Good afternoon, everyone.
Thank you all for joining us to learn about research to inform
the American Latino History and Culture Program.
This work was contracted to the Urban Institute by the Institute
of Museum and Library Services.
Next slide.
First, we will cover a few basic details.
Today's webinar will be conducted in English, but we are
joined by live Spanish and Portuguese interpreters.
If you would like interpretation, please click on
the globe icon on your Zoom dashboard and then click either
Spanish or Portuguese to hear that interpreter.
For those who need closed captioning, you can select that
option by clicking Show Captions at the bottom of your screen.
The video and audio from this webinar will be recorded and
available on IMLS's website for later viewing.
If you have a question or comment, please use the Q&A
button at the bottom of your screen and we will answer as
many questions as we can at the end of this briefing.
Lastly, we will be using the term American Latino today
because that is the term used in the 2020 legislation authorizing
this new program.
However, we acknowledge and respect the diverse preferences
that people have when referencing American Latino
life, art, history and culture.
In today's briefing, we will have an introduction by Laura
Huerta Migus and Gibran Villalobos at IMLS.
They will provide background on the American Latino History and
Culture program.
Following that introduction, we will present the Urban
Institute's research, key findings and recommendations to
IMLS.
We focus on our main final report, but also highlight other
products and events that our team did for this project.
And as I mentioned, there will be time at the end for questions
and and we will share information on how to reach us
afterward for more feedback.
Now we will turn it to IMLS.
Thank you, Jennifer and hello to all of our participants.
My name is Laura Huerta Migus and I am the Deputy Director for
the Office of Museum Services here at IMLS.
And I hope that many of you on the call are familiar with the
agency.
But in case you are not a brief introduction, IMLS is an
independent executive branch agency, and we are the federal
government's largest funder of libraries, museums and archives.
The agency's mission is to advance, support, and empower
the nation's museums, libraries, and related organizations
through grant making, but also through research and policy
development.
We're very glad to be with you today and our partners at the
Urban Institute to share this important research that really
fulfills all three parts of our agency's mission, outreach and
development and research and evidence gathering that will
help shape the future of the American Latino History and
Culture Grant program.
And I think with that, I'm going to hand it over to my colleague
Gibran Villalobos, who has been our lead engagement manager for
this effort.
Gibran, you need to unmute Gibran.
I thought I had.
Good afternoon, everyone.
Thank you, Laura.
My name is Gibran Villalobos and I was the project manager this
past year for this project.
The study will help us inform and advance the next phase of
our project, which is to help launch the American Latino
History and Culture Program.
The results of the study will help us develop language
guidelines and have a view of what is happening across the
United States in terms of the needs and urgencies of museums.
This will help us identify new goals and strategies and
outreach and also being able to support museums in in the field.
So I want to move on very, very quickly to pass it on to the
team so that we can begin learning about the results from
the study.
Thank you Laura and Gibran.
Next, we want to introduce our research team.
The Urban Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy
research organization based in Washington, DC with about 500
researchers.
We focus on a range of issues across multiple policy areas.
One example was Urban's evaluation of IMLS's Museum
Grants for African American History and Culture program.
This was a retrospective evaluation since that program
was already ongoing, but it has parallels with the American
Latino History and Culture program we are discussing today.
This research has been led by my colleague Mark Treskon and
myself, Jennifer Yaner nee Castro with a core team of
researchers that included Paola Echavez, Josh Fording, Sofia
Hinojosa, Karolina Ramos and F anny Terrones.
Our research has involved a large team of colleagues at
Urban that includes many members of our Latinx affinity group,
and our team included consultation from 2 museum
professionals, Patricia Laness and Antonio Rodriguez, who have
over 40 combined years in the Latino museum space.
Turning to our research study, IMLS gave us five key
objectives.
First, our research was to inform the design of IMLS's
American Latino History and Culture program so that it would
reflect an understanding of diverse Latino cultural
institutions and intersecting identities.
Second, we aimed to identify the potential universe of cultural
institutions and organizations that could be relevant to or
interested in this program.
Third, we wanted to develop priorities for IMLS's
implementation of this program to ensure it addresses the needs
of American Latino museums and builds upon their strengths.
4th, we hope to clarify how IMLS might work with similar federal
programs to support, expand and sustain the American Latino
History and Culture program's growth.
And lastly, we aim to help IMLS measure the program's success
for the field of American Latino museums.
This work took place over a 15 month period from October 2022
to December 2023, and it included a review of over 250
pieces of literature in English, Portuguese and Spanish, Scan of
30 databases, including online museum directories, national
nonprofit organization data sets, and federal grant award
records, all to map the American Latino museum space.
We also conducted 2 community listening sessions in July of
2023, one in English and one in Spanish.
We conducted an online survey aimed at American Latino museum
professionals who might apply to this program.
And finally, we interviewed 40 American Latino museum
practitioners, collaborators and funders both inside and outside
the federal government.
The next slides show our research findings, which are
organized into four themes, Understanding the American
Latino museum field, funding experiences of American Latino
museums, growing the capacity of the field, and implementation
priorities for the American Latino history and Culture
program.
And I'll turn it to my colleague, Mark.
You might be muted right now.
Mark, thank you.
Thank you, Jennifer.
I'm Mark Treskon as Jennifer mentioned earlier.
Thank you for joining us today.
So our first section focuses on the American Latino Museum
field.
Basically the who, where, and what of museums and institutions
potentially interested in this program.
There are 4 main questions that we tried to answer here.
What are the diverse characteristics of the American
Latino experience?
How should these characteristics inform understanding of an
American Latino museum?
What criteria best define an American Latino museum for the
ALHC program?
And then finally, what is the universe of ALHC program
stakeholders?
To start off with a quote, we wanted to pull this to
illustrate how nuanced this discussion needs to be in order
to reflect the diversity of American Latino museums.
As an interviewee said, we're such a diverse community.
All have different experiences based on what part of the
country we are in, based on the countries our families are from,
and we all have different cultural heritages.
So overall, in our examination we found a number of threads
putting together American Latino museums.
Compared to museums in general, American Latino museums tend to
be smaller and newer, starting from grassroots community
efforts, have less formal staffing, more likely to use
part time staff or volunteers, and may exist in non traditional
spaces.
This is both programmatic spaces but also physical spaces as
well.
In our searching and discussions, we identified 270
museums, which are the ones that are basically core to a lot of
our analysis.
We divided them into three groups.
The first group are museums where the core and central
missions are around and focused on American, Latino themes.
We found 86 of these museums institutions.
The second group, are other institutions where American
Latino themes are part of the mission, but the mission
includes other elements as well.
We identified 20 of these.
Together, these 106 museums are the core group of American
Latino museums that we identified and focused on.
In a fair amount of our analysis, however, we also
identified 164 other museums that have hosted exhibits with
American Latino themes.
This is focused in particular on those that have received federal
grants and therefore showed up in our scan of federal grants
databases.
This group is not exhaustive of all museums that have hosted
American Latino themed exhibits, but also helps us compare our
core group to museums that are already plugged into an active
and federal grant making efforts.
This map shows where the museums and our database are located.
As you can see, they're clustered in California, the
Southwest and Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the Northeast
with locations elsewhere.
And going from the location to the types we want to say, and we
dig into this in our report, is museums in our analysis reflect
a wide range of types.
A bit more than 1/3 in our database are art museums.
After that about 50 each,
this is out of the 270, are cultural centers or libraries,
archives, and university research centers.
Our sample also includes a number of history museums and
historic sites and museums that serve more specialized or
multiple purposes. To understand the American Latino museum
ecosystem in the role of higher educational institutions, both
as potential partners and as providers of training for museum
professionals.
We also reviewed Hispanic Serving Institutions or HSIs.
We'll discuss this a little bit more later too, but the basic
definition of an HSI is a college or university where at
least 25% of the undergraduate student body is Hispanic.
Emerging HSIs are those with between 15 and 25% undergraduate
Hispanic population student bodies.
Now, enrollment alone does not necessarily mean relevant museum
related programming or programming focused on American
Latino themes.
For our study, we did identify 50 universities or colleges that
had an American Latino museum.
HSIs tend to be located in the same locations as American
Latino museums.
Again California, the Southwest and Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico,
and the Northeast.
Finally, we wanted to have a sense of museums located in
neighbourhoods with significant Latino populations.
So this map shows the location of all museums identified in a
database of nonprofits across the United States, located in
census tracts with one quarter, 25% or 50% Latino population or
more.
Again, while these institutions tend to cluster in a few States
and cities across the United States, we do want to stress how
many we actually have found and how many there are.
If you're looking at neighbourhoods with 25% or more
Latino population, there's over 1400 of these, and there are 532
of these museums in neighbourhoods with half or
higher population of Latino.
So we do this to highlight a somewhat different approach for
identifying museums that could speak to the American Latino
experience.
This is through community acknowledgement and engagement
or even partnerships with nearby American Latino museums.
So from this section of the work, we have 4 main conclusions
and recommendations.
First, the American Latino museum field is diverse and
growing.
Second, this diversity means IMLS should pay attention to the
needs of institutions that may not be a traditional museum, but
nonetheless may be eligible.
Third, community engagement and collaboration is key to the
identity of many American Latino museums and an opportunity for
many others.
Grant review should consider supporting institutions doing
this sort of collaborative and engagement work.
And then finally, the quick reviews of HSIs in IMLS's own
fellowship programming illustrate the value of
identifying and cultivating professional development
opportunities for American Latino museum professionals.
Next, we focused on understanding the funding
experiences of American Latino museums, especially in the
federal space.
We had four main questions.
What is the landscape of existing funding opportunities
for American Latino museums?
What share of American Latino museums applied previously for
federal funding?
What cultural considerations affect access to federal funding
and what features of funding opportunities increase
accessibility for potential applicants to the American
Latino History and Culture Program?
First, we show a graph that measures the median assets and
revenues of museums.
In our analysis, you can see that the museums whose central
or partial mission was focused on American Latino art, history
or culture were significantly smaller than other museums that
have only hosted an American Latino exhibit, but do not
describe themselves as American Latino oriented.
Next, we looked at the museums who responded to our survey and
asked for their top sources of funding.
The top three listed were philanthropic foundations,
individual donors, and local or state government agencies.
Only a third of these museums listed the federal government as
a top funding source.
We also asked survey participants what limited them
from applying to federal grants and the top three reasons were
not having enough time or staff, not being aware of the
opportunity, and feeling that the application process was too
complicated. One person we interviewed said,
"I think a lot of Latino museums tend to be understaffed, and the
thought of taking on a federal grant if their staff does not
have the bandwidth can be overwhelming." When considering
whether to apply for a federal grant,
The museum participants we surveyed listed the grant
management requirements and the ease of the application process
as two of their top three considerations, we also wanted
to understand how Latino museums might use the funds from the
American Latino History and Culture Program.
So we asked survey participants to prioritize what they used
grant funding for on a scale from one to five.
Participants consistently indicated grant funding is
prioritized to exhibits and programs, but they also used it
for organizational planning, staffing, community engagement,
and partnerships, as well as improving their capacity to
manage collections.
From this assessment of Latino museums, funding experiences,
and other research described in our final report, we extracted
several recommendations.
First, the American Latino History and Culture Programs
application process should support the ability of
applicants to easily search for and find program opportunities.
And see what has been funded previously.
Also, the review process for the program should be informed by
culturally relevant equity considerations.
IMLS should consider using the program to offer strategic
planning or seed funding grants, given that American Latino
museums tend to be smaller and newer than other museums.
And IMLS should offer culturally responsive technical assistance
and engage in outreach that encourages American Latino
museums to see this program as a key funding opportunity.
It's also important that the application requirements be
streamlined as much as possible.
So we next turn to the question of capacity, specifically the
ways that IMLS can assist museums to build and sustain
their missions.
This part of our research focuses on three question
themes.
The alignment between the goals of IMLS for the ALHC program and
the goals of American Latino museums, the assets, resources,
and needs that can be supportive of applicants and participants,
and also the question about performance metrics to assess
progress in ways to make them valuable both to IMLS and
participants.
So as grounding in this section, we have a basic theory of change
diagram for the ALHC program.
It's high level and I won't be going through all of the bullets
and parts of it right now, but we want to highlight the ways in
which there are three interconnected program goals.
The first is to support the existing field, The 2nd is to
grow and strengthen that field and identify new participants
and, yeah, and colleagues.
And the third is to support professionals and
professionalization.
So I'll pause a bit briefly here to show the same slide in
Spanish.
This is basically seen as a diagram, as a way to kind of
understanding some of the main goals of IMLS and figuring out
how to link them with content to the goals of the museums that
will be participating in this program.
So in terms of capacity building recommendations, what our
research stressed was the value of aligning museum grantee goals
and needs with the goals of IMLS.
There's natural alignment here, of course, but based on
interviews and the survey, we identified 5 themes for IMLS to
consider to best support the American Latino Museum field.
1st is the importance of connections, partnerships,
collaborations, and networking.
This is something we heard across our our our conversations
and the survey.
And going back to the listening sessions as well, This came up
again and again.
I'll also say the value next is the value of linking intended
program impact to grantee goals.
Again, this is an area of alignment, but IMLS should
reflect on potential ways in which a museum grantee may think
about goals differently or define them differently or
consider different ways of meeting those goals.
That might be where IMLS is starting from.
This is where you know, conversation and engagement
discussion ongoing will actually be really helpful.
Again reflecting on the sizable share of American Latino museums
that may be small, new or non traditional, we heard a lot on
the value of seed funding, planning, grants, cost matching
flexibility and multi year timelines for providing
sustained support and capacity building value.
Related to this technical assistance, a range of
partnership models and mentoring were also expressed as being
done.
Finally, contacts stress the value of flexible and user
friendly reporting requirements, keeping in mind that there are
structures within which IMLS needs to adhere to.
But there might be some options to make it less foreboding and
more easy for, you know, grantees and applicants to
basically do what they need to do.
The last section of our final report summarizes the
implementation priorities for the American Latino History and
Culture Program.
Specifically, IMLS wanted to know what ALHC program
implementation priorities would be most effective, what
considerations from other cultural museums could inform
the ALHC program, and how IMLS could capitalize on other
federal models to develop the American Latino History and
Culture program.
This quote from an American Latino Museum collaborator
summarizes what many participants we interviewed saw
as much needed outreach.
IMLS has to be proactive about reaching out to the Latino
community to expand the pool and educate other non museum
organizations on how they can partner with an IMLS eligible
applicant on a project.
IMLS has to be inspiring and creative in their outreach
efforts, especially to launch and make this new grant program
successful.
So looking across all the research we just presented and
more that is described in our final report, we see four key
priorities.
IMLS should build upon the technical assistance it already
offers for many of its existing programs.
I would tailor this TA to the interests and needs of American
Latino museums.
IMLS should consider best practices of other funders.
In our interviews, we found some practices that both funders and
grantees appreciated,
that IMLS could incorporate. The outreach efforts for the
American Latino History and Culture program need to be
sustained, creative and flexible and stay up to date on
happenings in the American Latino museum space.
And lastly, much of our research supported the importance of
collaboration and networking for American Latino museums,
funders, educational institutions and other
interested parties.
So thank you.
Everything that we just presented can be found in our
final report and it's publicly available on the Urban
Institute's website in both English and Spanish, along with
more details in that report than we could cover today.
Our team also produced eight additional products in English
and Spanish that my colleagues will briefly discuss next.
Turn it to Paola.
Hello everyone.
My name is Paola Echavez and I co wrote a research brief with
Josh Bordin looking at the US communities where Hispanic
serving institutions or HSIs are located.
We found that communities with HSIs had a larger Latino
population and were more likely to have an American Latino
Museum compared to communities without.
HSIs making these institutions well positioned to collaborate
with Latino museums and to engage Latino communities.
We also found that Spanish is spoken by the majority of the
Latino population and that 1/4 of Latinos are immigrants in
communities with HSI.
Next slide, we're in the US and American and Latino museums.
This was discussed earlier by Mark.
He produced a brief exam examining museums in Latino
neighborhoods, which has given greater detail than what was
shown earlier.
I will now pass it to my colleague Fanny Terrones.
My name is Fanny Terrones and I co-wrote a brief with Sofia
Hinojosa describing how Urban engaged with community of
American Latino museums for this project.
In this brief, we emphasized the importance of using data methods
that respectfully engage marginalized communities and
talk about the ways in which Urban was able to do that.
We outlined these methods by first identifying the right
audience, accommodating community needs, and relaying
information with dignity.
We also provided some suggestions for improving
community engaged methods with similar populations and future
projects.
Next slide please.
What is an American Latino Museum?
This was written by my colleague Mark, who wrote this blog
reflecting on what an American Latino museum is based on ALHC
program legislation and our team's research.
Pass it over to Patricia.
Thank you.
Thank you for my name is Patricia Lanis.
I am a museum consultant and Co founder of Cultures and
Literacies Through Art for the 21st Century.
I Co wrote a blog for the Urban Institute with Jennifer and
Sophia on the importance of American Latino museums.
As you know, American Latino museums hold great value in
preserving the diversity of Latino cultures across the US
need advancing equity for Latino communities.
They also foster the development of Latino professionals and
serve as a place for interdisciplinary dialogue about
Latino priorities.
Next, please.
Thank you.
I was also pleased to be part of an urban-hosted panel with Laura
Huerta Migus and Selena Arias Milner discussing the ways in
which American Latino museums advanced cultural equity in US
communities.
This webinar was recorded and is available for view viewing on
Urban's website.
Now I pass it to Antonio Rodriguez.
Thank you Patricia.
My name is Antonio Rodriguez.
I am a museum consultant and chair of the Advisory Council at
the International Council of Museums, ICOM.
As part of this project, I co wrote a brief with Jennifer and
Mark looking at funding opportunities for American
Latino museums.
Historically, the funding landscape for culturally
specific museum has been very challenging.
Through the research for this project, we identified potential
founders, including Imls.
We also compiled some tips or suggestions for Latino museums
who are seeking funding, but also for funders who wish to
improve Latino museum access to funding opportunities.
Much of these tips, especially for funders, focus on proactive
outreach to diverse communities and being able to offer a robust
technical assistance.
Next slide, please.
Another product that emerged from this work is a brief by
Karolina Ramos that focuses on the commitment to equity that
federal founders of American Latino Museum have made.
It described equity action plans put in place in 2022 by IMLS,
the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment
for the Humanities, as well as the progress they have been
making since then.
Thank you, Mark.
Back to you.
Thank you.
I was just trying to advance the slide here.
So we've covered a lot of ground today.
We have a lot of materials and those materials have a lot more
in the way of context and content and examples throughout
all of these, all of these things.
But we want to leave you with a few summary points, again based
around the four themes that we covered today.
1st is the diversity and growth of the American Latino museum
sector and field and the implications for IMLS as it sets
up the ALHC grant program.
IMLS has experience working with other you know somewhat similar
grant programs.
We mentioned the African American grant museum grant
program earlier.
There are similarities and differences here, and this is
something that IMLS, you know, we we have, we've been in
contact and discussions with and our interviews talked about a
lot.
Second, and related to the first, is the ways in which
smaller and newer museums may have distinct goals and benefit
from tailored supports.
Third, we heard a lot about connections, both about the
value of formal partnerships, but also of networking,
knowledge sharing and impact measurement that benefit IMLS
and the museum's it supports.
And 4th, we stress the importance for communication.
This includes grantee supports and technical assistance, but
also outreach and communications more broadly and consistently.
IMLS should continue creative outreach and support to identify
new museums and potential partnerships that could benefit
from the ALHC program in the years ahead.
Finally, and again, thank you for your time and consideration
today.
You can reach out to us via the emails or the project landing
page URL found at the left of the slide.
And also again, thank you to IMLS and to the museums,
institutions, collaborators and funders who made time to
participate in this study.
The views expressed in this study and its reports are those
of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban
Institute, its trustees or its funder, IMLS.
Thank you again for your time.
Thank you so much.
Mark.
I would just encourage anyone who has any questions to please
use the Q&A button at the bottom.
It does appear we have a few questions.
I'm not sure they're who would be best to answer.
So let me just take a look.
But please, we have plenty of time for you to to submit any
questions you might have.
Someone is specifically requesting if we could show
slide 31 again and I believe that might be the theory of
change.
Oh yes, OK.
So I might I'll be able to pull that up.
As I try pulling that up, I know there's another question as I
scroll a little bit about the research disaggregating
institutions that use Latino, Latina, Latinx, Museum of Latin
American Art versus nationally specific museums.
We discussed that and we did a lot of work in our searches on
that.
One thing I didn't explicitly mention is our final report has
a technical appendix where we actually talk about our
processes for doing that.
And I think we mentioned further up our number of the number of
databases.
We searched how we actually did that both for institutional
names and mission statements, but also for grants.
So that played into our analysis and searching in particular.
And maybe Mark, if I can jump in on that as well.
Just as a reminder that all of these questions were guided by
the language that was in the legislation that creates this
new program.
And so the language does not actually create the field or
even the name of the sector of American Latino museums.
And so this work was really to explore how IMLS can create a
working definition for our use that might be useful for the
field to respond to.
And I think those kinds of questions about content focus
and community focus are going to be workshopped by the community
and we will learn from that as well.
I did want to address, if I can, another related question that
came very early in the presentation around Mark, the
types of organizations, the bucket, the three buckets that
you talked about in terms of organizations that are clearly
have a content focus on Latino Latinx cultures broadly, but as
their primary content focus those that were geographically
in a majority Latino community And then the third, those that
have exhibited Latino content.
And so just as a reminder that you use that as a framework to
then sort of winnow down what a functional definition might be,
correct?
Yeah.
And I will say that was also referencing language that is in
the legislation if you all would like to look up the National
Muse National Museum of the American Latino Act, much of
this research was exploring
openings that that legislative language directed us to.
I can pull up the slide shortly and it was clarified that it was
actually a question slide.
So I will, yeah, there are a few other questions about
institutional eligibility that I will address.
But I want to make sure that this is the, the question slide
that you're responding to the request for.
Yes, and I did let her know and I guess everyone knows this is
being recorded.
So you can feel free to look at the presentation more closely
afterwards.
And we're happy to to e-mail anyone the slides if you contact
me at JYAHNER at urban.org.
Thank you.
There are some questions about institutional eligibility, I
think, for the future IMLS program that I'd like to
clarify.
IMLS's work as a grant maker is defined by statute and
regulation and in general we are only able to fund,
not-for-profit, museum or museum services.
More of that will be coming out as we develop this program and
eligibility, but all of our funding, we can only make awards
directly to United States based organizations.
We cannot fund internationally.
And so if you are not an eligible organization, it is
important to find a partner organization that might be
eligible.
That is really a successful strategy across all of our
programs.
There are have been a couple questions about the the
publications that we referenced and we have a single website
that I think I've typed in an answer, but it also appeared on
our last slide.
It Ron just added it too.
Oh wonderful.
OK, great.
Please visit that web page and you can find clickable links to
all the resources that we produced.
I'll also say that you can search in Google and they'll pop
up and we have English and Spanish versions.
So you search with English, it'll pop up on the name of, you
know, Hispanic serving institutes.
Where in the US are Latino museums?
And you search in Spanish and the same will be should be true,
but that website houses all of the the products.
I can take a stab at one of the questions that was asked as
well, which is what are the next steps after the study.
So in the upcoming year, we're going to be looking, as an
agency, the IMLS will be looking at the data, will be looking at
what are some of the responses that we heard in the field and
addressing this in the forthcoming program.
What this means is that as we develop the guidelines and the
goals and objectives of future funding opportunities, we're
going to be cognizant of what we have heard in the field.
So stay tuned for more on potential upcoming Notice of
Funding Opportunity as we like to call it which will be
available on our website.
And if you would like more of a peek into what a current notice
of funding opportunity looks like, again, please visit the
website where we have sample applications of of what we have
done in the past as well as what you might expect from the
American Latino history and culture program.
Maybe we'll do one last call.
For any more questions, please put them in the Q and A. I
believe the other ones have been addressed live by Laura.
Maybe there are a couple at the very bottom, Jennifer, that I
might address.
There is a question here about resources for opening museum or
cultural events sector.
Unfortunately, that is not a space that IMLS provides
resources.
However, there are a number of other resource organizations
that do have that kind of information and support.
The American Alliance of Museums is certainly one resource.
And then I think also organizations like NALAC and
other arts and culture organizations are going to have
good resources that can support.
And then there is a question I think that is related also
around some challenges that we anticipate with dispersing these
funding opportunities.
As Mark mentioned, IMLS has been given this mandate before for
other specific parts of the museum field disciplines, even
naming them like our African American History and culture
grants programs, as well as being a funder in the way that
we are the only public funder of museums.
We have a special interest in reaching small volunteer run
grassroots organizations and so we really are very glad to hear
that the recommendations that Urban found through its research
very much aligns with the needs that we hear from all types of
other small and grassroots museum and cultural
organizations.
Community driven engagement, looking at lowering structural
barriers to getting into the system and the importance of
relationship building is are all messages that we hear across our
work.
And so that helps us know that we have some good lessons
learned on what we can bring to this program from the beginning.
And we know that talking to the field in this way is so
important and then being out in the field and being in
conversation is also very, very important.
Well, thank you so very much.
I think we have answered most of the questions that we could get
to and we have hopefully shared the, the web page and and also
IMLS will be making products available on its website as well
including this recording.
So we hope that you all enjoy the presentation and our work
and we're so proud to have worked on this effort and for
IMLS.
And thank you all for taking time to join us today.
And if I can, before we sign off, I want to give big thanks
to the entire Urban Institute team on behalf of IMLS.
It is important and part of our transparency practice to engage
external partners to do this work, to make sure that we are
listening and being responsive with public funds.
And we know that this work has been thorough and done with a
lot of heart and thoughtfulness.
So thank you all for your excellent, excellent work and
partnership.
Thank you so much, Laura.
It's been our pleasure and and Gibran as well thank you for
your partnership throughout this past year.
I believe that can conclude this briefing.
Thank you so much.
Take care.
Thank you.
Bye, bye.
Thank you.