Exploring the Impact of an Inclusive Interpretation Initiative at Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Client: Brooklyn Botanic Garden | Location: Brooklyn, NY
We helped Brooklyn Botanic Garden understand how a new initiative to create more inclusive interpretation at the Garden impacted visitors and relationships with the surrounding community.
OVERVIEW
We worked with Brooklyn Botanic Garden to design a two-part study that would explore their new initiative, The Power of Trees, with special attention to a co-created exhibit called Trees of Little Caribbean. Trees of Little Caribbean was developed in partnership with I AM caribBEING, a local community organization with a focus on Caribbean communities in New York City.
This project came at a time when BBG was reexamining its interpretive practices to align them with the museum’s goals for inclusion. The evaluation aimed to understand visitors’ experiences overall with The Power of Trees initiative. It also served as an internal reflection tool and cataloged processes of community-engaged work and shared authority in Trees of Little Caribbean’s exhibit development.
APPROACH
The project included two parts:
An evaluation of The Power of Trees initiative to understand visitor experiences in the exhibition through an online visitor survey.
A focused evaluation of Trees of Little Caribbean exhibit to document interpretive and curatorial co-creation processes and understand the exhibit’s impact on the Garden and its visitors through BBG staff, collaborator, and visitor interviews.
CLIENT TAKEAWAYS
Overall, we found The Power of Trees initiative created an interesting, unique, and inspiring experience for visitors and that the Trees of Little Caribbean exhibit sets a promising and effective foundation for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s future goals of co-creation. By partnering with I AM caribBEING, Garden staff fostered an organic and successful community partnership and created an exhibit process that models co-creation for the Garden. The exhibit resonated with staff, collaborators, and visitors alike; at the same time, visitor, staff, and collaborator interviews indicate a few areas for growth, including a longer exhibit development timeline, more cross-departmental involvement, and continued experimentation with BBG’s approaches to interpretation and community outreach.