Our interpretive engagement team had a broad idea of what we wanted to know from a particular visitor study, and Kera Collective helped us get to the heart of our actual needs by facilitating our process of formulating actionable research questions and methodologies. They were incredibly collaborative during the course of our study, and it was clear that they cared deeply about us getting the results that would be most helpful in our work moving forward. Their report was clear and had concrete recommendations that we can put into practice. The team at Kera really knows museums, they know visitors, and I would work with them in a heartbeat.

Working with Stephanie and the team at Kera Collective was an invaluable and eye-opening experience. By patiently and consistently listening, observing, asking questions, and pushing us to dig deeper to unearth our core values and practices, they brought insight and cohesion to our work that we had yet to fully understand and articulate for ourselves. Throughout the process, we felt supported, focused, and inspired; Kera Collective engaged us in a truly human-centered collaboration based in mutual respect, shared expertise, and authenticity.

Our repeat engagement with Kera Collective has been an invaluable catalyst for creating impactful programming and building evaluative capacity for our staff. Through our work together, our team developed robust evaluation metrics that guided multiyear internal assessments of our programs – gaining the support of funders and ensuring relevance to the audiences we serve. As a leader, the focus on impact has supported my strategic decision making especially within the context of reshaping our programming in face of the pandemic.

The Corning Museum of Glass strives to make decisions based on reliable data and has worked successfully with Kera Collective for the past several years on exhibition evaluation. In 2021 they trained museum staff across departments in data collection processes, fostering a deeper awareness of our guests’ behavior and needs. As a result, our staff is more invested in understanding visitors than ever before.

Over more than two decades, I've learned so much from working with Amanda Krantz and others on the Kera Collective team on three NSF-funded museum exhibitions for the Smithsonian. Amanda and her colleagues bring specialized knowledge and skills plus objectivity, flexibility, and good humor to every project. They collaborate closely with each team to develop robust tools for conducting front-end, formative, and summative evaluations tailored to project messages, goals, and audiences. As a bonus, their experience with doing NSF Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) grants is particularly helpful for planning, implementation, and, yes, all the bureaucratic paperwork. Highly recommend working with Kera Collective on any museum evaluation project!

The Smithsonian American Art Museum worked with Kera Collective to conduct front-end research to inform an upcoming permanent collection reinstallation project. The two-part study—which included on-site observations of visitors to the museum’s second floor galleries and interviews with members of the general public and museum members about expectations and themes for the reinstallation—produced critical insights that immediately guided our thinking around gallery interpretation and audience engagement.

The Kera Collective team was instrumental in helping our museum client get the most out of the visitor evaluation process—pre and post testing. One of the most helpful pieces of advice was for the museum to consider in advance if the results (however they turned out) would be actionable. Afterward, Kera Collective was adept at interpreting the results in a way that laid out practical options for improving the visitor experience.

We were delighted to work with Kera Collective again as our on-site evaluation experts for our three-year experimental Plus Ultra "Awaken the Mercer" exhibit. Having developed an Impact Framework for us in 2019, they were familiar with our institution and audiences, and assisted us in identifying and setting measurable goals for this new initiative. Throughout the duration of this project, their evaluations provided iterative feedback during each prototype phase, and helped us design our exhibition plans to have a more meaningful impact on our guests.

Kera Collective was the ideal partner for our team’s first formal program evaluation. They held our hand every step of the way and ensured we understood our options at each decision point. I was constantly grateful for their deep understanding of the museum education field. We were able to talk in specific terms about our program and goals, and they were right there with us. This was particularly evident in the Logic Model, a tool they created with and for us that will have a lasting impact on our work. I have no doubt that our program will be stronger not only because of the outcomes of the study, but also because of the time we spent working alongside our Kera colleagues. It was our first formal evaluation, and the experience has motivated me to make sure it will not be our last.

While all our interpretive planning and design work depends on understanding visitor perspectives, Arlington National Cemetery required special consideration. The collaborative Kera Collective team crafted thoughtful questions to elicit input from different visitor groups, including veterans and family members of soldiers buried at this sacred place. Kera Collective’s care and technical skills in getting visitor input guided our design in sensitive and meaningful ways.

Working with the team at Kera Collective since 2016, I have seen first hand how they can adapt and fine-tune their evaluation approach to your given project while recognizing the previous work you've accomplished, leading to more robust evaluation results. This has enabled the Science Museum of Virginia to better understand how our community-focused programs on climate resilience and environmental literacy are truly impacting our audiences as well as our own team members and organizational partners. I look forward to many more projects together!

The Museum of the City of New York had worked with Kera Collective on evaluating education programs in the past and when we had our first major exhibition evaluation ahead of us, we turned immediately to them. As anticipated, their highly professional and collaborative work on formative and summative evaluations on New York at Its Core proved invaluable: the visitor feedback and evaluations on the exhibition in development helped us make important decisions and improvements on what turned out to be an AAM-award winning exhibition. The audience studies and interviews after the exhibition opened consolidated our learning and have continued to help us shape our practice in the years since.