Museum Receives IEFA Grant to Partner with GFPS

GREAT FALLS, MT – The C.M. Russell Museum has received a $7,500 “Best Practices: Museums and Schools as Co-Educators” grant. Funded through the Montana Office of Public Instruction’s Indian Education for All (IEFA) program, the grant was established as a pilot project to improve collaboration between museums and schools as co-educators of American Indian education.

The collections-based project will be completed over an intensive 10-week period, and will partner the Russell Museum with Great Falls Public Schools (GFPS). The project is intended to create a growing awareness of the educational possibilities inherent in American Indian collections, as well as stimulate new ways of cooperative teaching in both museums and schools. The project will eventually result in an IEFA curriculum-based publication to be used by all Montana museums and schools.

Russell Museum Curator Lynne Spriggs, Museum Education Coordinator Kim Kapalka, and GFPS art teacher Lisa Easton will serve as leaders of the project. They will attend a three-day seminar at the Montana Historical Society, as well as take a learning trip to the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman. The remainder of the 10-week period will be used to develop creative educational programming specifically related to the Russell Museum’s collection of American Indian art and artifacts. The collection will be displayed in the Museum’s forthcoming permanent exhibition, The Bison: American Icon, Heart of Plains Indian Culture, scheduled to open in late 2008.

As one of six nationally accredited Montana museums, the Russell Museum will also serve as a host organization for a learning trip by educators and museum staff from two other grant recipients: Chief Plenty Coups State Park and Museum in Pryor, and the Old Fort Benton, located in Fort Benton.