How can museums build meaningful social connection?

This was a two day event, bringing together people from across the arts, public health research, aging, social services, and policy sectors to explore one big question. How can engagement with visual art help combat loneliness and build more connected communities? And if that sounds like a broad question, it is. But what struck me about this convening was how seriously and how practically it was tackled. There were researchers presenting data on the health risks of social isolation.

There were practitioners sharing real programs with real participants and real evaluations, and there were honest conversations about funding, about sustainability, and about what it actually takes to do this work well. Now if you work in a museum, you'll know that conversations about social connection, wellbeing have been growing louder in recent years. More and more museums are developing programs that respond to loneliness, isolation, grief, aging, and so on.

But there are harder questions underneath all of that. Like what does it actually take to do this work well, as something an organization commits to genuinely, something that IT resources and sustains and also how do we build the evidence that it works. Not just anecdotal evidence, which I'm sure we all have from our experiences, but rigorous evidence that stands up to scrutiny. And how do we make sure that the wider world actually hears about it.

Because museums are doing remarkable things in this space, and too often it stays within our bubble. The health sector, policy makers, funders, and the wider public, they just don't get to know or hear about it. So these are questions I've been thinking about for a long time now, from doing this podcast for nearly five years, from running workshops, from talking to museum professionals all over the world. And in March, I took these questions with me to Atlanta.

This convening gave me a lot to think about in response. So in this episode, I want to take you through what I heard, what I learned, and what I think it means for those of us working in museums and cultural spaces. We'll look at the scale of the problem. We'll hear from some of the speakers and panelists who were in the room, and we'll think about what it actually takes to do this work well, evidence it, and make sure the wider world hears all about it.

So the National Convening on Art and Social Connection was organized by Laurel Humble, associate Director for lifelong learning and accessibility at the High Museum of Art and her team. The High was founded in 1905 and it's the largest art museum in the southeastern United States.

It has built its reputation on being not just a collection of artworks, but a civic institution, a museum that takes its role in the community seriously, that reflects the diversity of Atlanta and that thinks of itself as a place for people, as much as for art. And that came through in everything I saw and heard during my time there from the staff I met, from the docents, the speakers who traveled in to take part in the convening and the visitors I met in the galleries.

There's a real warmth to this place and a real commitment to the kind of community centered work that the convening was all about. So it felt like exactly the right setting. The convening opened with some welcome remarks from the High's director Rand Suffolk, who explained more about the work of the museum

Dr. Kathy Bruss, a clinical psychologist and the former mental health lead at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, explained it really clearly to us during the convening. Have a listen.

Whereas loneliness is the feeling of being alone or disconnected from others, regardless of the amount of social contact someone has. So that's more subjective. So even a person with a lot of friends can feel lonely, and you can also feel really lonely in a crowd or in a group of friends. And loneliness also reflects the difference between how much social contact a person has and how much they would like to have. So it signals a deficit that something is missing, sort of like thirst or hunger.

And that's a factor that can really contribute to social isolation. And I'm not quoting these here as just abstract statistics and numbers. These reflect real people moving through real stages of life; from early adulthood to midlife and later life. And loneliness and social isolation can thread through a whole life in different ways at different times. And the health consequences are really significant too. So social isolation increases the risk of heart disease by 29%.

Stroke by 32% and dementia by 50%. And as former US Surgeon General Vivek Murt hy has put it, loneliness is far more than just a bad feeling. It harms both individual and societal health. But here's the more hopeful side of all of this. There's a real and growing body of evidence that engagement with the arts is consistently linked with stronger social connection across cultures, across lifespan, across populations.

So a UK survey of nearly 6,000 adults found that 82% perceive their arts engagement to be linked with social connection at least some of the time. A long-term study from Japan found that older adults who sustained arts engagement over three years experienced lower loneliness. And a major English study tracking adults over time found that frequent engagement with museums, galleries, and exhibitions was linked with reduced odds of loneliness over a 10 year period.

So we know the scale of the problem, and we also know with real evidence behind it that what museums do helps. So the question isn't here whether museums can play a role. It's more like what that role should look like and what it actually takes to do this work well. On day one, we had a keynote from Vanessa German, and I have to be honest, this was unlike any keynote I've ever experienced. It was much more like an art performance.

There was singing, there was poetry, there was real emotion in the room, and it set the tone beautifully for everything that followed. Now for those of you who don't know her work, Vanessa German is a self-taught artist based in Pittsburgh, and she describes herself as a citizen artist. She works across sculpture performance, communal ritual, installation, and photography.

Her work is in collections all over the US, including the High's own collection, and if you'd like to get a sense of what she does, look up The Three Headed Girl from the High's collection. But what really came through in her keynote was the way her work has moved out of the studio and into the community. And she talked about lots of projects, but a particular one that she ran in her own neighborhood. This is, uh, Homewood in Pittsburgh. Um, and this project was called The Art House.

Now Homewood is a low income area that has been deeply affected by poverty and gun violence. The Art house was a free, open community art space where children and adults could come and make art together, where the door was always open and anybody could walk in, and it was really a place where people could sit down with each other and create.

And it was where, as Vanessa put it, adults would lose time where they'd start working on something and an hour and a half later look up and say, I forgot what this feels like. So her central question at the convening was this, how can art help people see and care for one another more deeply? And she said something during her keynote that I've thought about a lot since. Have a listen. Here's Vanessa speaking.

The idea that disconnection itself is a form of harm. And against that, she kept saying about 'returning to wholeness'. 'We are whole. The whole time' she said, 'not broken, not in need of fixing', and one of the first places of social connection she said is internal. So connecting with yourself through creative practice, before you can connect with anyone else.

TimeSlips began as a response to the way people living with dementia were being engaged, or rather weren't being engaged, in care settings. And Anne's insight was that you could release people from the pressure of remembering and replace it with the freedom to imagine. So TimeSlips uses creative storytelling, often built around playful images and open-ended questions to invite people into shared meaning making.

And today TimeSlips has over 900 certified facilitators across 48 US states and 20 countries working in care communities, museums, libraries, senior centers and homes. And the way that this work is facilitated has three really simple steps. Ask a beautiful open-ended question, improvise with 'yes, and', accepting whatever the person offers and building on it and then offer proof of listening by echoing back, acknowledging what someone has shared.

And I think if you are a facilitator, you'll recognize the shape of that cycle. It's the foundation of any good group conversation. Now, one of the other projects Anne shared at the convening was called the Penelope Project, and it ran in a long-term care community in Wisconsin over two years. And as an aside, Anne is a great believer in long time horizons. She works in multi-year projects because as she puts it, that's how long it takes for the 'yes, and' to grow.

And the Penelope project used, uh, homers Odyssey as a starting point. Staff, students, artists and residents all working together over time to create a full scale theatrical production performed throughout their care home residents played roles, they wrote material, you know, they were the project, not the audience for it. And here's Anne talking about the responses to that project in her talk.

Secondly, she said, we need to hold uncertainty. So start a project without knowing exactly what it's gonna be and let it become what it needs to become. Next was to create ongoing entry points because the people you're working with may not be ready to join right at the beginning. And trust takes time to build. And the fourth is to recognize and build on existing strengths. So to look at the people and the assets that are already in the room, rather than starting from a deficit.

So those four things I think are really useful. So moving on from this, what does this work actually look like in practice? So, across the convening, I heard about a lot of programs from museums and arts organizations who were responding to loneliness and social isolation in different ways. And here are a few that stayed with me. So the first is Meet Me at MoMA. You may have heard of it before. It's a program for people living with Alzheimer's disease and their caregivers.

It was launched in 2006 and it's just celebrated its 20th anniversary and it's reach has been remarkable between. 2007, 2014 through the wider MoMA Alzheimer's project, moMA staff reached over 10,500 colleagues around the world through training, workshops, conference presentations, and resources for museums, wanting to develop their own programs. And they evaluated it in 2008. And they found statistically significant improvements in mood for both people with Alzheimer's and their care partners.

So 20 years on, that's the kind of longtime horizon Anne Basting was talking about. And what Lara Schweller shared at the convening was where the program is going next. And they're designing a newer strand designed specifically for caregivers themselves. The second program is Oasis at the High Museum of Art. It's a monthly program and it weaves together art, spirituality, conversation, and mindfulness. And I was very lucky. I got to experience it for myself.

It was on the day after the convening. Um, I saw yoga in the atrium, I took part in sound baths in the galleries there was mindful art making and there was also a wonderful strand called 'Seeing with Spirit', which is a one hour conversation with a single artwork. And you look at it through the lens of someone's spiritual practice.

So each month they invite a different person, whether that's, you know, a Baptist preacher or a Buddhist teacher, and that person walks through the museum chooses of work of art, and then they create and build a conversation around it. And on that day I experienced Oasis. The museum was just buzzing. It was full of people all ages, engaging with the galleries, with the art, and with each other in so many different ways. And it was so good to see.

And I think this is what a museum can be when social connection is built into the way it opens its doors. The third program is Art After Loss, which is also at the High. And this is a four week program for people who have experienced bereavement. It's run by specially trained facilitators, museum educators, not grief counselors, and they are using art as a way to gather around something that isn't the grief itself.

Now I'll come back to Art After Loss because there's some really interesting evaluation evidence for it. And the fourth one was Writing as Seeing at the Louisiana State University Museum of Art in Baton Rouge. And Callie Smith talked about a series of poetry workshops designed and led in three different settings. One was a bereavement camp for teens. One was a men's prison and one was a professional development day for school art teachers.

And I think what Cali showed was that impactful art experiences really don't need to be elaborate. Sometimes it's just printer paper and a few colored pencils, and a willingness to sit with people in places where art doesn't usually go. So four programs, four very different shapes, and that's really only a small slice of what's out there. And it brings me to our next question, which is how do we actually know this work is working? So let's return to the Art After Loss program.

So the High recently commissioned a formal evaluation of this program. It was carried out by the Georgia Health Policy Center at Georgia State University, and they use a validated research tool to measure changes in participant's sense of connection. And that means connection to themselves, to others, and to the world. And they measured it before and after the program. And they combined that with qualitative interviews. So they had both the numbers and the stories behind them.

And what the evaluation found was significant. So participants reported meaningful increases in their sense of connectedness across all three dimensions. And one of the insights that came in through the qualitative findings was that what brought participants together wasn't the grief itself. It was the art. It was looking closely at artworks together, with a skilled facilitator, gave them something to focus on that wasn't their loss.

And paradoxically created the conditions for the most meaningful connections to happen. And in addition, under a new head of research, that's Julia Forbes, the High are building research into the fabric of the organization. And during one of the breakout sessions, I heard about a major project measuring visitor wellbeing across three different programs.

So they're measuring, Oasis, which we've just talked about, their free entry Access for All Days for older adults and their UPS Second Sunday, which is for families. And this research is using a framework built on John Falk's categories of museum value, that's physical, intellectual, social, and emotional wellbeing. And they added a fifth category of spiritual wellbeing. So they're using Garmin watches to measure physical wellbeing during visits.

They're doing surveys and interviews for the social and emotional dimensions. And for spiritual wellbeing they're using participatory photography, inviting visitors to photograph moments of awe in the galleries. And the findings excitingly will be published in a peer review journal in May 20 26. And what this means is the High isn't just doing the work, it's actually generating knowledge that other museums can use. And this really matters.

Because I think one of the hardest things about this kind of work, it's that so much of it happens in silos or under the radar. Organizations develop programs, they run them well, they get good feedback from participants, and then the learning stays inside the building. But this work opens the conversation up. And I think this matters enormously. I think one of the hardest questions facing museums doing this work is how to make the case for it to funders, to policy makers, to the health sector.

And without evidence, it's just a story. With evidence, it's a contribution to a much bigger conversation. So let's come back to the three questions I carried with me to this convening. What does it actually take to do this work well? How do we build the evidence that it works and how do we get the wider world to hear about it? So here's what I've come to think. Those three questions aren't separate questions.

They're all really kind of pointing at the same thing, and that's not a program or a project or you know, some kind of commitment on paper. It's culture. So the museums that are doing this work best have built a culture around it. A culture where social connection and wellbeing aren't side projects that the learning team runs when there's funding, they're really part of how the organization understands its own purpose.

So this is a culture where the director speaks about this work in the same breath as exhibitions and collections, a culture where research and evaluation are built in from the start, not bolted on at the end. And it's a culture where programs are allowed to run for years, not just seasons. And finally, it's a culture where staff, docents facilitators and visitors all feel that this is what the museum is for. And I don't think you can fake a culture like that, and you definitely can't rush it.

At the High it's taken roughly a decade of consistent patient building, and that's a really honest timeframe for this kind of work. And it's worth spelling out because it really sets realistic expectations for anyone wanting to do something similar. And of course none of this is simple. Cultures don't change overnight and they don't change because just one person or one team wants them to. But there are questions here worth sitting with wherever you are in your organization. So think about this.

Is this work visible in your institution's values, strategy, and language, or does it mostly live inside one department? How widely is it talked about? And by whom? Are the programs you run funded as short term projects, or are they built as ongoing commitments? And are you building evaluation in from the start? And when you talk about this work with people outside the museum, with funders, with health partners, with policy makers, what do you have to show them?

And I think if you're wanting to start building that culture in your own context, here are a few simple things worth holding onto from what I heard at this convening. So number one, work in longer time horizons. So real relationships take real time and trust builds slowly. Secondly, keep the bar high. Keep asking whether what you are offering really matters to the people you are offering it to.

Number three, find partners outside the museum, academics, health professionals, community organizations, because doing this work alone is harder and lonelier than it needs to be. And finally document and share what you are learning so it doesn't just stay inside your organization. Because one of the ways this whole field moves forward, is when we share what we know with each other.

So before I wrap up, I just want to say a huge thank you to Laurel Humble, to Andrew Westover and to the entire learning team at the High for putting on such a wonderful two days. This convening really practiced what it preached. Social connection was built into the design of the two days. You know, there were icebreaker questions on the tables in the breakout areas. There were reflective prompts at the end of each day. And the pacing was generous. Plenty of breaks to actually talk to people.

And boy did I talk to a lot of people. It all sounds like small things, but it really matters. You can't talk about social connection, without enabling it in the room. And I really hope that this is the start of something, a community, a movement, or an annual gathering. So I want to leave you with two prompts that Laurel shared at the end of the convening.

I think they're really useful, especially if you've listened to all of this and you're wondering where to begin, whether you're starting this work in your organization, or whether you're trying to deepen what you're already doing or thinking about how to make it more sustainable. The first question is this. 'For me, social connection looks like...' And the second is this. 'One thing I can do next is...' so sit with those for a moment. You might even want to write down some thoughts.

So one last thing before I sign off. Don't miss the next episode. There's an announcement coming and that's all I can say about that for now. So thank you so much for listening to this special episode, and I'll see you next time. Bye. Thank you for listening to The Art Engager podcast. With me, Claire Bown. You can find more art engagement resources by visiting my website.

Thinking museum.com, and you can also find me on Instagram at Thinking Museum, where I regularly share tips and tools on how to bring art to life and engage your audience. If you've enjoyed this episode, please share with others and subscribe to the show on your podcast Player of Choice. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.