Collections and Communities: Voices from the Climate-Changed Pacific

People across the Pacific have been using YouTube and other social media to ensure their concerns about climate change are heard internationally.  While these expressions are ensuring islanders' perspectives are being noticed, museums have the capacity to bring these voices vividly, and in a cohesive way, to new audiences.  This presentation outlines a community-based series of workshops created by the American Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Samoa around the cultural impacts of climate change. These workshops provide a forum for community members in remote Savai'i (Samoa) and in the Pacific diaspora in New York to discuss, document and disseminate responses, thus enabling audiences in places not yet experiencing obvious environmental change an opportunity to make useful connections of imagination.