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Culture Craft Saturday

Family Fun Series

Navajo weaving demonstrator with visitor

A master Navajo weaver shows a young visitor the intricate skill it takes to create a rug. puppet fun

Parents and children enjoyed making puppets and a puppet performance.

Ballet Folklorico Tapatio performed and taught visitors the traditional dance steps.

Mask making is a popular activity.

Tohono O'odham artist Michael Chiago demonstrated and later helped children create their own paintings.

18 Mexican masked luchadores brought this tradition to life on ASM's lawn.

Pottery making is popular at Culture Craft Saturday programs.

Culture Craft Saturday programs are aimed at family audiences. These are intergenerational audiences, mixed in age and interest areas. The programs are designed around the museum's temporary exhibition themes as well as about Native American culture, archaeology, and cross-cultural learning. The programs feature cultural tradition bears, performers, scholars and lots of hands-on exploration.The Culture Craft Saturday series sometimes embraces larger programs (600-1000 attendance), such as Celebración, Fiesta de las Artes, and Ceramic-A-Rama and culminates each year with the Marking the Solstice: A Multicultural Celebration program. In 2002, when we began the family program series, 35-75 people attended each program, with 500 showing up for the Solstice Celebration. Today, 300-400 people attend most Culture Craft Saturday programs and 4,000 people attended the 2008 Solstice Celebration.

Culture Craft Saturday: Family Fun! page on ASM's website

(includes links to resources such as treasure hunts and bibliographies)

Culture Craft Saturday programs are designed around the themes of current museum exhibitions. Past programs have focused on American Indian paintings, Navajo weaving, Native ceramics and jewelry traditions and archaeology, Mexican masks and general American Indian traditions and creativity. We have incorporated literacy activities at many of the programs and often partner with the public library. During 2007-08, an Institute of Museum and Library Services grant supported evaluation of this series. Among other things, we learned that our audience is from 1-87 years of age and that these programs often are people's first introduction to the museum and people who attend forsee returning to future programs and exhibitions and will recommend the museum to others as a result of their experience.