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Museum Without Walls Programming

CommunityWorks, Inc. began offering "Museum Without Walls" programming in 2000. Interactive, hands-on community education enrichment programs, involving kids, families and seniors, provide opportunities for experimentation and experiential investigation of subject areas, while also building community, and promoting appreciation of the differences among us. Supported by generous volunteer hours, contributions from local businesses, and funding from tuition fees, grants, and donations, exciting, successful projects and programs developed.

Helena Community Garden on Carroll College campus
(now the Exploration Garden in the "back yard" of the YMCA)

CommunityWorks´ Helena Community Garden on Carroll College campus was the first venue for Museum Without Walls programming. The garden is a living, dynamic museum floor and outdoor learning lab, where:
• Elementary–aged kids actively engage in exhibits including a compost heap, an aphid-infested sunflower, raised beds cascading with vegetable plants, edible flowers, and herbs;
• Older students share their expertise and experiences with younger students;
• The community gathers for seasonal and earth honoring celebrations, festivals, and workshops;
• Students learn about the science of compost, the roles of beneficial insects, study soil, measure, and chart;
• Kids create garden art: mosaic stepping stones, "beautiful bugs" in cooperation with a local clay artist, garden benches, whimsical gates, and painted outdoor furnishings.
• Students taste edible flowers, cook with interesting herbs, and learn about cooking, nutrition, and healthy bodies.
• Students bundle fresh garden vegetables, choose recipes to share, and proudly deliver the harvest package to the shelves of the local food bank (Helena Food Share) and shelter and other programs.

The garden teaches about systems, sustainability, necessity and benefits of diversity among human beings and the creatures of the earth, and the value of sharing of work and harvest. Perhaps most importantly, the garden is fun, it is a welcoming and joyful place, vibrantly alive with creatures, music, and laughter.
In it´s early years, the community garden was located by the pink psychology house on Carroll College campus. Carroll generously provided the space and the water for the garden, as well as use of the Psychology House as a summer indoor facility, with the clear expectation that all that would change when Carroll proceeded with their campus master planning and future construction. When that milestone was reached, Carroll faculty and administration helped find a new home for the garden on City land at the YMCA.
Through a Helena Rotary Centennial Celebration grant of $10,000, much volunteer labor and support, as well as support from local businesses, a beautiful new garden and garden shed were built in 2005 at the YMCA.

Kids´ Days Off Camps

In cooperation with Helena area schools, one- and two-day long enrichment programs were offered in our early years for elementary school kids during week days when school is not in session (e.g., teacher training days and holidays). Providing healthy, safe, enriching activities for kids during school days off, Kids Days Off is an opportunity for kids and teachers to become immersed and probe deeply into seasonally significant subjects of interest, outside of the routine demands of the classroom. Whether exploring the history of a holiday and sewing costumes, or deliberating the similarities and differences among world cultures, with native representatives who are members of our local community, or welcoming back the birds in the spring, Kids Days Off engages students in meaningful and educational activities.

Exploration Summer Camps for Kids

A series of hands-on educational summer camps are offered for kids from ages 5 to 11providing experiences of the concoctions of bubbling towers of color, stretchy sticky polymers, (or s´not snot, as some would call it) and liquid nitrogen homemade ice cream in the "The Great Stinky Gooey Exploding Chemistry Show" to making solar vehicles and wind turbines in "Exploring Renewable Energy." Students explored early Helena in "Pioneer Kids" through trekking through a downtown Helena history hunt, making ya ya dolls, playing string games, and painting Charlie Russell-style watercolor paintings wearing Metis sashes. In "Waterwonders" kids waded through local water bodies York Island pond, Ten Mile Creek, Little Prickly Pear and Spring Meadow Lake, looking at the health of the water in riparian area by seeing what lives there and checking oxygen content and pH. Catching, identifying and examining caddis flies, mayflies, stoneflies, damselflies and dragonflies in their nymp and adult stages, in the water and under the microscope. Each student left the camp as a card-carrying member of the "I held a Pteronarcys californica club."
Other camps include Garden Works Beautiful Bugs, Aeronautics and Beyond, A Symphony of Ourselves, Stories through Pictures, Inventing Gadgets and Gizmos, Multi-cultural Games, Mysteries of Flight, Fun with Physics, Dino Days, Lego Robotics, and Tech Girls. Camps have often been offered in cooperation with other Helena organizations such as Carroll College, Montana Historical Society, Archie Bray Foundation and the Helena Public Schools PEAK Enrichment program. Students explored many of the assets the Helena community offers, as they attended camps in various locations such as the chemistry and engineering labs of Carroll College, the Historical Society museum, and various riparian areas around Helena.

Community Events, Celebrations and Festivals

In addition, CommunityWorks sponsors events that promote the vibrancy and well being of the community. One example is the Red Grammar concert and teacher workshops. CommunityWorks provided engaging, hands-on learning activities for families and kids at community-wide events such as the grand opening of the Great Northern Carousel, the Mount Helena Music Festivals for many summers, the Centennial Celebration of the Montana State Capitol building, the Helena Education Foundation Street Fairs, and the local farmers market.

Spontaneous Collaborations to Meet Community Needs

Community Works has served as a resource for helping organize responses to arising community needs. For example, recently the Helena community has experienced some instances of intolerance, intimidation and hate crimes. Individuals from India were targets of harassment and hate crimes (e.g., automobile windshield smashing), anti-Semitic slurs were written on sidewalks, and a Muslim woman was harassed and intimidated at the airport. CommunityWorks was called in to a collaboration with the Montana Human Rights Network, the Helena Human Rights Task Force, PRIDE, and The Helena Interfaith Circle to explore how we can build a community that accepts and respects ethnic and religious diversity. On July 31, 2002, at a weekly summer traditional outdoor downtown gathering called "Alive at 5," before the scheduled band plays, community members are invited to enjoy the music and food of India. Members of the Indian community will sing traditional music and share cultural dance. One Indian woman worked with Indian and American children at CommunityWorks Symphony of Ourselves summer camp to involve American children in learning the traditional Indian music and dance, and those children will take part in the celebration.