This month's picks all circle back to one essential question: Are we living up to our purpose? From interrogating AI adoption, to building a values-based decision-making tool, to rediscovering what drew us to museum work in the first place, we share resources that push us to think about how we work and why.

This month we are sharing resources that highlight the power of planning — because whether you're designing for visitors, reimagining your museum's role in the community, or preparing for a leadership transition,thoughtful planning is what transforms good intentions into thriving institutions.

This month we share resources that explore AI through a questioning lens — public skepticism, concerns with research integrity, and how these tools shape the way we think. It’s a good reminder that curiosity goes hand-in-hand with asking challenging questions.

Museums continue to face growing pressures and censorship threats, yet crises like this can spark new pathways forward. With this in mind, this month we recommend the annual TrendsWatch from the American Alliance of Museums, a story of not backing down, and a proposition for museums to embrace a new paradigm.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not going away. For the last few years, it has been something we at Kera have regularly talked and written about. Inspired by those conversations, we decided it was time to set some guidance for how we approach AI in our work. Given the rapidly evolving contexts, we opted for a values-driven guidance versus more prescriptive directives on AI use.

Museums and cultural institutions are at a crossroads, balancing bold exploration of human experience (art, awe, authentic storytelling) with challenges like decreased visitation and censorship. How can museums forge a path forward with integrity and courage?

In today’s world, we need creative problem solving skills more than ever to plan for an uncertain future and unexpected developments. This month, explore how creative problem solving helps to interpret history in politicized times, rethink philanthropy, and address unexpected uses of AI in research.

For museum program facilitators, a post-program reflection tool is a great way to not only reflect on your teaching and facilitation practice, but also generate rich data with which to evaluate your participants’ progress. At Kera, we often include these first-person perspectives in program evaluation designs as an additional data set to triangulate with data representing other relevant perspectives, like those of program participants or museum program managers.