A predicted storm
The story of climate change is old, and the warnings have been many. Extreme weather has become closer to us, and engagement has increased among people of all ages. Yet museums' interest in the topic is quite new.
This book therefore contains both professional testing and self-insight. Underlying it all are the museums' special resources: history, participation and communication. A Warning Storm: Museums Meet the Nature and Climate Crisis covers the areas of water, wind and nuclear power in addition to the textile and metal industries and oil extraction through seven chapters. The authors write from different angles, with new forms of collaboration and based on both history and the present. The contributors provide a broad professional introduction to the museum field.
The Aluminum Museum, in the middle of the center of Holmestrand, has gone through a change. It is about the museum's basic narrative. The author describes how both a new form and new perspectives were developed, in close collaboration with school students. The change was necessary to be able to explain, in a more in-depth way, how the metal aluminum is produced and how it affects the environment.
– Kristin Skjelbred
The exhibition Climate for Change opened at the Norwegian Oil Museum in 2019. A close reading of this sets the framework for a discussion about communicating climate challenges at museums. A central question is whether hope is suitable for changing the audience's behavior. The concept of the Anthropocene is discussed as an alternative approach and at the same time an opening towards deeper understandings, responsibility and action.
– Trude Meland and Herdis A. Nergaard
How can the topics of energy and sustainability be made relevant to a school class? The authors examine students' work on content for a display in the exhibition Energy in the Time of Climate Crisis at The Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology. A collaborative pedagogical approach provides a space for students' ideas to be expressed. The work created creative wonder and an exhibition title: Where do you get your energy from?
– Torhild Skåtun and Catharina Hoff
The teaching program described involves students and teachers in a close and long-term collaboration with a museum. The chapter author presents various opportunities for in-depth learning, and includes the topic of resource use in everyday life, using clothing as an example. The teaching program is composed of several elements, with elements of design and theater.
– Ingrid Haugroening
The industry along the Akerselva River in Oslo has left deep traces and, among other things, created a toxic vein of chemicals through the city. But what happened to the "newer" textile industry in the mid-1950s? Why was it closed down so quickly? Did it conflict with a new, formalized nature conservation? Or were there other reasons? The author examines why there is little research and communication about the establishment and closure of Oslo's "newer" textile industry history.
– Gro Red
Kraftlandet.no tells stories about people's encounters with the forces of nature. The digital initiative is a collaboration between the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate, Anno Norsk Skogmuseum and Kraftmuseet. Three authors come together to shed light on the development of an online exhibition, which in itself has high ambitions – to give the public insight into controversial energy issues and describe energy management in a historical perspective.
– Liv Eirill Evensen, Sidsel Hindal and Stig Storheil
Photography is an entrance to stories – in this case about the energy sources wind power and nuclear power. The author takes as a starting point an activity where museum visitors get up close to an exhibition about these energy sources. The discussion is about photographs in a permanent exhibition, the possibilities of putting them in new contexts, and about personal statements about wind power and nuclear power.
– Nina Bratland
