Hello everyone!
It's been four weeks since I started my internship so I thought now would be a good time to make another post.
With this internship, I find myself constantly writing. I keep a calendar with all the dates relevant to my internship - including events I am not directly a part of, a second journal that acts as a personal reference log of my daily activities, a digital journal that is saved on the computer and emailed to the education staff I work with, and finally this blog that is shared with all of you. I am thankful to have so many opportunities to reflect on this internship - both at the Kimbell and here. While my journaling for the Kimbell is on a weekly basis, I enjoy these longer stretches between entries as I can think over the past few weeks as a whole rather than broken into chunks.
Jan 19th was the day of the focus group tour for the Vision Access Project led by Alli Rogers. It ended up being a full workday for me as we spent roughly an hour on the tour; I was in charge of taking general field notes of participants actions, comments, and if there were any improvements to make during the tour. After a break for lunch, we jumped into interviewing the participants to see if there were any improvements to make about the signage, accessibility of information, and general program improvements. I worked with Connie to record our participant's responses as close to verbatim as possible as the data would be compiled and cross-referenced with other observations and interview responses so that we could target areas to improve upon.
Since then, I have worked on a variety of assignments and projects for various staff members. Some of these projects have been simple tasks labeling folders for archival purposes to making artistic prototypes for upcoming events. Some things I have worked on include watercolor flowers, stamped landscapes, and architectural collages. One of the overarching projects I have been working on is the organization of the storage room to condense materials into labeled bins or bags as well as taking inventory the number of supplies for future activities.
February is considered my 'slow' month as I have no assigned activities outside of my regular internship hours. However, I have multiple assignments that I will be working on for this short month that I am looking forward to!
I hope everyone is having fun in their internship programs and I'm excited to hear everyone's updates soon.
Way to go, Brandan, in keeping multiple journals! I had debated about making a journal one of the internship requirements but figured this blog would allow for both self-reflection and community support. But, when I was a grad student, keeping a journal at my internship was a course requirement and I was grateful for it. It really helps when you are updating your resume and you can look back on the tasks that you participated in during your internship. And, names! Keeping track of all of the people you meet in your journal can come in really handy in the future!
ReplyDeleteThe evaluation that you did as part of the Vision Access Project sounded incredible! I am thrilled to hear how reflective that process was. What a great experience!
I agree completely with Dr. Evans. I am really interested in the evaluation you did as part of the Vision Access Project. I would love to hear more about exactly what you found and how you evaluated the access. What improvements did you recommend?
ReplyDeleteIt's so important for museums to provide access to not only all differently-abled visitors, but also blind/low-vision visitors. I have been working on finding ways for museums to improve access, and I'm excited to hear that the Kimball has a program that focuses on this. Do you know how many people participated in the program? I hope there was a great response. I have found that one of the most difficult aspects of providing this access is promoting it through the proper channels. Outreach is more challenging that I had thought it would be.
I also think that museums should keep working on providing access to blind/low-vision guests not only during special programs but also during normal museum hours. It would be great if barriers to access could be removed so that these types of visitors could come any time of their choice, and that's what I have been working on and will continue to work on during my internship. However, we are also struggling with how to make the blind/low-vision community aware of our efforts so that they can benefit from them.