Centering Adult ESOL Students in the Museum Through Art and Art-Making

ABSTRACT In 2020, the Brooklyn Museum Education Department, like many departments in museums across the globe, engaged in a reevaluation of its programs and priorities in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. As we reassessed what responsive programming could and should look like for our audiences, the Adult Learning Division within Education decided to prioritize further developing our adult literacy initiatives, including programs and partnerships for English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) students and teachers. One such partnership resulted in a template for incorporating art-making in language learning and for centering the voices of adult language learners within the context of a public pop-up talk at the Museum. This article shares some of the lessons the museum educator, ESOL teacher, and ESOL students learned through the collaboration, as well as reflections from the public at the culminating event as revealed through survey work.