Transcript
Jennifer Berglund 00:04
Welcome to HMSC Connects!, where we go behind the scenes of four Harvard museums to explore the connections between us, our big, beautiful world, and even what lies beyond. My name is Jennifer Berglund, part of the Exhibits Team here at the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture, and I’ll be your host. Today, I’m speaking with Abbie Sandoval-Focil, a bilingual museum educator at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, as well as Mia Hortado, a teen student in HMSC’s “Hear Me Out” program. The Hear Me out program was created to reach out to the Latino community across Massachusetts, and engage them in the goings on at the HMSC museums. Now in its third year, I wanted to hear about how the program is going from the perspective of one of the participants and find out about the ways in which the program is changing us at HMSC. Here they are. Abbie Sandoval-Focil and Mia Hortado, welcome to the show.
Abbie Sandoval-Focil 01:24
Thank you for having us.
Mia Hortado 01:25
Yeah, thank you.
Jennifer Berglund 01:30
Abbie, the Hear Me Out program started in 2021, during the pandemic, and we actually had an episode with the woman who was previously in your position, Julia. Give us a little overview of how the Hear Me Out program started, and what it evolved into.
Abbie Sandoval-Focil 01:51
Hear Me Out started out as a grant, and the idea was to really serve teens that have a Hispanic or Latino background, the communities they live in, and museums visitors who could connect with that same cultural experience and background. And what we really wanted was to welcome teens to engage in museum programming, to give them a broader knowledge of cultural topics, from the Natural History side, scientific knowledge, and to really have that sense of what a museum is and what we do. So the end goal was for each group of participants to create a final exhibit where they would develop the activities for the public, they would be presenters, they would be volunteers, and they would be museum ambassadors. And so one of the unfortunate things that happened was, of course, the pandemic. So that first group of teens, instead of being able to come with a large group of 25 teens that we wanted, it actually was eight teens, and we worked completely virtual with them and they created a virtual tour also of the exhibits. And that was at the Peabody Museum, where they created an online bilingual tool, working with the exhibit called “Resetting the Table,” and they created a short audio trailer for people to visit and see what their favorite foods were and they created these animated and graphic sort of short 32nd videos. The second group, that happened right after we were able to have people in the museum so of course, we still had to wear masks, keep our social distance, and they worked again, because we work in collaboration with the Natural History Museum, this time, we’ve worked on the Natural History side. And they also shared stories about their favorite animals on that side of the museum. They’d walk through galleries, and made it again, another audio trail because we couldn’t have people in museums. So this was the second online exhibit. And then finally, for the 2022 season, which was so great. The museums opened, we can have people in the spaces again. This was almost a whole new group of teens. We got 18 teens who worked on two chairs, covered them with artwork to really push back against stereotypes, Latino stereotypes, specifically, and this time, we worked in the Peabody side and with the exhibit called “All the World is Here,” which talks about the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. And so we placed those chairs there to really contrast with the exhibit of how people want to be represented, how each culture wants to be represented, and that was really great. And the last one that Mia was part of, this was an exhibit called “Birds and Blooms.” We worked in the Natural History Museum side again, and this was an activity and an exhibit that showcased meaningful birds and flowers for each of the teens from the places that they were from or where their parents came from, and all of it was recreated with recycled materials.
Jennifer Berglund 05:29
So, Mia, you participated, as Abbie was saying, in the last round of Hear Me Out the Birds and Blooms. How did you find your way into this Hear Me Out program and into the museum?
Mia Hortado 05:43
My mom, she like to spend a lot of time on Facebook, and I’m pretty sure a lot of people can relate to that. I think she was in a group, like a Facebook group, and she saw the news thing, I was like, “Oh, Harvard program, Hear Me Out.” And then she’s like, “Oh, you should do it.” And I was like, “I don’t know.” And she was like, “No, go for it.” And I was like, “Okay.” And I didn’t think I would get in because I thought because it was Harvard, it was for experienced people or people that knew what they were doing but turns out it wasn’t. It was a fun program.
Jennifer Berglund 06:19
Tell me a little bit about your mom and your dad and your family. What’s their story? What’s your story?
Mia Hortado 06:25
So my dad’s from Chile, my mom’s from Mexico. My mom came to the United States when she was in her 20s, and she met my dad and she used to work here. She used to cook, and my dad was like one of the managers so they got to know each other. And then I was born here in Boston. But when we were two, we moved back to Mexico, and we stay there until 2018, and we came to Boston and we’ve been here since.
Jennifer Berglund 06:59
So you’ve been here for about five years now, and you endured the pandemic, like the rest of us, in Boston. And following the pandemic, your mom discovers this interesting opportunity at Harvard and encourages you to do it. So Abbie, when Mia started, you talked a little bit about the Birds and Blooms project, but tell me a little bit about what that was like. How did you describe the assignment to the students and where did you guys start?
Abbie Sandoval-Focil 07:29
We worked in collaboration with the Natural History Museum, and we were trying to show both sides of these two museums, one that deals with culture, and one that deals with science. And so for that last cohort of teens that we had, we worked in the Natural History side, and really taking into account what teens had already told us of what they wanted to see in the museum, which was an exhibit that either had to do with climate change, and the effect that it has on their countries of origin. So when a teen I remember very clearly, her name is Karla Larios, and she said, “Well, can we talk about the birds and flowers of our countries and how, if we don’t take care of them, they’re going to disappear. And we thought it was a great idea. So that’s where the prompt came and the name of the exhibit Birds and Blooms. So we asked teens to think about a bird or a flower from their country that might be personally meaningful to them. And they could ask a family member, a relative, somebody important in their lives, maybe share or give them an idea of a specimen that they would want to choose. And then we would recreate that using found and recycled materials, and we also, because we wanted to show the teens in the museum, we actually had them create this piece next to a self-portrait that they took themselves,a selfie picture. And that’s sort of where that came from so they all chose a range of things. Each one actually chose a specimen that we have in the museum that we were able to find and recreate, whether it was from the Great Mammal Hall, from the Bird Balcony that we have a huge collection of birds, and a Central American collection of animals that we have, and then also picking something out from the amazing collection of Glass Flowers. That was a fun activity, and we talked about all of those specimens, visited the galleries they were in, and then worked on recreating all of those, and they each got their own frame to put their own piece of artwork in and it’s still up in the galleries. If you visit the museums, you’ll be able to see it in the galleries at the Natural History Museum and it also comes with a flyer that you can read each statement that the kids made of why that specific specimen was important to them.
Jennifer Berglund 09:58
Mia, I’m curious. This sounds like a super fun project, but I know you had feelings kind of leading up to your participation in this project from the time your mom was like, “Hey, you should do this” to you being like, “I don’t know.” So describe your feelings leading up to the experience, and then how did those feelings evolve over time as you started participating?
Mia Hortado 10:22
At first, I was really nervous, because I didn’t know what we were doing because the first two sessions we’re learning. The first one, we’re learning about birth, the second one about flowers. I was really confused on what we were doing, and then when they explained the whole art piece thing, I was like, I got a little bit more competent with whatever we’re doing. So I was like, “I think we can do this.” And I did something decent, I guess. I chose a flower. It comes from Chile and Argentina, because we were supposed to pick a flower or a bird from our country, or where we were from. And I was gonna pick one from Mexico, but every time they asked me to do something for my country, I always choose Mexico, so I was like, “let’s change things a bit.” So I chose Chile. My dad’s from Chile so I was like, might as well try something new, change things a little bit.
Jennifer Berglund 11:18
When your mom told you that, “Hey, you should do this. What were your thoughts?”
Mia Hortado 11:24
That time I was kind of not really busy with school. It was a free month, I guess. We weren’t in at the time where midterm, so I didn’t have anything to do. So I was like, “You know what, maybe it’s a good idea.” I can be like, “Oh, I take this program at Harvard” and like, talk about it. And I thought it was gonna be like a good opportunity, but then also, I was very self conscious, I like wouldn’t I get in. So I was like, “why should I even try if I’m not gonna get in.”
Jennifer Berglund 11:50
Why do you think you thought that?
Mia Hortado 11:52
Because it says “Harvard.” The name “Harvard” is in it. I just thought it was for people that knew what they were doing or like experienced people, people that been in this program, like, a lot, a lot. And I don’t know, it was like my first time doing something like this. So I wasn’t very confident with it.
Jennifer Berglund 12:09
Abbie, this strikes me as a feeling of not belonging. Is that a common refrain from the Hear My Out students? Is that something you hear a lot?
Abbie Sandoval-Focil 12:18
Yes, and not only just from the teen participants, but also from the parents. One of the things I really tried to do in this role was to reach out to parents to let them know what the teens were working on, how we were doing it. And when we promoted this, we try to make it as straightforward as possible, saying you don’t need to have any special skills, just the willingness to try something new, meet new friends, and give us your opinions of what you think the museum should be doing to engage more teens and more Latinos. But it was something that we heard from teens saying, “I didn’t think I would be here because it’s Harvard. I didn’t know I could come, I didn’t think I was going to be welcome.” So that was sort of a recurring theme that happened. And one thing that we tried to show the teens was anybody can be here, and one way that we did that was we invited First Year students who were taking Latinx studies class at the Harvard University to come and see the teen’s artwork, and engage with it, talk about it and then we brought our group of teens and the Harvard students together to talk about these experiences and these backgrounds. And that was very meaningful because the teens were able to see that there were other students at Harvard who had the same background, and maybe the same life experiences that came from maybe an immigrant situation where their parents lived somewhere else and came to this country. And so they saw that, and after we had that workshop with the Harvard students, the teens said, you know, “I never thought I would meet somebody like me who was at Harvard, and I just did.” And that was one thing that really stood out to us. Like, we have to work more to make this museum and all the Harvard museums more inclusive, and send out that message that this is a place where you belong and this is a place where you can come, whether it’s for learning or leisure, or just a fun time. We’re here, and we’re open to anybody really.
Jennifer Berglund 14:30
Mia, what was your impression? What was that experience like for you working with the Harvard students? As you participated in the program, did your feelings about it evolve?
Mia Hortado 14:41
I guess it changed after a few sessions, because I saw that not everyone was experienced, like some of them have been to programs before, but most of them were as lost as I was. We were all like, “What are we doing?” We were all asking questions, like “How do we do this? What should we do? What do we write? What should we find” No one knew what they were doing, so I was like, “Okay, like, we’re all lost, we’re all lost together.” So it’s not that everybody knows what they’re doing, but me. So it was pretty okay.
Jennifer Berglund 15:10
And now that you’ve been to Harvard, and you’ve been to the museums, is it a big scary place now or is it…
Mia Hortado 15:15
No.
Jennifer Berglund 15:15
…a place that you feel comfortable?
Mia Hortado 15:18
After we completed the Hear Me Out, they gave us paces to give away and things like that, so a few months after, I told my friends, I was like, “You know what I like have this thing at a Harvard Museum that I didn’t tell you guys about because I was kind of like, not really proud of it. And and I was like, You know what, it’s at Harvard. It’s at a Harvard Museum. Like, why not?” So I told them, “Hey, we should go. And they were like, okay, so we went there, and we actually had a lot of fun in the museum, because I have friends that are very into minerals, and like rocks, things like that…
Jennifer Berglund 15:49
Oh cool.
Mia Hortado 15:49
…animals, so it’s like, full of that. So they were all having fun, and then we got to the Hear Me Out exhibition, and it was okay. We had fun. That’s awesome. Do you think your friends are going to come back? I feel like they would come back if it was free. Because the one time I had the passes, and they’re like, “Okay, if it’s free, let’s go.” But I don’t think they would. They would go with like their families and things like that. It wouldn’t be a place for them to like, hang out.
Jennifer Berglund 16:20
What does your family think about you having a cool exhibit in the museum?
Mia Hortado 16:25
My mom, she told everyone. She posted it everywher,e in her Instagram, her Facebook, everywhere. And I kept getting messages from my family being like, “Oh, congrats! Congrats!” I was like, “How do you know?” Because all the way in Mexico, or like Chile, and my cousin told me that my grandmother was telling everyone about it. She was like, “Oh, did you know that my granddaughter’s doing this? Oh, my granddaughter said this, and this,” and this was like, I don’t know, she was like very proud.
Jennifer Berglund 17:00
What do you think you learned from the Hear Me Out project?
Mia Hortado 17:05
I think I’ve learned how to socialize a little bit more with people that have similar backgrounds to mine. It’s also nice, because I’ve had experience with like different programs so I’m, like, more confident when I go into things. And I try to pay attention, do what I can do to help, things like that. I know from other people that went to Hear My Out, they found out by their schools. They are like, “Oh, you should do this, and that.” My school doesn’t really have those things. My school doesn’t tell us about programs anywhere. They tell us about like things that happen from the school and it’s just sports and like clubs, those things are sort of like the only outside school hours thinks we have.
Jennifer Berglund 17:48
How is this kind of program different from what you experience in school? What kinds of things do you think you can learn in the museum that you might not be able to learn in the classroom? And then likewise, what can you learn in the classroom that you can’t learn in the museum?
Mia Hortado 18:03
I think if the Hear Me Out programs, the Harvard programs, they’re different, because we’re more free to do what we want to do. They give us like a main idea of what they want, and we just do what we can. And in school, it’s mostly they tell us how to do things, like, how, why and like the whole process. And in school, I feel like it’s mostly learning about things we have to know, things for like, life, like, oh, math, science, english, history, things like that. It’s more things we have to know. And the whole Harvard thing is were like interesting things that not everybody knows, things that you can go around saying, or things you can learn about things that they don’t really teach at schools, like they taught us how museums used to kind of steal things, but not really. They would take things that belong to some other people, things like that.
Jennifer Berglund 19:04
Abbie, I’m curious. So the Hear Me Out program, it sort of went through a transition where it went from where you were working in the galleries and doing specific projects to something called Teen Saturdays. Tell me about Teen Saturdays. What are they and how did they come to be?
Abbie Sandoval-Focil 19:24
Yeah, so this was a fun project for me because we were able to get an extension on the grant that we had for Hear Me Out and continue to build off of that, so instead of having four workshops with a final exhibit, like Hear Me Out, in one single month, we sort of spread it out. We said let’s do a series of workshops, one Saturday a month for the semester, and let’s talk about Indigenous cultures because we’re going to have it at the Peabody Museum. Trying to stay on the topic of cultures, identity, belonging, we came up with teaching teens about Indigenous cultures based on what we have in the galleries and on exhibit. So we had four workshops, each one talked about a different topic. The first one, and this was, again, we opened it up to high school teens, we did it on a Saturday, we moved it a little later in the day. As we all know, we want to sleep in on the weekends, and we promoted it as “come, have fun, it’s a much more informal setting.” This is the place where we’re gonna have gallery walks, you can talk about anything you want, and then at the end, we’re just going to have a hands on activity to really get a sense of what we were talking about in our gallery walks. And so the first one we did was back in February, we talked about Inuit art, and the Inui are people, are the Native people of really the north of America. So we’re talking about located in the Arctic, Alaska, places in Canada, and we talked about the ways that they tell stories through scrimshaw. So we were able to get materials for teens to try that out themselves and see how difficult it really is to actually try to create art on a piece of ivory. Whether it’s a square that we gave them, but imagine trying to do this on a bone, which is what they did, whether it was a whale tooth or a walrus tusk, to get that sense of this is what they were doing with their storytelling and the artwork. Then the second session was called Spaces of Healing. And this is where we walked around the museum, and we asked teens to go to a place in the museum, find a place where they felt comfortable, where they felt it was a space that they could just relax in. Because based on a lot of research that’s been happening lately, we know that people are using museums as spaces of both mental and physical healing. And it was very interesting to hear the teens responses saying I went to the spot, and it made me feel good. But then I went over to the Great Mammal Hall, and I didn’t feel good because it smells and so and it is true when you go in there, it’s full of taxidermy. So you’re gonna get old artifacts smell. There are some things that said, “I love being in the Glass Flower exhibit because it’s so quiet,” and then there were other teens that said, “I went to the Glass Flower exhibit, and it was so quiet, it was uncomfortable. Like I felt like I was in a library, and I couldn’t talk.” And it was interesting to see these different reactions for how spaces are perceived in the museum. The third workshop, we talked about museums as crime scenes, and this is something that Mia brought up, where we said, “Yeah, museums are great, we have all of these artifacts, but how did we get them? And we worked off of some Indigenous poetry playlists that we had previously used before and in the museum, and listening to what the authors were writing about, what they were expressing, we went to different spaces in the museum, specifically, the Native American Hall, and the fourth floor where we have exhibits about anthropology. We talked about how it feels to have artwork from your culture exhibited in a way that you might not have wanted it to be exhibited, and how are museums complicit in working with anthropologists or archaeologists and taking our artifacts and art that might not belong to them. Now, museums are really working with Native Americans, with different tribes to repatriate that so again, talking about how museums have evolved over time. With that workshop, teens were able to do an activity called Cut and Paste Poetry, where, using those same poems that we read in the gallery, they created their own poems to talk about how they felt they should be represented in the museum space. And the last workshop that we did was last month in May, we did Solstice traditions. We talked about how different cultures think about the sun, how they represent it, and if there are any religions around that, are there any beliefs about that. For example, the Mayans believe that sun would travel across the sky, and then at night, it was traveling in the underworld. And so to help the sun come back out, they had to do rituals, and they had to do lots of different things to help the sun go through the underworld without being sort of damaged or hurt and then come back out the next day. So just different beliefs of cultures across North America and how the sun is so important to them. And we ended that session by doing a cyanotype print, which is basically a sun print. So you take fabric that has been treated, you create something on it using different hardware, you can create an image, you expose it to the sun, and then after that, you rinse it out and you have this beautiful sun print. And so that was sort of what Teen Saturdays were. The teams were able to come, hang out, we provided snacks, and refreshments, a very relaxed environment. And we had good feedback from both the teens and the parents of saying, “Is this program going to happen again? And can we come back?” And we said, “Yes.” So we’re working to create another iteration of Teen Saturdays at the museum for the fall semester.
Jennifer Berglund 25:38
Mia, I have to know what was your scrimshaw?
Mia Hortado 25:41
I drew a cat.
Jennifer Berglund 25:43
Oh, that’s so cool.
Mia Hortado 25:45
Yeah.
Jennifer Berglund 25:45
Why did you choose a cat?
Mia Hortado 25:47
Because I have a cat, and I don’t know, I was going through like a weird phase. I was drawing cats everywhere.
Abbie Sandoval-Focil 25:55
I love that.
Jennifer Berglund 25:56
Why not. What’s your cat’s name?
Mia Hortado 25:58
Blueberry.
Jennifer Berglund 25:59
Blueberry, aw. I love that. I’m setting a blue theme in your life. I don’t know.
Mia Hortado 26:04
It’s different in Spanish, but that’s kind of the translation, because I named him after a Strawberry Shortcake character and when I was little, so…
Jennifer Berglund 26:16
Oh. Okay, okay. After doing all of these programs and stuff, do you think it sort of changed the way you thought about museums?
Mia Hortado 26:30
It did change. I thought museum were gonna be like boring, quiet, things like that. But I after I’ve been to the Peabody one, and the Natural History one, I think the Peabody one is like quiet, but it’s like interesting. They have interesting things. Things you learn, like people not wanting, like specific things to be showcased, and I thought it was really interesting. And for the Natural History, one, I think it’s interesting, because it’s like full of kids, full of college people, and teenagers, everything. So that’s, like, pretty interesting to me, and they have like fun things to look at. I think the Natural History Museum is more about visuals, and the Peabody one’s more about like history.
Jennifer Berglund 27:12
Abbie, having facilitated programs in the museum and having been a museum person for a long time. And then Mia, experiencing the Harvard museums for the first time kind of through this interesting lens through the Hear Me Out program, how do you think we can grow from here as a museum and as a program, as a place where you have the opportunity to be more welcoming?
Abbie Sandoval-Focil 27:42
That’s a great question, because we are trying to have this not be just a one time thing. We want this to be a recurring program. I think that like you said, I have been in this for quite a while now, and usually was always behind the scenes but having the opportunity to come to the forefront and really interact with the public and do the outreach that I’m doing now, I think we have to be more proactive in outreach that we do to the community, not just within the museum, but actually going into the communities. One of the questions from the Hear Me Out, because we did a survey, a pre-survey and a post-survey for that, one of the questions that really stood out to me asked of the teens of how important it is for museum staff, and educators to know your community. And it was very important to them. One of the things I’m trying to do, along with my colleague, Javier Marin, who’s my counterpart at the Natural History Museum, is to really trying to take steps to go into the, physically go into the communities, knock on doors, work with organizations within those communities who have a high percentage of Latinos, and when we’re talking about Chelsea, East Boston, Somerville, Medford, Everett, and work with those organizations on the ground and say, “We are here for you guys. How can the museum meet community needs? And how can we create that space, whether it’s working with the city itself, or having people come to the museum space?” I think that’s something that’s really important. And then dispelling the idea of exclusivity. Again, Harvard should not be a synonym of exclusive. It should be a synonym of inclusive, right? And that’s really what we’re trying to do with these kinds of programs, bringing in people who would normally not come and making that accessible to them.
Jennifer Berglund 29:50
What do you think Mia? How do you think we could grow as a museum and how do you think the program can grow or where do you think it’s gonna go from here?
Mia Hortado 30:00
I think these kinds of programs are like really nice for teenagers with these kind of backgrounds, because like, it’s something you can relate to, and I think that’s very important for the museum to be more open to every kind of people, different backgrounds, different like stories. I think it’s really important because people would go more to museums if there were like, things they would see and be like, “Oh, that’s where I used to live,” or “I’ve heard of this place,” or “this one, where my grandmother’s from,” “this where my mom’s from,” like, “Oh, this is where my friends from.” Like things like that people can relate to and talk about, and feel more welcome to those type of things.
Jennifer Berglund 30:39
I’m curious, though, what about you? Are you going to become like a museum person now?
Mia Hortado 30:44
Right now, I don’t really have time for museums, things like that, because I have a lot of schoolwork, things I need to catch up with. But like in the summer, I would definitely try it again and go check things out.
Jennifer Berglund 31:00
Well, I hope, certainly, that you become a lifelong museum goer, and that maybe this has helped somewhere along the way encourage that.
Mia Hortado 31:11
Maybe it will. Who knows?
Abbie Sandoval-Focil 31:14
She’s already taking steps to this.
Mia Hortado 31:16
Yeah.
Abbie Sandoval-Focil 31:17
Mia is volunteering at one of our biggest events, which is the Solstice Festival happening.
Jennifer Berglund 31:23
Oh, that’s so cool. Good for you.
Abbie Sandoval-Focil 31:25
Whether you knew it or not, I think your mom signed you up to volunteer.
Mia Hortado 31:28
I didn’t know that.
Abbie Sandoval-Focil 31:29
So you’ll be receiving an email about that, yes. But this is something, again, that’s really great. Mia’s mom has been in contact with us saying, “Can you please let me know what other programs we have? I think this is such a great opportunity.” And again, it’s creating those opportunities and having those available for everybody, reaching this kind of audience and having this diverse engagement with the community, and from all of our teen participants. For Solstice, we have 10 teen volunteers who are going to come and help us out with various activities, whether it’s being museum ambassadors, greeters, you know, helping with flower crowns, and other activities that we’re going to have during the festival, baby animals, and mini golf. They’re showing up and so it’s being able to continue these relationships and foster that engagement.
Jennifer Berglund 32:32
Abbie and Mia, thank you so much for being here. This was really fun.
Abbie Sandoval-Focil 32:37
Thank you for having us, Jenny.
Mia Hortado 32:39
Yeah, thank you for inviting me and having this opportunity to do more things like this.
Jennifer Berglund 32:52
Today’s HMSC Connects! podcast was edited by Eden Piacitelli, and produced by me, Jennifer Berglund, and the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture. Special thanks to the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture, the Peabody Museum, and to Abbie Sandoval-Focil and Mia Hortado, for their wisdom and expertise. And thank you so much for listening. If you like today’s podcast, please subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Podbean, or wherever you get your podcasts. See in a couple of weeks.