Future-focused Q&A with Elizabeth Merritt, VP Strategic Foresight, & Founding Director Center for the Future of Museums at AAM

Through a recent series of discussions, I had the chance to catch up with?Elizabeth Merritt, the VP of Strategic Foresight & Founding Director Center for the Future of Museums at the American Alliance of Museums. Our conversation reviewed the state of museums today, the continued impact that the pandemic has and continues to have on museums, the upcoming TrendsWatch, and the great resignation, among other topics. Here are some excerpts from our conversation:

Adam Rozan: What does a futurist do, and how do you support museums as a futurist?

Elizabeth Merritt: My role as director of AAM’s Center for the Future of Museums is to help anyone working in and around the museum sector become a little bit of a futurist and, in the process, become effective and powerful optimists, improve their own well-being, and tap their power to make the world a better place.?

I start by helping people understand that the future is not predetermined. Thinking of the future as something inevitable can breed apathy and inaction. By contrast, it’s empowering to realize that at any given time, we face countless possible outcomes and that we, as individuals and through the organizations, we work for, can have a significant influence on how the future actually plays out. (Here’s my latest fun fact: futures-thinking also helps our mental well-being: recent research from BetterUp Labs found that people who score high in future-minded leadership report 34 percent less anxiety and 35 percent less depression than their peers. They are more optimistic about the future, more productive, and have greater life satisfaction.)

Much of my work centers on providing skills and raw material that can be used to imagine what those futures might be. I produce a stream of content that constitutes a kind of “futurism 101” training for the field. Some of this is shared through the CFM Blog, where I explore the implications of trends and current events, and highlight museums that are adapting to these changes. ?I also jumpstart other people’s foresight practice by sharing the results of my own scanning (that’s futurist-speak for “reading the news”) through the free newsletter Dispatches from the Future of Museums, and by developing scenarios museums can apply to their own planning.?

Sometimes I have the opportunity for deeper engagement with museum people by teaching classes or workshops—but I can only do so many of those in a given year. I’m really excited about our latest publication, The AAM Strategic Foresight Toolkit, which pulls together materials I’ve created over more than a decade of this work. I hope the Toolkit amplifies the impact of our work by making it easy for museums to incorporate futures training into their staff development and their own strategic planning.

Q: Let’s talk about the pandemic and its impact on the museum field and those working in the museum sector. Can you tell me what about the Measuring the Impact of COVID-19 on People in the Museum Field report? Why was it necessary to do this research?

EM: As the novel coronavirus spread across the world in spring 2020, my colleagues and I at AAM basically dropped whatever else we were doing to focus on helping the museum sector make it through the crisis. On February 25, the CDC warned that COVID-19 was “likely heading towards pandemic status,” and on March 5, 2020, we launched a new section of the AAM website devoted to COVID-19/coronavirus Resources and Information for the Museum Field. Six days later the World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 was in fact a global pandemic. (That timeline, by the way, demonstrates how futures thinking can help organizations stay ahead of rapidly changing circumstances.)

From the beginning, we knew it would be vital to collect data documenting the impact of the pandemic on the museum sector. Our first focus was the effect on museums themselves, in order to provide the material we needed to advocate for relief. AAM’s staff used the data from our early surveys to ensure that museums were eligible for critical funding such as the Small Business Administration's (SBA) Shuttered Venue Operators Grants and the Paycheck Protection Program, and for that funding to be large enough to meet their needs. Our advocacy efforts in 2020 and 2021 led to over 62,000 messages sent to Congress, helping secure billions in federal relief funding in response to this crisis. That initial data collection, advocacy, and communication supported museum staff as well, by tracking layoffs and furloughs, and encouraging museums to access relief funding that could help them retain staff.

But we knew we also needed to document the human cost of the pandemic—documenting the experiences of directors struggling to protect their staff, staff coping with disruptions to their work, income, and families, independent professionals struggling to keep their businesses afloat, students hoping to enter a profession that was essentially on hold, and people experiencing retirement in a way very different from what they expected. So in March of 2021 we launched a survey designed to measure the impact of COVID-19 on people in the museum field.

Part of the purpose of this research was to help people feel heard and to validate their experiences. One of the devastating side effects of the pandemic has been isolation. Knowing that you and your peers are going through this together can be a source of strength. Another goal was to help museums understand how to care for their staff in such an incredibly difficult time—what practices make staff feel safe, valued, and supported? Long term, we wanted museum leaders to understand how the pandemic not only was affecting the people who work for them now, but the potential ripple effects in years to come.

Q: AAM also created a site that shared resources to address the challenges identified in the report—tell me about that.

EM: Anytime AAM staff identify a challenge, we try to present potential solutions as well. So when we sat down and read the results of the individual impact survey, we asked ourselves “is there anything we can find that might help, even a little bit?”

The impact has taken a tremendous toll on the physical and mental health of people in our field—whether or not they or their family members became ill with COVID-19. CFM has already been tracking and sharing resources on self-care (which was, somewhat presciently, one of the themes of our 2019 TrendsWatch report). We updated those resources to help people combat burnout, create their own self-care plan, and (if necessary) search for a new job.

It's incumbent on employers to support individual well-being as well. Museums have faced three “duties of care” over the past two years: to survive the pandemic and emerge positioned to resume their roles in service to their communities; to support their communities during COVID-19 and mitigate the damage to the most vulnerable; and to care for their own staff, for the people who make the museum itself possible. The individual impact survey helped us frame that last duty in a way that could foster effective response by museums. The site you refer to summarizes the actions employers can take to support their staff, including creating a healthy and supportive workplace culture, prioritizing health and safety, providing economic relief, and assisting staff who have been laid off. Our research documented the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women and on people of color, so we included resources on supporting women in the workplace, and on centering DEAI in museum practice.

Besides the statistical data (x percent of museums did this, y percent of people experienced that) the surveys gave us a wealth of anecdotal data that illuminated creative, compassionate, courageous ways museums were responding to the crisis: providing a place on site for children of employees to do their virtual learning, offering free meals for staff during furloughs or museum closures, providing assistance to former staff navigating the process of applying for unemployment assistance, or helping with job hunting and placement. We hope these examples will inspire other museums to follow suit.

Q: At the time of the report coming out in April of 2021, it was reported that 36 % of those in the museum field lost their jobs, and numerous museums have closed. It’s been almost a year since the survey and the report have come out; how have the numbers changed since then?

EM: We just released our fourth institutional COVID snapshot survey, and while things are getting better for some museums, overall there are still clear signs of stress. Sixty percent of museums report having experienced pandemic-related financial loses. In 2021 one quarter had a decrease in their net operating performance compared to 2020, which was already a pretty low bar. Attendance is still down 38 percent from pre-pandemic levels. This extended financial distress affects staffing—37 percent of museums report having decreased their staff, by an average of 28 percent. On the bright side, 47 percent plan to increase their staff size over the coming year. In terms of long-term risk, the percentage of directors who feel their museum may be at risk of permanent closure has dropped by half—from 32 percent at the beginning of the pandemic, to 17 percent in the latest survey.

Q: The report painted a problematic picture of the museum field in many aspects; one such statistic, less than half those working in the area, or (46%) think they will be working in museums in the next three years. As a member of the museum field and in your role at CFM, these statistics must have been very challenging to see. What’s your takeaway from these numbers and the study itself?

EM: I think it is important to think about this stat in the context of a bigger challenge facing whole country—what journalists have dubbed the “Great Resignation”—as we see an unprecedented number of people quitting jobs or changing professions. For example, a new poll from the National Education Association shows that 55 percent of teachers will leave teaching sooner than they intended. One in five health care workers have left the medical profession since the pandemic began. People in a range of professions are suffering from stress and burnout and revisiting their choices about what work they are willing to do, and for what pay.

That doesn’t mean we should be complacent about it happening in museums! But I think it’s important to remember that museums are not somehow uniquely bad places to work—they are struggling to provide good, stable jobs in a society that lacks a robust, integrated network of support for health, child-care, and employment. And because other sectors are coping with similar challenges, we can look outside our field for examples of potential solutions. What do employers need to do to attract and retain workers? While compensation is of course an issue, some research suggests that workplace culture is even more important.

Pre-pandemic, many people in society as a whole, and in museums as a microcosm of society, felt we were suffering the effects of an unhealthy imbalance of power between employers and labor. The labor shortage created by the pandemic has shifted that power dynamic and may presage a new era for the American worker. Our latest COVID data hint at that possible shift: 56 percent of museums report having trouble filling open positions, and 45 percent identify a shortage of labor and skills as one of the greatest disruptions to their business strategy in the coming year.

Q: As a futurist, what trends can we see now that are hopeful for the museum field and those working within museums today?

EM: I love the way you frame that question. It’s all too easy to fall into a pessimistic outlook when we read the news. Actively searching for signals of hope is a healthy way to counteract that tendency. Marina Gorbis, director of the Institute for the Future, has pointed out that “a more equitable future begins in our imagination.”?When you see something in the news that points in a hopeful direction, I hope you use that nugget to fuel your imagination, asking “how could I/my museum build on that trend? How could we help ensure there is more of that good thing?”

?Here are a few seeds of hope I am hoping we can water in coming years:

• Museum schools. During the pandemic, several museums started new schools. (See, for example, this recent guest post on the CFM blog from the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, as well as this post from the Kidzeum.) This continues a trend I’ve been following for years, and I look forward to a day when any child in America can choose to go to school in a museum (preferably a free, public school).
• Sustainable tourism. All around the world, over-crowded destinations such Amsterdam, Prague, Paris, and Barcelona are trying to redirect tourists to less-traveled regions of their countries. Some cities, including Venice, are using the pandemic pause to rethink their approach to tourism in order to diversify their economies and create a more livable city for residents. I’m very encouraged to see museums joining the “sustainable tourism” movement as well: The Uffizi, in Florence, recently launched the “Uffizi Diffusi” (scattered Uffizi) to foster new tourist destinations across central Italy, in part by loaning its collections to small, distributed venues. (A related pandemic signal—nearly a third of the museums responding to the most recent survey indicate they intend to reduce their maximum capacity for visitors in the long term—perhaps responding to feedback that people LIKE smaller, less crowded experiences.) I can envision a future when large American museums, as a matter of course, foster travel, tourism, and the economy generally throughout their region, rather than focusing just on the numbers they bring through their doors.
• Inclusive Hiring. The labor shortage, combined with a decrease in the number of Americans (particularly men) getting college degrees, is prompting more employers to de-emphasize academic degrees, and consider job and life experience instead. Workers are using their new leverage to demand training and opportunity to advance in their careers. Many museums have committed to building staffs that reflect the diversity of the communities they serve. Our sector’s traditional focus on degrees as prerequisites for employment can get in the way of achieving that goal. And the staff who do “contribute to diversity” are often found in low-wage jobs with little to no room for growth. What if, in the future, museums commonly hired from the community, without regard for college or graduate degrees, and provided the training mentorship to turn entry-level jobs into pathways for advancement? Margaret Koch recently wrote a post for the CFM blog about how the Bullock Texas State History Museum is tackling that challenge. She envisions creating “hybrid” positions that let people split their time between visitor services work and apprenticeships in departments like exhibits, education, or development.