CC-PES Final Year Report: Reflections on Co-Creation, PES, and Community Engagement at the Museum of Science

In 2018, the Museum of Science, Boston (MOS) kicked off an initiative called CC-PES: Building Capacity for Co-Created Public Engagement with Science. Funded by the National Science
Foundation’s Advancing Informal STEM Learning award (AISL), this project set out to test a model for bringing museums and other informal science education institutions (ISEs) together with community and civic partners to create programs that address critical socio-scientific issues in a manner that promotes civil dialog amongst diverse stakeholders. These issues include topics such as climate change, vaccinations, and any other problem that lives at the intersection of science, policy, and human values. Between 2019 and 2023, twelve different teams, each led by a museum partner, tested the CC-PES project model in collaboration with local civic and community organizations. Findings from these earlier phases of the projects
can be found in the Phase I, II, and III reports. In the final project year, the Museum of Science used lessons learned from these earlier phases and explored different approaches to co-creation across a wide range of initiatives within this single institution. This report focuses on the question, “What does it look like for a large informal science education institution - with many different departments, staff members, initiatives, and priorities - to move toward a more community-centric approach?” This report presents findings from interviews with MOS staff as they reflected on this question, their interpretations of co-creation, and the shifts they have seen in how MOS approaches its work with communities.