By Lisa Terech, Community Engagement
It amazes me how quickly I have settled into my new routine of working from home. I am so grateful to be able to continue working from home; my little corner ‘office’ is becoming more and more comfortable with every passing day.
Meanwhile, the Oshawa Museum’s digital presence continues on as we keep our physical doors closed. I have set goals for the Museum to achieve through the month, setting benchmarks, and hopefully seeing proof that our increased digital strategy has been successful. I re-vamped the Oshawa Museum Blog, making our Museum From Home page more visually appealing; we have used the same template since launching the blog in 2013, and it was high time for it to receive a virtual facelift. Our Museum From Home page is a team effort to create and make already existing resources easy for our community to access. Its intended audience is kids and families, hopefully inspiring them to try these activities at home, or maybe these activities can lead to other inspiration.
To help focus the content we’re producing for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, I’ve so far found themes to be helpful with this, and it’s hopefully an approach I can continue until we’re back in the office and regular scheduled programming can resume. We started with #MuseumAlphabet, but after 26 days, it came to its natural end. Last week was all about #MuseumPets, because, really, who doesn’t like a good animal pic! #MuseumWeek is scheduled for mid-May, and this world-wide campaign is always a favourite leading to good engagement.
I am very grateful for the team who are helping with content creation. Having an exclusively digital engagement presence could lead to creation fatigue and potential burn-out, but so far, I’m feeling inspired, and our amazing team at the Oshawa Museum have been nothing but collaborative and supportive.
While I haven’t been creating much for this COVID-19 project, I feel as though a long standing habit of mine may make for interesting reading in the future. Since my internship as a Museum Management and Curatorship student in 2010, I have kept a daily log of what I do and what I’ve achieved through the day. This has proven especially helpful when completing a monthly report for our Board of Directors. This is a habit I’ve continued while working from home, noting everything I’ve worked on, successes, as well as any notes I’m taking while sitting in on webinars. Examining my daily tasks pre, mid, and post COVID-19 may make for interesting comparisons for researchers many years from now, who knows!
COVID-19 in Oshawa 