"A New Life Forms" When a Museum Becomes a Center for Free Thought

Della Baeza (Jackie Robinson Foundation)
Franny Kent (Jackie Robinson Museum)
Howard Bryant (ESPN)
Suzanne Musho (Zubatkin Owner Representation)

Purpose: To create sustainable urban environments, we must engage in a discourse to make it clear why they are important. This workshop asserts that in order to create truly sustainable urban environments, equity and opportunity must be overt, obvious, fostered and above all, discussed. We also assert that Urban Environments need centers for this discourse. The new Jackie Robinson Museum is a case study that will be this important societal center.

Goal: A sustainable urban environment is one that constantly changes and one that encourages change. In this workshop, we analyze the Museum building type and offer its role in impacting the development of sustainable urban environments. We will use the case study of the planning, design, and outreach efforts involved in the creation of the Museum to illustrate how it can truly serve as the center for free thought and public engagement. The Museum will pivot their discourse in real time. As our society faces new challenges, the Jackie Robinson Museum will use the museum typology to lend gravity of its mission and will use the museum typology to enact social change in urban environments.

As a sports hero and social justice leader, Jackie Robinson is the perfect shepherd for creating a space dedicated for sustainable thinking. Based in NYC, the Jackie RobinsonMuseum is responding to his legacy providing an everlasting, changing forum that engages people of all types, and we beseech them to communicate. The Museum will ask the participant to question, analyze, and reform thinking on topics that are facing us today in our urban environments. The platforms will be through open conversation at the Museum and consistent educational outreach methods implemented throughout New York to encourage students to consider what equity and equality truly means, and how opportunity becomes the great equalizer. How is the unacceptance of equality limiting our need for globalization as a country? How do we turn the mirror on ourselves asking how do we change, not what needs to be changed to meet our thoughts?

Format: Our Workshop encourages engagement of all participants. Suzanne Musho will moderate the active conversation. Della Britton Baeza, CEO of the Jackie Robinson Foundation, Franny Kent, Director of Educational Programming at the Jackie Robinson Museum, and Howard Bryant, Writer, will be introduced. They will each deliver a five‐ minute introduction outlining the purpose of our case study inquiry. While the learning objectives will be thread through the entire workshop, Ms Britton Baeza will concentrate on our appreciating the role of active discourse to solve urban issues, and evaluating equity in an urban environment, as a compulsory component of urban sustainability. Ms Kent will concentrate on analyzing the function of the Museum typology in an urban sustainable environment, as well as reviewing the traditional view of the Museum in urban environments. Mr Bryant will discuss the historical reliance on sustainability in civil rights and change. All participants will be asked to discover how the Museum will be a center for discussion on urban sustainability.