OMA Webinar | Nothing About Us Without Us: Engaging Authentically with Marginalized Communities
OMA Webinar
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Event Details
How can museums move beyond simply telling stories about marginalized communities to creating opportunities to tell stories with them? Meaningful engagement requires more than checking a box or adding a new perspective to an existing interpretation—it means building relationships and trust, listening to community expertise, sharing decision-making power, and creating space for communities to shape how their histories and experiences are represented.
In this Empowering Museum Voices Fellowship-led webinar, our panelists will explore what authentic, collaborative engagement can look like in practice. Together, we’ll consider how museums can amplify marginalized voices without speaking over them, avoid tokenizing or extractive approaches, and navigate multiple perspectives while creating interpretation and programs that are relevant, respectful, and engaging. We’ll also explore how museums can sustain relationships beyond a single project, recognize what meaningful engagement looks like, and respond thoughtfully when institutions make mistakes.
Whether your museum is just beginning this work or looking for ways to deepen existing relationships, this conversation will offer ideas and inspiration for moving from inclusion as a checkbox toward meaningful partnership, shared authority, and ongoing relationship-building.
About our speakers:
Michael D. Aaron is President and Executive Director of Rickenbacker Woods Foundation in Columbus, where he leads work connecting historic preservation, public history, youth education and community engagement. His work focuses on expanding the traditional historic-house model to tell broader stories about people, place, innovation and the communities connected to historic sites.
Dr. Terron Banner is an artist an educator, currently serving as Director of the Ohio State University Urban Arts Space. As an artist, he advocates for open access, just resource allocation, and culturally relevant decisions made in the arts administration and arts management process. As an educator, he supports culturally responsive teaching that accounts for the lived experiences of students and as a researcher he seeks to encourage more education reform discussions that are grounded in issues covering cultural diversity and socioeconomics.
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n Ohio native with deep Appalachian roots in southeast Ohio, Philip Hutchison serves as a Historical Resources Program Administrator at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. He is a graduate of Ohio University, where he earned degrees in History and Public Administration, and specializes in interpreting Ohio history—from the Underground Railroad to Native American and pioneer heritage—for public audiences
When: Monday, October 19, 2026, 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM EDT
Where: Online – complete webinar login details will be sent to participants after registering
Cost: $15 – OMA Members; $20 - Non-members
Registration deadline: October 16, 2026
TAM Members: Use code TAMMEMBER at checkout to receive the OMA member rate. Please contact Johnna McEntee at oma@ohiohistory.org or 614.361.5613 if you do not see the $15 member rate after using the code, or run into any issues when registering.
Register: Click here to register
Registration deadline: October 16, 2026
