CONFERENCES & WORKSHOPS
The recent northeast region meeting of the Association of Living History Farms and Agricultural Museums at Strawbery Banke had a great green-meeting concept: boarding on-site. One historic building hosts up to 7 or 8 interns each summer. And it hosts conference guests. If you bring your own linens (or sleeping bag), you have a bed and bath...even a kitchen. For $25 a night, it's perfect...so much better than a hotel if you want to reduce resource use. They also took care to recommend camping sites - another low-resource option.

Even better - the opening reception was pot-luck! That saves on staff time and food packaging. And it meant for a fabulous variety of special foods that supported the mission of the organization. A great creative, community-minded idea.


The Virginia Association of Museums gives a $5 discount to each person who carpools with at least two others to attend a VAM workshop. The office also helps registrants find others willing to carpool.

The APGA gave out organic cotton bags at their recent conference - the kind you should re-use for grocery shopping. Let's hope the rest of the associations do.The Virginia Association of Museums is not giving out bags, but is asking folks to bring ones from past conferences. There's a prize for the oldest one. Mine from an AAM conference is 10 years old now.

Let's spread the green conference idea. We know that the California Association of Museums has been greening conferences for awhile. There's a new page here for green conference ideas - please share and help all the museum associations hold environmentally-sustainable conferences.

TEXTILES
The textile museums can promote quilting and knitting using green materials: the knitters can use natural organic fibers including some amazing bamboo yarn; the quilters can go back to using scraps instead of newly-produced materials.