In this episode, Abbie Diaz (Wisconsin Maritime Museum) speaks to us about accessibility and inclusion in museums.

Abbie talks about a range of changes she and her colleagues have made to their tours, programs, staffing and staff training and exhibit spaces to hold universal design in mind. From visitors who require low-sensory conditions to people who require wheelchair access, museum professionals must work together to ensure cultural and scientific educational spaces are accessible for diverse publics.

We also discuss the challenges of pushing for inclusive practice in the museums and education field, how socioeconomic and racial inequalities also act to exclude certain people from cultural and educational buildings, and how a huge part of her professional and personal journey has been inspired by the love and care of her brother Daniel.

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Show notes

You can find Abbie on Twitter if you have questions for her, or find her on Instagram.

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Transcript

Michael: Welcome to the Arch and Anth Podcast. It’s your host Michael here again and this is the podcast all about human history, about museums, about heritage and the people who work in the fields of anthropology and archaeology. Today, I have a very special guest, and today’s guest is Abbie Diaz. Abbie, are you there?

Abbie: I’m here! Hello!

Michael: Hello! How are you today, Abbie?

Abbie: I’m so good! How are you?

Michael: I’m doing well, as well. Where are you calling in from?

Abbie: I am in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, which is northeast Wisconsin in the US. And I’m at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum.

Michael: Oh, cool. And how long have you been living there?

Abbie: Oh, we are, oh gosh, everybody in Wisconsin measures by winters, so this is my second winter coming up, so just under two years and we already have snow up here.

Michael: Wow. I never knew that about people who live in Wisconsin.

Abbie: Maybe it’s just people who aren’t from Wisconsin who do that because it just seems like such a long winter. I’m from Virginia, so I’m cold all the time.

Michael: Right.

Abbie: I’m freezing… yeah!

Michael: So, that’s really interesting that you work at the Maritime Museum. For people who’ve never been there before, what sorts of things are on display generally?

Abbie: So we just had our fiftieth anniversary. So fifty years ago, we were founded to commemorate the twenty submarines that were built right here in Manitowoc for World War Two. So the massive effort of a fairly small town comparatively, so we built twenty subs for the navy. And so we started as a submariners memorial, so we have a World War Two submarine here you can stay the night on and go on tours, but we’ve since grown to the state’s maritime museum. So we tell the story of Wisconsin’s history through shipwrecks, and ship-building, fishing… we’re starting to talk about climate change and sustainability in just how water connects all people together.

Michael: And how long have you been working in museums or heritage? How many years have you been working in this field?

Abbie: I have been working in museums nine years? Coming on ten years, I think? So I started in archaeology, I was an archaeologist and that’s what I went to school for. But I quickly switched into education rather than fieldwork, because I was finding if I couldn’t make people care about what I was doing in the field, then my work became less important… if I couldn’t communicate that well. So I’ve since moved into museum education, although it is still, um, love archaeology. I go to conferences, I read the journals, but it’s been a minute since I’ve been out in the field.

Michael: Right, right… and, um, where you’re working at the moment at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum, how many visitors do you usually get per year or per month?

Abbie: We get about 50,000 a year and we’re in a pretty rural location, so the submarine is a big draw for the people. Um… 50,000 is where we’re at.

Michael: And is the submarine the main thing, the biggest thing a lot of people are excited to see?

Abbie: I think that’s what we’re most known for, but we also do a couple temporary exhibits a year. We have a fantastic shipwreck exhibit and we have underwater archaeologists that do lots of presentations, so my department, I run a lot of the public programs…

Michael: Cool!

Abbie: … all the fieldtrips, so I try to bring new people in by switching up what we’re doing programmatically.

Michael: When I used to do a lot of outreach as well, I don’t… obviously, I do this podcast now, um, which is a big, you know, outreach project, but, uh… before this, I used to speak to a lot of schools and a lot of public audiences and what I found really interesting was kids are always excited to learn about history or science.

Abbie: Yeah.

Michael: But what I found really cute and interesting is how the adults, like the parents who are bringing the kids, it was almost like something in them was being reignited and they were all of a sudden excited at something. They thought they were just bringing their kids, it was for their kids, but suddenly they want to ask me lots of questions about archaeology. Do you have that experience as well?

Abbie: Absolutely. And kids are a great gateway to start those conversations, because their passion and excitement is infectious, so it’s the same and it’s one of the best parts of the job is seeing that multigenerational interest in your work.

Michael: And your department – is it a big team?

Abbie: So we’re a pretty small museums. Our budget’s about $1,000,000 and we have maybe, uh, seven full-time employees and about a dozen part-time, so I have probably ten people that report to me. But that also includes visitor services, special events, since my department, all of that is under educational programs, which seems a little weird, but small museum life, you know?

Michael: I imagine it varies quite a lot, but what is your typical day, so when you get into work, what’s happening before you finish work?

Abbie: So I really run my department like a little city, so I have to fundraise for my own projects. I run my own tours, my programs… I find my own speakers. I staff my own programs, so really it’s looking at what’s coming up, what events are coming up, what grant and funds are due, so, for example, this week, uh, we have a couple fieldtrips. We had a lot of fieldtrips (both chuckle), I have a grant due on Friday, I have a group coming in to do a special… an adult presentation on Friday. I have a newspaper article due on Friday. Lots of stuff. We do a quarterly publication called The Anchor I’m Editor of. I have to get that to the printer by next week.

Michael: Cool!

Abbie: So all of that in addition to just being a boss and making sure the museum is running.

Michael: That’s really cool. Um, I know a big part of what you’re passionate about is also making all of these spaces in the museum accessible to as many people, as many public audiences as possible. And I wondered when in your career did you start to really focus in on these sorts of concerns or issues?

Abbie: So my brother is, um, a wonderful young man with disability. So we adopted Daniel when he was two years old, and he was found in a cardboard box in Virginia, where we were all born. And so we were his foster parents, his foster family, while the adoption was going through, and we knew when we adopted Daniel that there might be some delays, but we didn’t know all the things that were coming our way. And I wouldn’t have changed anything, but since knowing Daniel and loving Daniel and seeing Daniel try to come to the places where I’m working and try to love museums… it really opened my eyes and my perspective to how exclusionary and oppressive museums can be to visitors. So it really started with being a sister and now a caregiver, um, Daniel’s nineteen now, so my sister and I are two of his caregivers, and trying to bring him to places and seeing unwelcoming it is. And usually it’s not on purpose, but it’s carelessness and not, um, seeing things through an equitable lens has really made me push forward inclusive initiatives wherever I’ve worked. And this includes now doing consulting and trainings for other museum staff.

Michael: I’m wondering, like, what was the first time that you took Daniel to a museum, if you don’t mind me asking, and what sorts of things were, um, perhaps exclusionary towards people with a disability?

Abbie: So he’s… museums are my favorite thing. And as a family growing up in Virginia, we always Smithsonian and Jamestown and all the local sites. So that was part of it, but at that point, I wasn’t a museum professional, so I wasn’t seeing it through, uh, things that could be changed. I just thought that’s how things were, so when I went to school and I started working at my campus museum and Daniel would come up on the weekends and stay with me, I would say, like, “Wow! He really… when he’s in a wheelchair, he can’t really see these exhibits or there’s a lot of a steps, so when he gets out of the wheelchair, we can’t really go up and down that easily, there’s no elevator.” So that was a spark, but it wasn’t until I worked at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and I worked on creating fieldtrip programming. Daniel’s class came on a fieldtrip and I was so excited… I signed up to be the chaperone and I came downstaris to my office. And I saw that his class (and he was seventeen at the time… no, sixteen), I saw that his class had been put in the early childhood education space, which is like a lot of foam building blocks and water tables, and I was so mad because it wasn’t real engagement for him or any of his classmates because the stuff is meant for toddlers. And cognitively, it wasn’t appropriate, but also physically, they were too big for this space, so this space hadn’t been built with universal design in mind. Like, we weren’t considering all the users of this space and I was so upset that they really had just put them in this… this baby space… because we hadn’t been offered anything else. But then I also thought: if you’re writing your fieldtrip, that’s your job, this is something that you could change now, like, do better. So then, um, in about a year and a half, I had spearheaded, I had found allies and I found people that cared about what I cared about and made the case for inclusion, and this massive museum of over 500 employees, $60,000,000 running budget, started doing low-sensory mornings. We started to offer fieldtrips for people with disabilities and all students, and we started to talk about the power and privilege that’s inherent in museum education and how we can make our lab spaces more equitable for all learners. So, it was super powerful, but it was that one fieldtrip where I was like: “oh, this is something I could do, that I haven’t done. So this is on me, I’m the educator here, and I haven’t done my job.”

Michael: Yeah, I mean I have done this, um, advocacy as well in the academic setting. And at my university, I remember having conversations about how we can do better and, um, I think you’ve just touched on something that reminded me of this: that there are two aspects to it. One is to make practical changes so that logistically and tangibly and materially, people can have access to the same resources, but then the second thing is also there should be a, sort of like, a psychological, a culture change amongst people who you work with, otherwise making all of these, y’know, changes or doing actions, they’re not meaningful if not everybody is not, you know, personally invested in trying to be inclusive. There has to be a culture change that accompanies these actions.

Abbie: That’s exactly right. And if it’s one person spearheading and that person leaves, the change was not sustainable. So a big part of what I did is to find people and friends across this massive siloed organization and making them care about the things I was saying or if they already cared, giving them some easy action steps where they could use their sphere of influence to push inclusive things forward. Because the thing about inclusion or accessibility is that it’s pretty daunting. If you think you’re at zero, and you look at an inclusive organization, it’s a stark difference and you feel like, “I don’t even know how I would ever get there”. And so you’re sort of paralyzed in fear, and, um, not wanting to get it wrong, and not knowing where to start. And so it takes somebody kinda sneaking in and being like, “well, what if our labels were in large print?” and talking to the exhibit department about high-contrast, well-placed exhibit labels. “We could do that. Like let’s just do that?” And starting there and making incremental steps. So soon, your sphere of influence is much larger than if you just tried to take on something by yourself. It’s all about finding allies and getting support, and then that creates that culture change.

Michael: Yeah, and, uh, yeah, I always used to say to my department, you know, it takes an organization to change an organization’s culture. You can’t rely on the backs of a few people.

Abbie: That’s totally right.

Michael: When you were trying to do more of this work, did you ever receive, um, any, like, did you ever experience any pushback and how did you go through those challenges?

Abbie: Yes, of course! So, sometimes, I would hear, um, “well, people with disabilities don’t come here”. And I would say, “Oh, my gosh, that’s so right” because they didn’t, but then I would say, “but we know one in five Americans has a disability. Uh, so they’re not coming here. It’s not that they don’t exist. They’re not coming here, but what does that say about us? And sometimes for leadership and for boards and for executive directors or managers, I had to make the financial case, so if one of five Americans have a disability and they’re not coming here, this is untapped market. Like, people will come if we offer things as inclusive and universally designed. So if I brought it back to money, if I brought to “I could increase attendance, I could bring in fundraising dollars”, the case became more compelling. And I think what is special, um, about my story is people know Daniel. Like, I would bring Daniel to work with me all the time. Um, he lived with me, so if he didn’t have school, so he was coming to work with me, so we had a family atmosphere, where I was able to do that, but people were able to meet Daniel. And sometimes, it’s meeting somebody and being able to personally empathize, that I was able to make the case a lot easier than talking about ‘these people with disabilities’ without putting a real face on it. But I was really clear about… this is one person with disabilities, and we need to reach this huge intersectional group, but this is a good place to start.

Michael: And, uh, how much do you also try to advocate or raise awareness of also people with invisible disabilities as well – things that we can’t actually see on the surface?

Abbie: Yeah, so I think that a big part of the work that I did is trying to stress universal design and never… making sure people were never asking for diagnoses and never making people prove why they were coming to an accessible program. And so we marketed low-sensory mornings for anybody who identifed as needing a lower-sensory experience and that could include vets with PTSD, anybody with brain-based disorders, traumatic brain injuries, dementia or memory loss, and also people with autism. So we had to be really careful because when it was a free event, there was an impulse sometimes to say, “well, how do we know people aren’t going to take advantage of us?” And I would say, “they’re coming for a reason and that’s all we need to know. They have identified. And if it’s a financial barrier, if they’re coming because this is free and usually we’re $22 to come in, that’s still an accessibility issue and so I don’t care. (chuckle) I don’t care who comes, y’know? So it’s all part of changing that work culture and making people understand if we make more inclusive events, it’s better for everybody and we don’t need to know why they’re identifying to participate in things.

Michael: Yeah, mhm. Do you have, um, what are some of the, you know, initiatives or projects that you’ve worked on to make museums more accessible that you have been most excited by or that your colleagues have done as well that have really impressed you?

Abbie: Mmm, so when I was at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, I had a fantastic boss who really trusted me and knew that I wanted to do this. So he, um, me and two other educators really a summer off. We did teach during the summer. So he… we proposed to do, um, we called it ‘Mission Accessible’… a Road Trip Throughout Chicago and a couple of suburbs, and we would do an accessibility evaluation at each stop and we would meet with education staff, accessibility staff, leadership, and we would fill out an evaluation form, qualitative and quantitative, and try to see… and not give them a letter grade, but just gave where Chicago was at with their accessibility? Um, so we visited twenty-two sites in one summer. Um, and we were really lucky to be able to do that. We were able to mine that data and look for trends and that helped guide… the data helped guide what we did at MSI, but so did the networking, the partnerships we created. So from that, we did a massive teacher evaluation and so we e-mailed every teacher who had already given us an e-mail address and asked, uh, to ask them to describe who was in their classroom? Um, and then how could we best serve their classroom? So we asked, like, do your students need more tactile engagement? More time with tasks? Uh, do you have students who are low vision? Wheelchair users? Things like that so we could get a good gauge of what’s happening. And then we were able to make practical changes really quickly. So we added transcripts to all our learning lab spaces for the program who happen in there. So if you have a participant who was deaf or hard of hearing, they could follow along with the transcript. We added noise-reducing headphones, fidgets to every table, written instructions… we added bilingual materials since for the first time, Chicago public schools was more than 50% Spanish-speaking. So we knew it was essential that we include bilingual materials in Spanish and English.

Michael: Cool!

Abbie: We had a Spanish tutor come in and started tutoring us in Spanish once a week so that we could start communicating with our students in their native language. And since then, now here in Wisconsin, I have a little bit more autonomy, so I’ve gone past just students with disabilities, and so I, uh, I lead a science club at our local domestic abuse shelter and some of our homeless shelters, so people maybe who don’t identify as having a disability, but are definitely marginalized and continuing to engage. Although, I think we see a lot of mental illness in the homeless population that’s undiagnosed or un-… not talk about, or, for reasons of our broken insurance system, um, they’re unable to get the medication that they need, so that’s a population I’m really passionate about engaging now. And we’ve also started to work more with home-schooled students. We hear really often that parents are fed up with public school systems and special education requirements being understaffed, not serving their children. So we do, anecdotally, see a higher percentage of students with disabilities in the home-schooled population. So we’ve started to target them as an audience that we want to intentionally welcome to the museum through programs and events.

Michael: That’s really… honestly… inspiring, inspiring work and amazing work.

Abbie: Oh, thank you.

Michael: Yeah, and um, you know, like, honestly (chuckles) I’m almost, like, tearing up, just listening to it because I know that, um …

Abbie: Thank you very much.

Michael: … you know, I’ve been an archaeologist and anthropologist for many years, for ten years. And I feel like, you know, what we do is study the human condition. We study our common heritage, um, and our humanity, and I feel that everybody should have access to that information and all of that knowledge that, um, you know, researchers come up with, and put in museums on display, and I think especially, you know, when we consider the fact that in prehistory or even in historical periods, there definitely were, um, you know, poor people or people with disability, people who were marginalized or disenfranchised in the past, you know, it’s really good if people today in marginalized groups have access to that history as well so that they know, um, you know, society is really old, and the knowledge we come up with in museums and universities belongs to everyone in that way.

Abbie: I love that and I love making those… because I’m an archaeologist at heart, whenever I talk about accessibility and disability, I love giving examples from even, you know, there were Neanderthals with arthritis and there’s evidence of care given and people were taking care of each other. And so, I also get very emotional about this, because the best part of the human condition are empathy and our ability to care for each other, and I don’t want people to think that this is new and that disability is something that has just started to happen. And it has been throughout the entire human existence and even before… that illness, injury and disability happened and it is on us that we have built this inaccessible world. We have seen this is a reality and continued to ignore that and build something that’s not accessible to all people. And I think that is a wake-up call to people to realize it is in our power to build a world without barriers because it is a fact that disability will affect everybody… whether you or a loved one, whether it’s temporary or permanent, it’s gonna happen. And look at the world around you and think of all the barriers that are… we have built, that are in our way.

Michael: Definitely, and I wanted to ask you across the country and in all the museums in the States, is this a conversation that isn’t just at the museums that you’ve worked at, but something that a lot of people are talking about altogether?

Abbie: Yes. There… it’s a beautiful access world. There are, um, hundreds, thousands of places doing the work, um, and it’s not just museums, it’s theaters, it’s aquariums, and there are real standouts in the field. So Shedd Aquarium in Chicago does important essential work for access and inclusion and, uh, we went there so often that Daniel’s featured in their marketing material (both laugh) of their accessibility program, because I will spend money at a place that caters to people with disabilities, or to inclusive programs, and we were there so often and I was sending so many e-mails and tweets that they were like, “do you just wanna be in video?” And I was like, “Yes, we do, thank you so much!” So, um, Dan’s in the Shedd with his noise-reducing headphones on and he’s touching the sturgeon and we’re using their sensory-friendly app, um… and that matters and those connections, but there’s also tech companies that are taking note. There’s a great company “InfinityX” that builds sensory-friendly apps for cultural organizations, um… and so they’re starting to think about, uh, the tools they can provide to museums, libraries, theaters, that will make visits more inclusive and accessible, and they’re geared towards people with autism, but they’re better for everybody. I use them, even if I’m just visiting in museums, um… they’re bilingual usually. They have primers and games, but also it’s for visiting and prep. How to prep for your visit and when are the quieter times to visit. They’re fantastic.

Michael: That’s cool. Uh, I know that you’ve, um, worked on accessibility for a number of years. My mom is also an educator, um… back in Hong Kong, she used to work for a long time as an English teacher. And then she moved school to a school for students with disabilities. And I remember in the early days when she first got the job, she underwent a lot of, sort of, like, she went to a lot of extra workshops to get some new qualifications to help her understand how to teach students with different needs. I was wondering did you also have to go through new training and, um, learn some new skills as well?

Abbie: I did, and I think, um… so I’m, of course, a caregiver and a sister, and that’s primarily how I identify, because Daniel is such an essential part of my life. But I think that has to be coupled with formal training because too often, parents and caregivers feel like they get disability and accessibility because their kid has disability, when really it’s such an intersectional, vibrant part of our world, people with disability? So you have to do the training if you want to speak intelligently on access. So I’m a certified ADA coordinator and in the U.S., the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990. So it’s coming up on thirty years, and so only thirty years ago, we (chuckles) said that discriminating against people with disabilities is illegal, which is shocking, um, so I’m an ADA coordinator, so I’ve been certified by ADA, um, at the national level for understanding the law and working in access, but I also attend conferences. There’s a great one in the U.S. that’s put on by the Kennedy Center called the Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability (the LEAD conference). And that’s really the top conference who work in the heritage sector and then also want to work in access. And for the first time next year, they’re going to be hosting in Ireland, so they’ll be… I think they’re calling it the Arts and Disabilities Summit in Dublin in May. So they’re taking that abroad. Imma try to sneak into that conference too.

Michael: Cool.

Abbie: Um, but those are the big ones, but ADA, because it’s a federal law, they offer free trainings. All their webinars are free, but I also think it’s really important to think about how again, how intersectional this group is, so if you are doing work in access, you also need to care deeply about racial equity. You need to think about all the ways that the barriers that we build can oppress or marginalize people. You have to think about racism. You have to think about socioeconomic barriers taking place. And so that’s what’s also what I’m really delving into now. I feel like I’m super comfortable in the access world. And I need to be… to learn to be and immerse myself more in racial equity work at this point. Um, so that’s where I’m at in my growth.

Michael: And, and that’ll depend also on where you’re working. It’ll be different in Chicago, or in Wisconsin, depending on which groups are coming into the museum.

Abbie: Absolutely, mhm. Absolutely. I mean, it’s a… you just have to build that lens in and do self-work, because I’m really good at seeing, uh, barriers for people with disabilities, but it’s retraining your mind, especially when you’re white, and you grow up with a lot of privilege. You have to really consciously build in these lenses to view the world, to make sure you are not blinded by your own privilege. So, looking at… so, for example, at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, we started having armed security. And a lot of our white visitors saw no problem with that, but a lot of the educators saw… when we’re boots on the ground, working with those people, that’s a huge deterrent to have off-duty police officers armed, guarding the museum, when there is such a fraught tension between the police officers and brutality and violence and murder. And so when we’re singing about all of those cases, of course, all those people of color don’t feel comfortable coming to the museum, when the first thing they see is a police officer with a gun, literally guarding information and knowledge and culture. So we had to really have those difficult conversations with a predominantly white leadership and say, “this is not a problem for you, but it’s a problem for our community and the people we say that we’re serving”.

Michael: Right. Wow. But that makes a lot of sense, and I was wondering, um, what are, you know… would you say doing this long-term work is, um, the biggest challenge of doing your work? Are there other big challenges that you face overall?

Abbie: I think… there never is enough money to do anything that museums wanna do, and too often, access is thought of as: “it would be great if it was accessible, but it’s not in the budget right now… that’s a long term goal.” And so, that’s a real challenge to making the case for accessibility and inclusion, especially one… I loved your point about the changing culture, that can be really tough, those conversations can be hard for organizations to have and I don’t even know if my current organization is in the place if we’ve really talked about some of those things that… the nitty-gritty of what it really means to change who we’re serving and the power that, that we have. So making the case financially and culturally within the organization of this is more than, “me coming in for two-hour training – this has to be really staff-led and all staff need to have buy-in to create this organization-wide change that you say that you want, but you have to be willing to do the work.”

Michael: Yeah, and you mentioned, uh, we were talking earlier about, um… you mentioned, like, funding and, uh, we don’t have to go into too much, but I presume, uh, that, you know, current affairs and politics in the last few years, you know, it kind of feeds into the museum work that you can do and you can’t do, right?

Abbie: Yeah, absolutely, and I… from my personal experience post-election in the U.S. has been a more violent time. The rhetoric has been much more aggressive. People feel much more comfortable being hateful than it felt like before. And, um, so for example, we… one of my programs this summer was hosting a panel of, um, gay veterans in June, which is Pride Month here. And so because we have a World War Two submarine, we have a strong military tie-in here, and so I had veterans that all identified as gay or lesbian and so we did a panel discussion just about lived experience and what it felt like to serve a country knowing you couldn’t say you were gay, um, during the Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell time, which was only just recently repealed. So you couldn’t… first you couldn’t be gay in the military, and then you could be gay but you couldn’t talk about it and if they found out that you were gay, you’d be investigated, um… kicked out of the military to post-Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell and what that felt like and why you would still do that. And so we flew a Pride flag for the first time, and uh… somebody came in and tore down the Pride flag, we got complain calls, I got a death threat, people showed up with guns to the Museum… like all over this program and this month, which was about celebrating and equality, and being proud of our veterans, um, people felt very comfortable with violence during that time. And it was really scary and I think it’s just, um… and I also, in my education programs, I hear kids saying things like, “Build that wall!” referring to the wall that, um, Trump wants to build between the U.S. and Mexico, um… and just really awful things that they’re hearing on the news from the leader of our country and so they think it’s okay. And so it’s been… something that I’ve had to practice and talk to my educators about is how do we make that a teachable moment, especially with kids, so that they know exactly what they’re saying and how hurtful that is, because they’re just parodying things they’ve heard at home or on the news.

Michael: Right.

Abbie: So, the mindset has changed in America. Currently, I would say, or at least people feel very comfortable saying things that maybe they didn’t wanna say before. But also I think that that has brought out a lot of, um, beautiful things and more resistance and more marches and more people being better allies.

Michael: Right.

Abbie: I would rather it not happen, but there is some silver lining of… you really see who your allies are in this and people are getting very, um, good at resisting.

Michael: I mean, um, I, there are many reasons I started this podcast. But another one, one of those reasons was that, you know, I was looking around the world and there are many problems in geopolitics, um, and uh, with climate change, and you know, just wondering what can I do about it? And one of the things I could do is, um, is interview people to have them share their perspectives and their work and, yeah… on the show, we’ve talked about race and racism, we’ve talked about accessibility, um… we’ve talked about, you know, climate change and the climate crisis at the moment, so kinda like my way of doing something, but, uh… y’know, like you said, I wish I didn’t have to do that, or we didn’t have to talk about these things, but it’s difficult.

Abbie: Yeah, it is difficult, but I think this is such a great way to your point of just sharing humanity and sharing stories and this podcast is such a fantastic way to do that. I was looking through all the people you’ve had on and I see some people I’ve presented before and I’m excited to go back and listen to some things I’ve missed.

Michael: Cool! And, uh, y’know, what made you do that switch in the very beginning from archaeology to museums?

Abbie: I felt that I was doing all of this fieldwork and labwork and I didn’t have a great way to talk about it until people came on, like, a site visit, so people could come and that was when I was really excited and I was… I enjoyed making connections for people, I enjoyed telling them why this work was important, and I just thought my… I’m like a third-generation educator now, it was bound to happened, I think I really tried to get away from it. I was going to be an educator one way or the other, um… and it just so happened to be through educating about archaeology, but I wanted to make a difference past putting artefacts into bags and then going into storage, or even through that and the museums, I wanted to tell people why it matters.

Michael: If we, if we spoke to, um, like, the Abbie who was there, uh, maybe six or eight years ago, would she be amazed at the things you have done and the places you have worked? Would she be amazed at the things you’ve accomplished?

Abbie: Wow, I really… I think so, I think even, even eight years ago, I never… I was stressin’ out about conference presentations, and I was worried about the things that I don’t think about now. I’m proud of how confident I’ve become, and how vocal I’ve become. And I think more importantly is I would hope Daniel would be proud of the things I’ve done. And I try to keep that in mind of… if Daniel could talk, if he could tell me about this experience, what would he want me to say, and that’s what I say really loudly, so I would hope I made him proud through my work. And that’s more important to me.

Michael: Yeah. Um, and so Daniel lives… lives near you or with you?

Abbie: So he’s in a residential home halfway between my sister and I outside Chicago.

Michael: Mhm, cool. Do you have plans to see him soon?

Abbie: I was just down there last weekend, so we, uh, try to get down there a couple times a month. So… he’s going to be a hotdog for Halloween, which is hilarious (both laugh). Um, so we bought his Halloween costume, did the whole thing, and then it was, um, this huge event in Chicago called ‘Open House Chicago’ and they open up all these historical sites, and so we did Open House Chicago together – my sister and my brother and I. And I was thrilled because in all the promotions, they had markers on which sites were accessible and I was tweetin’ up a storm and I’m so proud of this organization for letting us know which ones we can go to… ’cause I would’ve been real salty if we showed up to a place and we couldn’t access it. So little things like that and giving kudos to organizations who are doing stuff like that is super important.

Michael: Yeah, and so… what are your upcoming plans? Do you have anything exciting, um… lined up for, you know, now until the winter holidays?

Abbie: So for work, I, um… next week take off to D.C. I’m participating in the Smithsonian and Fulbright Transatlantic Summit for Museum Curators, which is just a week-long seminar paid for by the Fulbright organization. And it’s twelve German museum professionals and twelve U.S. professionals and we’re getting together to talk about best practices and access and inclusion internationally, which is really exciting, using the Smithsonian as, sort of, our classes for the week.

Michael: Cool.

Abbie: Immediately after that, I fly to (chuckles) a conference where I’m presenting on access and inclusion – the Place-Based Education Conference. So it’s a busy week, you caught me right… right at the beginning of, um, but after that, it’s just, uh, a ton of programs. Our community is pretty rural and on the lower socioeconomic scale, so we have a ton of programs coming up, science clubs… spy-themed, so ‘The Science of Spies’ coming up is a free program we’re doing for kids and some outreach. The museum that I’m at now, I wrote a grant and we got a large sum of money from NOAA, which is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And so we have about $75,000 to… for me to plan and implement an inclusive environmental education for students with disabilities and their classmates. So we’re kicking that off, it’s been kicked off, this fall, but I’m doing a lot of outreach for that and making the outdoors accessible for these students, because too often – and I’ve seen this with Daniel – you get kind of stuck in the classroom if it’s something outside that they think a special education classroom can’t go to, which is really silly because people with disabilities are left out of the sustainability conversation, which is how we make big blunders like banning plastic straws altogether when it’s such an importnat thing for some people. So we want to include people with disabilities in those conversations, so I’m starting fieldtrips and adding in a lot of, um, differentiations and modifications to make the outdoors accessible. So that is a lot of my winter is working with those groups and those teachers to build fieldtrips for the spring

Michael: That’s amazing. And I know that, at the very beginning, you mentioned that you were, uh, maybe like, transforming some of the programs or designing programs that will, um, as you say, be mindful about, um, climate change and sustainability. What are some of those, um, what are some of the topics you’re hoping to cover in these programs?

Abbie: So we just had a, two weeks ago, a climate change communication workshop, where we had about thirty community partners and public, um… members of the public to talk, uh, how to communicate effectively about climate change. Not only the realities of it, but how to… uh, communicate to people who are kind of on the fence. Like they had heard some things like, “Not all scientists all agree”, and what to say to that in a scientifically proven way, what helps people in a psychologically proven way. So that you’re not combative, but you are ‘lovingly pursuasive’ (both chuckle) about the realities of the climate change crisis. So that was step one. And then we’re partnering with local environmental organizations to continue those workshops and do more in-depth information about climate change, but it’s also something that we are starting to talk about in our exhibits… that I bring in speakers about. And then also talk to, um, my students about it when they come on fieldtrips, and then especially these environmental education programs, um, it’s important to talk about it in a way that doesn’t make… it makes it seem like a big deal, but not a big deal that we’re talking about it, because we just need to accept that it’s happening, like we are changing the climate. And an important piece of that making adults aware that the climate change crisis directly and disproportionately affects people with disabilities that live, uh, anywhere? So when we look at what’s happening in California right now, the wildfires, they turned off a bunch of electricity, which sure is annoying… but there’s also a lot of people who depend on medical equipment or, uh, their refrigerators have their medicine in it. So there is rarely emergency plans for people with disabilities, so these natural disasters are going to keep happening, and people with disabilities need to have their voice in that conversation. So I’m looking forward to hosting a program about that later this winter, so we can really dive in to that specific topic, because I think it’s that important.

Michael: Mhm, definitely. Where can people follow your work going forward, Abbie… online?

Abbie: You can find me @AbsLovesMuseums on Twitter and Instagram. Um, and that’s where I do most of my yelling about access.

Michael: (chuckles) Mhm. And at the end of every episode, I like to ask the guest to come up with a hashtag…

Abbie: Oh!

Michael: … kinda like a secret for listeners, so that they can use it on social media to indicate they’ve listened all the way to the end. So, can you think of a good hashtag?

Abbie: Oh, shoot! Man, you sprung this on me…

Michael: (laughs) I spring it on everyone, though, so it’s… equal, yeah.

Abbie: Okay.

Michael: (laughs) Some of them come up with puns, um… some of them come up with something to do with the topics that we’ve talked about. Do you know Laura Heath-Stout, maybe?

Abbie: Yes, I presented with her at SAAs last year.

Michael: Well, Laura’s one, for example, was #citeblackwomen, so…

Abbie: Ooooohhh!

Michael: So it’s anything you’re passionate about, anything that you think would be, uh, a good summary to this episode.

Abbie: Yas, Laura! Right. Well, I’m going to pick one that’s already established, but I think it’s important that people use this. It’s #cripthevote, and I think, uh, people should read through this hashtag about disability perspectives in elections and how we can find candidates that care about access that. So we’re picking somebody who cares and who understands disability rights.

Michael: Yeah, okay, that’s really important. Good hashtag!

Abbie: Thank you. I’m co-opting somebody… that Alice Wong… came up with, so I want to give her all the credit. Um, but it’s important, and especially if you’re U.S.-based or not, you’ve gotta crip the vote wherever you’re at.

Michael: Cool, and uh, before we… before we say goodbye, is there anything else that you feel we haven’t covered already? Anything closing messages for the listeners?

Abbie: I would just say that there are really easy ways if you’re looking to start on your accessibility journey or you’re not sure where to start? I would ask that there’s some super simple ways, like acknowledging the land that you’re on in presentations, and using pronouns, um… adding alt text image descriptions to your images on social media. So there are easy ways and there are people out there that are willing to tell you. So don’t be afraid to start doing the work. You don’t have to wait for training or me (although I’m available for hire)… you don’t have to wait for that to do the work. You can start making small steps forward.

Michael: Awesome. So, listeners, if you want to indicate to us that you’ve listened all the way through, then definitely tag @AbsLovesMuseums or @ArchandAnthPod and use the hashtag #cripthevote. And please leave us a review on iTunes or our Facebook page if you enjoyed this episode. We are on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Reddit for updates on the newest episodes coming out. You can also find other episodes and all of our back-catalog on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and anywhere else you find podcasts. Thank you so much to the patrons who support the show and keep the show going. For more information on that, you can go to patreon.com/archandanthpod and the website of the podcast is archandanth.com where I have information on all of our previous guests and more information and links to do with, uh, Abbie’s work and many other people’s work as well. Abbie, thank you so much for being today’s guest.

Abbie: Thank you, I’m so excited to be able to connect. I followed you on Twitter for a long time, so I’m a big fan anyways.

Michael: Well, thank you, thank you. And I’m a fan of your tweets as well.

Abbie: Thank you.

Michael: Listeners, I’ll have another episode out for you soon. Goodbye!

Abbie: Goodbye!