IGM Art Gallery Advisory Council Members visit Connecting Cultures Mobile Museum

USC Institute for Genetic Medicine Art Gallery (IGM AG) Advisory Council Members, Susan Sims-Hillbrand, Co-Chair Exhibition Committee; Robert Donin, Chair Public Policy Committee and Lynn Crandall, IGM AG Director, were inspired by a tour of the Connecting Cultures Mobile Museum (CCMM)  at the Lincoln Middle School in Santa Monica on Thursday, February 4.

Click on the photo to start slide show with captions      Photos by Lynn Crandall

Valerie Lezin, CCMM’s Founder and President and Executive Director Julia Goldman conducted the tour of the unique educational program that bridges the gap between students’ diverse backgrounds, teaching lessons of acceptance and respect using the outstanding collection of artifacts from a surprisingly vast number of masks, musical instruments, sculptures, tools and costumes to speak to and draw in children and families from diverse cultural heritages.

A Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization, CCMM is working to foster cultural awareness, understanding, and acceptance in LA youth and brings a unique cross-cultural museum experience directly into schools, focusing primarily on middle school-age students at Title 1-funded, low income schools. The CCMM leaders understand that students, whether from affluent or disadvantaged backgrounds, often have limited contact with cultures outside their own communities, thus, since 1995, CCMM has been offering unique educational resources and programs to schools regardless of location or student population. CCMM reaches between 16,000 and 20,000 students annually who are responding enthusiastically!

CCMM helps bridge the gap between students’ diverse backgrounds, teaching lessons of acceptance, respect and, similar to the IGM AG mission, works to incubate social capital and stewardship of self others and the planet.  Both organizations laud Kofi Annan’s call for citizen leadership CLICK and agree that we need moderate, inclusive, noncompetitive citizen leader voices reclaiming the space of our town squares and especially the digital space.

CCMM has three main objectives:

• to increase understanding and respect for cultural diversity
• to develop students’ cultural competence
• to support and enhance classroom learning

CLICK to hear Valerie Lezin explain CCMM mission related to Kofi Annan’s call for Citizen Leadership

CLICK  To hear Susan Sims-Hillbrand explain art as a tool for preventing and healing conflict and ensuring inclusive, noncompetitive, transparent, responsible stewardship of self, others and the planet

We have agreed to begin organizing ways to share and leverage resources between the USC IGM AG and CCMM.  We plan to gather on February 14 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. for an open-minded, art-framed discussion among public, private, nonprofit, faith-based, academic and media leaders at the USC IGM Art Gallery to review collective challenges, resources and suggestions for inclusive, noncompetitive, transparent and accountable action steps.