MAAA | Programs | Prof. Development | Texas | HELP

The purpose of the West Bay Common School Children’s Museum is to provide a hands-on history experience for children of all ages; house the state and local acquisitions of school memorabilia and educational artifacts; preserve the landmark of an original school site as part of the town’s local history; and preserve a key structure of Texas’s past.

The museum features an exhibition of buildings and artifacts from turn-of-the-twentieth-century rural America. Visitors may tour the one-room schoolhouse or enjoy the barn museum and icehouse museum containing a collection of tools, artifacts, and implements from daily life during the 1890s and early 1900s.

Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Year 4


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Year 1:
Rags to Riches: Handcrafted Rugs

Goals:
With a training focus in volunteerism, the West Bay Common School Children’s Museum developed several goals in conjunction with the HELP exhibition. First, they aimed to develop a museum guild and create a handbook with guidelines and responsibilities for volunteers. Second, the museum set out to create laminated docent note cards related to the exhibition. Finally, the museum hoped to update their brochure and gain media attention for the rug exhibition.

Accomplishments:
A very enthusiastic group of volunteers took on the challenges of helping with the HELP exhibition. The enormous benefits that volunteers can provide to the museum became apparent during the run of the exhibition.

A planning meeting was very successful in establishing a pool of volunteers to draw from, and several training sessions were critical in preparing docents for the various duties related to the exhibition. A volunteer information and recruitment brochure was developed in conjunction with the exhibition and distributed at several civic functions. Informational note cards were created for use by volunteers during their docent tours. Volunteers also helped to install and take down the exhibition, and the director took pictures to document this process for future use.

The museum also increased its publicity and number of visitors by holding off their opening to coincide with the Day of Remembrance for September 11.

Improvements:

• Recruited and retained several new volunteers as well as many new ideas for recruiting volunteers

• Created a volunteer handbook

• Created schedule cards and time and talent sheets for volunteers

• Printed a recruitment brochure for volunteers

• Eighteen volunteers from the museum visited the Moody Mansion and had lunch in Galveston as a thank you from the director

Goals for Year 2: Out of the Nest: Artists’ Birdhouses
The West Bay Common School Children’s Museum will focus on marketing in Year Two. With the help of Seth Davidson, a marketing consultant, they hope to inform past visitors about museum activities through mailings; measure the effectiveness of their marketing activities by tracking their Web site traffic and asking visitors how they found out about the museum; reach more potential visitors by creating a new brochure, using signage, updating the Web site, and using grants for advertising; and reach more members of the community through outreach programs and event partnering.

Year 2:
Out of the Nest: Artists’ Birdhouses

Goals:
The West Bay Common School Children’s Museum succeeded in meeting all of their goals in the second year of Texas HELP. With a focus on PR and marketing, they attempted to reach more potential visitors by creating a new brochure, updating and expanding their Web site, increasing signage to the museum around League City, and applying to the local Conference and Visitors Bureau for a $3,500 advertising grant. Another goal they set for themselves was to better inform the community about the museum’s events. They achieved this by sending a mailing to all of the schools that have visited, updating their mailing list, and sending out a 10th anniversary mailing.

Accomplishments:
Catharin Lewis, museum director, dove head first into her museum’s list of goals and was successful in expanding her mailing list by keeping a phone log and entering visitor log information into their database. The museum increased its public image through participating in community events. Their participation in the Oak Tree Festival resulted in increased income to the museum through the sale of birdhouses from their gift shop and raffle ticket sales. They also hosted an event for a local womens’ group that resulted in raising funds for the museum. The birdhouse exhibition was well publicized and several news crews came by the museum to cover it. Catharin also had wooden nickels made with the museum’s address and phone number printed on them, as a souvenir for visitors to take away with them.

Improvements

• Highlighted four local artists who contributed birdhouses to the exhibition

• Received grant from Destination League City for publicizing the exhibition

• Expanded gallery space and improved traffic flow by adding a door between galleries

• Began long-range planning for future exhibits

• Built new exhibition furniture

Goals for Year 3: Apron Strings: Ties to the Past
In year three West Bay Common School Museum will host the exhibition Apron Strings: Ties to the Past as they focus on their next area of training, exhibition design. They plan to work with consultant Kit Neumann on improving their permanent exhibition labels, improving the lighting in the museum, and providing interested museum volunteers the opportunity to attend a hands-on exhibition design workshop.

Year 3:
Apron Strings: Ties to the Past

Goals :
The West Bay Common School Children’s Museum focused on exhibition design as their area of training in year three. With consultant Kit Neumann, they were able to create a challenging list of goals aimed towards improving their exhibitions and gallery space. They set out to purchase track lighting, improve their labels and also to train volunteers in the exhibition development process.

Accomplishments:
Curator Catharin Lewis purchased and installed track lighting. This will allow her greater flexibility when installing and lighting future exhibitions and she was amazed by the difference it made. She also made changes to the flow of traffic through the exhibition by creating an entry panel that partially blocked the initial view of the exhibition. Vignettes of objects from the collection helped to tell the story of the aprons. Catharin built upon her marketing training from year two and did an excellent job of publicizing the exhibition. Articles appeared in the Houston Chronicle and other local papers. She expanded on the exhibition and gave it a local component by adding photos of historic and contemporary businesses where people wear aprons. A number of aprons were collected from the community in order to extend the exhibition past its scheduled closing date.

Improvements:

• Developed interactive component with hands-on aprons for school groups to try on

• Enhanced the exhibition with objects from the museum’s collection

• Sketched out exhibition layout before objects arrived

• Had local students write stories about their grandmothers

• Brought in Catherine Garrison, a textiles specialist, to speak on the topic of conservation

• Recruited new volunteers to the museum

• Created a detailed list of all loaned objects to ease dispersal at the end of the exhibition

• Received funding from Destination League City to purchase advertising

Goals for Year 4: Keep ‘em Flying: Everyday Life in a WWII Fighter Squadron
In the final year of Texas HELP the West Bay Common School Children’s Museum will move on to their last area of training, fundraising and development. Working with consultant Scott Cooksey, they’ve drafted a list of goals that will help them expand their fundraising capabilities. They plan to raise $5,000 for a future exhibition program and would like to add $13,000 to their new endowment. They are beginning to plan fundraising functions to help meet these goals. Their final goal is to raise money to expand the museum’s limited parking facilities.

Goals:

In the final year of Texas HELP, the West Bay Common School Children’s Museum worked with consultant Scott Cooksey on fundraising. Scott provided many new tools and valuable information regarding the legal and ethical aspects involved in fundraising. He worked with museum director Catharin Lewis on new fundraising strategies that included creating an endowment, identifying ways to strengthen ties to local businesses, and laying the groundwork for greater business support for the museum.

Accomplishments:

Catharin felt that she made great progress toward establishing an endowment for the museum and getting the support of the board of directors behind it. The endowment subcommittee raised $7,000 toward this goal. A media specialist from one of the local schools filmed a professional video of the museum and its grounds to be used in future fundraising efforts.

This year, the museum hosted the exhibition Keep ‘Em Flying! Everyday Life in a WWII Fighter Squadron. Catharin curated and organized the exhibition with her usual enthusiasm and eye for detail. She was able to borrow a number of artifacts from museums and collectors all over the country. These objects included blue prints of a P-38 fighter, three gauges and a gun camera, a full uniform from the Evergreen Flight Museum in Oregon, a camera of the same model that photographer Jim Bertoglio used to shoot the photos in the exhibition, war bonds, cookbooks, model airplanes, and nurses’ uniforms, just to name a few.

Due to the extensive list of objects and the expense of receiving them and shipping them back, the museum has added a permanent line item to their budget to accommodate such loans. Catharin also included a hands-on element to the exhibition, a kiosk that housed a flight simulator game.

Catharin was also successful in her efforts at connecting with the local business community. She approached a number of businesses about donating to the museum and even helped the historical society raise $1,500 from local merchants.

Improvements:

• Initiated and completed the development of a long-term strategic plan

• Secured nation-wide inter-museum artifact loans for their WWII exhibition

• Raised $7,000 towards an endowment fund

• Had a video made by a local filmmaker to be used for marketing and fundraising

• Developed a new museum fundraising brochure

• Received $450 from a local funeral home to print a brochure to accompany the “Blue and Grey” exhibition

• Updated the museum’s disaster plan