California Association of Museums - Leaders of the Future

Are you working to make your museum more relevant in your community?

Are you wanting to stay informed of the latest trends and events, but feel overwhelmed by too much information?

Do you want to create a more sustainable future for your museum?

The coming decades will bring massive social, technological, economic, environmental, and political changes in our society and these forces will contribute to the stress that communities experience. The California Association of Museums (CAM) believes museums can play a role in preparing for, and responding to, these challenges by exploring where current trends may take us, identifying preferred futures, and helping bring them into being.

To assist its members take on such a role and develop 21st century skills, CAM has launched Leaders of the Future: Museum Professionals Developing Strategic Foresight project and has provided strategic foresight training to museum leaders, both longstanding and emerging. This program is funded in part by a 21st Century Professionals Leadership grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the James Irvine Foundation.

During this two-year project, participants are developing the habit for futures thinking by planning for long-term change, integrating insights into daily activities, and creating more responsive and relevant institutions for their evolving communities. Professional futurist Garry Golden is guiding the collaborative learning process, which included two daylong workshops and a virtual working group on the CA Museum Community Online site.

Participants in CAM’s Leaders of the Future: Museum Professionals Developing Strategic Foresight project have been busy working this summer—scanning, researching and identifying critical emerging issues. The would like to share their work with you and invite colleagues to participate in the conversation by opening up the futures online group* to all members of the CA Museum Community Online. Please check out this blog post* to learn more about the project and future plans.

The Leaders of the Future online group will also be sharing a series of Foresight Research Reports developed as part of the project learning experience.

We hope you will join us as we work to turn the massive and expected external shifts in California into opportunities rather than challenges for our museums.

If you have any questions about the project please contact project director Lisa Eriksen.

* To view these resources, you must first join or sign-in to the CA Museum Community Online, a free online community. To preview this online community, see www.camuseumcommunity.org.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 123,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The Institute's mission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to information and ideas.

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