ABSTRACT
This essay presents a first-person account of a museum's efforts to listen deeply and engage in climate change conversations within a local, rural context. The museum was the source of the interaction design, the context is a Western Pennsylvanian rural community, and the facilitators are a combination of museum and community actors who together broke the ice and started climate conversations. One path forward involved refining our cultural competency to recognize the ways that rural communities talk (or don't talk) about climate change, and what that reveals about how they relate to and conceptualize the topic. The experience revealed ideas about how important policy verses science is to the outcome of climate communication; how open the museum can be to a role in a conversation that is curious rather than authoritative; how shifts in engagement with topics like climate change involve emotional connection, respect, and interest first; and how museums can move beyond ideas of educating the next generation and call on public audiences of all ages to join them in openly caring about and acting on controversial topics.
