Description

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While first person interpretation and historic crafts have long been part of the museum world, current movements in the maker movement in libraries and schools have occurred mostly outside of the museum world. Instead, Makerspace in Museums: Hands-On History in Museums and Historic Sites shows the importance of the Maker Movement for museums and historic sites, and presents a roadmap to building, planning, researching, and using a makerspace alongside more traditional museum programming. It calls for a revitalization of living history, which can be done through makerspaces and the maker movement.

Highlights include:

• • Why museums and makerspaces are a natural fit together
  • Ways to organize and create a makerspace in a museum of any budget
  • Creating a makerspace and culture of making that is inclusive and for the entirety of the community
  • Strategies for researching historic making techniques and adapting them to the modern world
  • Creating meaningful makerspace-centered programming

The processes and methods explored in this book will help produce a sustainable makerspace that will help the museum or historic site that adopts it reach new audiences, creating growth and new museums stakeholders. Likewise, through calling for a recalibration of living history through the language of the makerspace, this project calls for new approaches to living history. Thus, it is a call for a disruption to the status quo and a push towards sustainable and meaningful living history.

About the Author

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Tim Betz is a museum professional, historian, and artist. He is executive director of the Morgan Log House, a historical society in Lansdale, PA. He is an instructor of art history at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania and is completing his PhD in history at Lehigh University, in Bethlehem PA. He is particularly interested in historic processes and historic craft, which he uses as a tool for understanding the past.