Massachusetts Audubon Society (Mass Audubon) commissioned a study on urban audiences and environmental education at two of their sanctuaries – Boston Nature Center and Broad Meadow Brook in Worcester. Specifically, this involved measuring Mass Audubon’s ability to engage a diverse audience and to identify the barriers that keep under-represented audiences from visiting the Society’s urban sanctuaries more often. The research was carried out between November 2004 -August 2005 by Julian Agyeman Ph.D., Kathryn Newhall-Smith and
Jenna Ringelheim.
The complete report can be downloaded from the bottom of this page, and excerpts from the Executive Summary are copied below.
General Recommendations:
- Institutionalize cultural competency. All cultures
can’t be treated the same. They are different with
different perceptions, expectations, aspirations
and customs. The cultural competency approach
is suggested as a way for the Centers and Mass
Audubon to begin to understand cultural difference
and to integrate it into their programs.
- More organizational clarity and better communication.
There needs to be more organizational
clarity and better communication about the need
to attend to diversity and cultural issues, especially
about both the aims and goals of this.
- Staffing must become more diverse. It must
reflect the communities served in racial, ethnic,
cultural and socio-economic ways.
- Develop systematic and systemic community
outreach. Community outreach is largely ad hoc
at present. It needs to become both systematic
and systemic. It needs to be based not only on
educating people and communities, but more
importantly, on listening to them. It needs to
employ many techniques such as word of
mouth, community TV (especially ethnic channels)
and use many locations such as health
clinics, markets, places of worship, cultural and
ethnic festivals.
- The curriculum must be ‘community relevant.’
Literature, focus group and user data suggests
that the curriculum should become more related
to life issues faced by local people and communities.
• Diversity issues need to be formalized in writing.
Diversity was a word on most staff members’
lips, but was more difficult to find in written
form. Diversity should not be solely related to
verbal aspirations, it must permeate all levels of
the sanctuary/organization, from staff recruitment
and review to marketing, from curriculum
to community outreach.
Specific recommendations:
- Use ‘seasonal signage.’ Seasonal signage
helps customers identify not only the site but
the specific camp or program offering.
- Develop programming for older youths. Many
users and focus group attendees asked for more
to be done for older children. Given the problems,
especially in the BNC neighborhoods, with
youth violence funding may well be available.
- Create a director of urban programs/diversity
post. While we do not want to see diversity
‘ghettoized’ as purely an urban issue, we feel
there is merit in a senior position at Mass
Audubon HQ that both fundraises to support
Centers and acts in an advisory and support
role. The person should be qualified in environmental
education and have experience in diversity
based environmental work and, preferably, a
second language.
- Create ‘diversity sabbaticals’. Staff should be
encouraged to go to another center to learn
about its approaches to diversity issues. Upon
their return, they can ‘cascade train’ staff at
their own center
- Develop culturally relevant curriculum resources.
For example, many non native plants in both
sanctuaries have interesting stories to tell about
where they are from, how they got here, when
they got here and what they might have been
used for in their country of origin. This could
be linked to human migration stories helping
people to see that in addition to our multicultural
societies we also have ‘multicultural ecosystems.’
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