to see so many kids come out for this amazing event, where they got to listen to authors that looked like them writing books about loving yourself and exploring the world. At one point they did an activity where they partnered up and said something nice about the other person, and then about themselves, and at the end they came together and each kid got up on stage and said something they loved about themselves. To see a 4 year old get up in front of everyone and say, grinning, “I love my hair!” or “I love my eyes!” brought me to tears. I’m really glad to have been able to be a small part of something so impactful and important. It made me so proud of my community and so hopeful that young kids would grow up with a better sense of themselves and their worth than I did. 

It is amazing to think how much I have learned about the museum field and about myself in these two weeks, and how long-lasting (and possibly career-impacting) I think the effects will be. I am looking forward to what the next week brings. :)
With some of the authors and organizers of the Liberty City Reads festival. 

A response to an interactive part of the Folklife exhibit that made me laugh. 

Not totally related to the museum, but this place just opened directly across the street! Coincidence? 

HistoryMiami team at Liberty City Reads. 

Working on a map of Miami to use on my tour. 

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