WE ARE WATER MN is a unique collaboration among the Minnesota Humanities Center, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, the Minnesota Historical Society, and the Minnesota Departments of Agriculture, Health, and Natural Resources.
Through the WE ARE WATER traveling exhibit, hosted in eight communities, visitors reflect on local stories and the meaning and experiences of water in Minnesota with space to add their own stories. By creating relationships around water, the project partners and host sites, are seeking to create networks to that can promote positive social norms, building a shared vision for water stewardship.
As the program evaluator, the Creation In Common team is helping the project partners understand the impact WE ARE WATER is having on visitors making the connection between their individual relationship to water and the role they can play in advancing local, regional, and statewide efforts to care for this essential resource. Utilizing both formative and summative evaluation approaches, we are seeking to help project partners and community host sites, improve their own relationship-building practices as well as move toward a deeper alignment with the Minnesota Humanities Center’s approach to community engagement through absent narratives—those voices or stories often left out or marginalized.
To learn more about WE ARE WATER and which communities the traveling exhibit is visiting, go here.