Call for Session Proposals

CLHO's 2023 Annual Conference

Community Matters: Linking Past and Present in Meaningful Ways

Monday, June 5, 2023 at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain

Proposal Deadline: March 31, 2023, 11:59 p.m.

Submit a proposal

Museums inform a community, document a community, and exist as a community for sharing ideas, history, and cultural information. This year’s CLHO conference will address the myriad issues we tackle as organizations and individuals seeking to connect with and support the communities we represent, through a series of conversations around some of the key challenges of our moment. These include:

COMMUNITY HISTORY

How does the history of your community get communicated to the public, both within and beyond the town line? Are you reviving and telling stories that have been overlooked or ignored in the past? How have you engaged a broader audience through your efforts to interpret—and reinterpret—your community’s stories? What partnerships and collaborations have you forged? What lessons are you learning?

A CHANGING PLANET

How are you and your museum responding to the challenges and threats of climate change—to your site, your buildings, your collections, your landscape, and more—and how are you communicating those to your visitors? Are you fostering conversations with your audiences around climate issues, either at your museum or out in the community? What are your plans for weathering the changes and uncertainty ahead?

AMERICA 250

The Semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence in 2026 will be an important moment for museums and communities across the nation to engage with democracy, history, civics, and the long arc of revolution. What are you doing to prepare for America 250? What does your museum or community have in the works? How will the history we interpret in 2026 be different from the stories we told at the Bicentennial? What work can we do to ensure that a fuller story of our nation is told, both now and in the decades to come?

RECKONING AND RECOVERY

The pandemic moment has called on all of us to rethink our lives, our work, our relationships, our missions. What are you or your institution reevaluating, changing, ceasing, or starting as a result? How are you laying the groundwork for a better, healthier, and more inclusive future, for your organization and your community? How can the museum community rectify its serious racial and socioeconomic diversity problems, and how do we create a future where history and museum careers are accessible to all? Where do you need guidance and support?

MUSEUMS 101

Help is on the way. Let’s get together and talk about what you need. From successful fundraising to recruiting staff, board members, and volunteers that truly represent the diversity of our state, and everything in between, we are looking for sessions to help smaller museums thrive and grow. What challenges are you facing at your organization that you want help with? What do you have up your sleeve to share? Nobody has all the answers—but we can always help one another out.

CLHO seeks sessions that will educate, engage, and inspire. We welcome all manner of session formats, including panel presentations, roundtables, workshops, moderated discussions, performances, demonstrations, think tanks, working groups, and more. Successful sessions offer practical ideas or examples of projects and efforts that tackle real-world challenges, bring together presenters from more than one institution, community, or discipline, and provide takeaways that participants can bring back to their own communities. We aspire to provide information and inspiration on Monday that can be put into practice on Tuesday.

We especially welcome submissions from art, childrens’, science, and natural history museums/nature centers, as well as from grassroots community and history organizations.

You don't have to be an expert to propose a session! We're particularly interested in your ideas for think tanks and discussion sessions on a subject you're interested in but may not know much about. If you've got some thoughts and are willing to moderate a conversation, suggest it! When you get a bunch of people in a room who are interested in a topic, good things emerge.

Conference Potpourri: Do you have a session idea that doesn’t seem to fit with this call for proposals? Send it in anyway. We are open to all good ideas.

Details

Conference sessions are typically 50 minutes. To ensure time for questions and discussion, we recommend no more than three presentations per session if you are proposing a traditional panel. We accept proposals for complete sessions (preferred) or for single presentations/ideas that the committee may combine into a session.

To submit a session proposal, please complete the online form.  You will need:

• The name and contact information for your session coordinator
• Your session's title
• A brief abstract of your session (50 words or less) for the conference program
• Name, title/role, affiliation (if applicable), and a brief bio for each presenter
• Your session's format (panel, roundtable, workshop, performance, think tank, etc.)
• The level for which your session is intended (introductory, intermediate, advanced)
• A description (250 words or less) of your session, identifying its main objectives, how you will be addressing them, its relation to the conference theme, and its intended audience
• Three expected takeaways of your session

You may submit a session proposal as an individual, as part of an organization, or as a student. You do not have to be a CLHO member to participate in the conference. We welcome submissions from non-history museums and groups, as well as grassroots history and community organizations.

Questions? Please contact David Rau, Conference Committee Chair, at david@flogris.org.

To submit your proposal, fill out the online form. Proposals are due by March 31, 2023.