Campus Exhibitions in Advancement of Civic and Community Engagement – Higher Education
Target Audience: Higher education faculty and administrators.
Created by: The National Museum and Center for Service in partnership with Campus Compact
Design / Project Team: Alexandra Byrum (Lead), Urkovia Andrews, Mariam Ismail, Gina Lee-Olukoya, Leslie Lombre, Shelley Errington Nicholson, Ashley Sawyer, Julie Budkowski and Laura Weaver
Primary Objective: To advance civic and community engagement through developing community-based exhibitions that tell the stories of campus-community partnerships.
Contents
The toolkit provides a sequential operational framework and guidelines organized across the following programmatic components.
- Core Introduction & Rationale: Outlines why institutions should create exhibitions to celebrate service, invite dialogue, advance partnerships, amplify untold stories, and provide deep interdisciplinary learning.
- Operational Planning Framework: Step-by-step methodologies working from the purpose of the exhibition to impact measurement.
- Planning Worksheets: Includes a practical four-page “Exhibition Worksheet” that serves as a direct planning template covering purpose, funding, timeline, curation details, marketing, and metrics
Steps
Features structured step-by-step methodologies covering:
- Defining the Exhibition Purpose:
Aligning content with organizational values, mapping goals, and selecting target audiences.
- Collaboration & Funding:
Coordinating stakeholder committees (students, staff, faculty, community partners), securing venues, and pursuing grants or institutional budgets.
- Creating a Project Timeline:
Working backward from an open date to structure research, content development, writing, design, and up to three weeks of printing buffer.
- Marketing the Exhibition:
Generating campus and media coverage via digital flyers, social media, direct emails, and media releases.
- Measuring Impact:
Setting evaluation metrics such as tracking attendance, social media metrics, audience critiques, or visitor feedback forms.
“Always center community voices and the stories they want to tell.”
Case studies
The resource anchors its methodology in five higher education case studies spanning different scales, budgets, and structural models:
- “Now is the Moment” (Case Study 1): A mobile, low-budget ($1,764) exhibition utilizing twelve portable retractable banners and a digital Padlet map to highlight regional public service pathways during a national conference.
- “Through It All: Families Moving Richmond” (Case Study 2): A community-engaged course exhibition ($3,302.20 budget) co-developed by the University of Richmond and GRTC Transit Company that integrated oral histories, family portraits, and a digital archive to honor transit workers.
- “Celebrating Simms: The Story of the Lucy F. Simms School” (Case Study 3): A multi-year, permanent physical installation (59 panels), companion booklet, and comprehensive digital archive ($36,450 budget) developed by James Madison University to recover and foreground local African American history.
- “Campus Museum of Service” (Case Study 4): An annual traveling poster exhibition and online initiative ($500–$1,000 annual budget) running at Georgia Southern University to explicitly recognize individual student, staff, alumni, and community partner service commitments.
- “The Faces of Mentoring” (Case Study 5): A student-driven, gallery-based exhibition ($833.44 budget) at the University of Richmond celebrating local mentor-mentee relationships through collaborative blind contour art workshops and pairs’ portraits.
Recommended technical toolset
The toolkit lists specific software applications recommended for alternative stages of exhibition curation:
- Panels, Labels, & Visualizations: Canva, Adobe Express, and Kumu.
- Online Virtual Exhibitions: WordPress, Knightlab’s Storymap, and Genially.
- Audio & Video Integration: Audacity and DaVinci Resolve.