PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The Berkshire Museam will open later Thursday Oct 1. To accommodate staff diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility training.

 

The Berkshire Museum, which is currently open Thursday through Monday, will close its doors on the morning of Thursday, Oct. 1, while staff attend training. The museum will open for the day at 1 pm. Reservations continue to be required at the downtown Museum; visitors are encouraged to reserve online.

 

The museum’s complete staff will participate in a two-part training this week with social justice and equity consultant Angela Park on Sept. 29 and Oct. 1. The training will focus on increasing awareness of diversity, equity, and inclusion topics to allow staff to develop programming and communications that better reflect the museum’s community and audiences as the 117-year old organization works to examine the role of museums in institutionalizing racism, reflect on its internal and external culture, and join with community partners to end systemic racism. 

 

The museum team will use their training to set and meet specific goals designed to ensure that guests of all backgrounds feel safe, welcomed, and included. 

 

Angela Park is a Vermont-based consultant, researcher, and writer. She helps organizations embed social justice and equity throughout their operations and programming, including testing assumptions about the root causes of inequity, mapping impacts and dynamics of systemic racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression, and making visible the mental models that can hinder well-intended organizational efforts. 

 

Park has testified before Congress and state legislatures, lectured at universities across the United States, and worked in the Clinton-Gore White House as part of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development.

 

Funding for the museum’s training comes from the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation’s Community Engagement Through the Arts Capacity Building Program.