Culture Change: Works When Working Together

Share Knowledge Widely

Every museum has people who notice where things could work better. A front-of-house staff member sees a family having a hard time at admissions. An educator wonders how to make a program feel more welcoming. A designer recognizes that a gallery could be easier to navigate. Across the museum, people are paying attention. They see barriers, and they often have ideas for how to make the visitor experience better.

But there is a catch. When change depends on one passionate person, it can be fragile. Museums know this reality well. Staff move into new roles, take new jobs, or simply get pulled in too many directions. When that happens, even meaningful work can lose steam. Too often, the effort fades and the museum drifts back to business as usual.

That is why our project starts by asking each museum to build a core team of at least four people.

Why a Core Team Matters

A core team helps spread knowledge, responsibility, and energy across multiple people. Instead of inclusion living with one staff member or one department, it becomes something shared. That matters because lasting change needs more than enthusiasm. It needs structure, relationships, and a group of people who can keep the work moving over time.

A strong team also helps a museum see the full visitor experience more clearly. Visitor services staff understand what it feels like to arrive. Educators know where learning experiences connect or miss the mark. Communications staff shape how welcoming the museum feels before a family even walks through the door. Designers and exhibit staff influence how spaces feel and function. Administrators can connect ideas to budgets, policies, and long-term planning. When those perspectives come together, the work gets stronger.

What Makes a Strong Core Team?

A strong core team includes people from different departments, roles, and levels of the organization. It is not just a group of people who already think the same way. It is a group that can connect day-to-day visitor experiences with bigger organizational decisions.

Team members do not need to arrive as experts in autism inclusion. That is part of what they are learning together. What matters most is that they care about making the museum more welcoming for autistic visitors and their families.

The team also has to make time to connect. A core team works best when people meet regularly, reflect together, and make plans together. That can be hard in busy museums, but it is part of what turns good intentions into real change.

Keeping the Work Moving

Building a team is only the first step. Keeping it going takes intention.

It helps when responsibility is shared. When one person is always leading, always reporting out, or always carrying the next task, the work can start to feel narrow and unsustainable. Shared roles help people build ownership.

It also helps to notice progress. A positive visitor story. A successful staff training. A small change that makes a family’s experience easier. These moments matter. They remind people that the work is real and that it is making a difference.

And the work needs to be visible. When teams share updates at staff meetings or in internal newsletters, inclusion becomes part of the museum’s broader conversation. It stops being the work of a few people and starts becoming part of how the organization understands itself.

A Story of Impact

Pueblo Grande Museum in Phoenix offers a strong example of what this looked like in Phase 1. There, inclusion was not limited to one staff member or one department. It showed up in different parts of the museum’s work.

Staff came together to develop sensory backpacks that gave families practical support for navigating the museum in ways that felt more comfortable and manageable. At the same time, the museum created opportunities for young people to be involved more fully, including training some youth as volunteers. These were concrete steps, but they also represented something bigger. They showed a museum thinking more intentionally about who it serves, how participation happens, and what it means to create a more welcoming environment.

Culture Change Takes More Than One Person

For museums wondering where to begin, the answer does not have to be dramatic. Start by finding a few people who care. Look across departments. Bring together colleagues who notice problems, care about visitors, and are willing to work toward something better.

Real culture change rarely comes from one person carrying the whole watering can. It grows when knowledge is shared, responsibility is distributed, and people learn together. A core team creates the conditions for that growth and for the ripple effects that can follow.

Coming next in this series: Build Connections Beyond Your Museum and why working with others can make change stronger.