DuSable Museum of African American History

DuSable Museum of African American History plans to partner with the Chicago Park District to increase the diversity of the museums' audience base and bring the museums' rich resources into communities throughout Chicago. The program, Park Voyagers, now serves 3,000 adults and children annually with program components that range from neighborhood-based after-school activities to year-long museum "memberships" for participating families. Park Voyagers components are structured to help families gain confidence with using museums as recreational resources, nurture children's innate capacity for creative problem-solving, and encourage collaborative approaches to experiential learning. To expand this program, the museum will develop new curriculum units for use in after-school programs and family workshop sessions, implement a three-year evaluation study to better understand families' experience, and implement new systems for tracking family participation in the program. The anticipated results will be a program model and curriculum units that can be adapted for use in other communities and a better understanding of how community and family dynamics affect the impact of outreach initiatives.