Call for Session Proposals

Stewardship 2020: Caring for the Past in an Uncertain Future

Proposals due online by January 31, 2020, 11:59 p.m.

From fluctuating finances to shifting audiences, the digital revolution to climate change, history organizations in 2020 must chart a course through an ever-shifting landscape. How do we in Connecticut sustain and care for the places, collections, and communities to which we are responsible in a time of change and uncertainty? What strategies can help us ensure that the past remains accessible to future generations?

The Connecticut League of History Organizations welcomes proposals for its 2020 annual conference that explore the many forms of stewardship we practice as keepers, sharers, and communicators of the past. These might include:

• Environmental stewardship.  How are we caring for and interpreting the landscapes and places we sustain—and that sustain us? What approaches work for greening our museums and historic sites? How are we planning for the challenges of climate change? How can we meet the hazards of sea level rise, extreme weather events, and other changes that imperil our collections and places?
• Collections stewardship.  How do we care for our collections in the best possible ways?  What tactics work for preserving, repairing, and maintaining objects, landscapes, documents, machinery, clothing, tools, and the many other kinds of artifacts we are responsible for?
  
• Institutional stewardship.  How do we run our historic sites in ways that make them more resilient, nimble, and adaptable?  How do we make our museums, historical societies, schools, libraries, and other places of history more sustainable—environmentally, financially, and operationally?
  
• Interpretation.  What stories are we telling about the places that matter to us?  How can we recast the seemingly familiar stories of Connecticut places to make them newly relevant?  How can we incorporate difficult subject matter, like the history of slavery, into our narratives?  What work are we doing to tell the stories of the many different kinds of people who have constituted our communities over time?
  
• Community.  How do we serve our audiences in ways that better address their changing needs?  How can we better represent and reflect the communities to which we belong?  How are we involving the public in capturing the future history of our communities that is being created right now?
  
• Digital stewardship.  How can digital projects support our work as caretakers and communicators of the past?  What technologies are we using to steward our collections of digital resources, documents, and physical objects?  What work are we doing to ensure that our digital materials also endure?
  

We particularly welcome proposals for sessions, panels, roundtables, workshops, and other kinds of presentations that offer practical examples of projects and efforts that are tackling these challenges, and concrete lessons and toolkits that participants can take back to their own communities.

To submit your proposal, fill out the online form.

Download a PDF of the call for proposals.