Dreaming of ways to engage the Austin community during the pandemic, UT alumna Juliet Whitsett, and her friend, Marianne Newsom, devised a plan for an interactive creativity hub. Building the first two 18-by-18-by-12-inch museums in their front yards within walking distance from each other, their small boxes would later become the Really Small Museum.
In 2023, Whitsett decided to combine the museum with her passion for the environment, moving the museum to the Ann and Roy Butler Hike and Bike Trail, where it now stands. After receiving a 12-month grant in 2024 through the Trail Conservancy, called TEMPO on the Trail, she received a grant through the city of Austin that allowed the museum to stay on the trail for six more months.
The museum’s latest installation showcases a collaboration with the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, also known as ARS, as a part of Climate Resilience with Youth, which is a yearlong initiative with UT Austin’s Drama for Schools and Planet Texas 2050, where Whitsett holds a fellowship. The display features buttons made by students during their first “Action Through the Arts: Creating Constellations of Change” festival, where seventh-grade students taught the sixth graders about being an ambassador for an assigned endangered species.
“We can say that teachers and students are co-creating curriculum or artistic opportunities,” ARS interim principal Christina Almaraz Ortiz said. “That’s what we take pride (in) here at the Ann Richards school.”
In class, the students were placed in pairs to write research papers and contact elected officials via email. Former ARS teacher Sharon Roy, who worked on the project with her seventh-grade class before retiring in May, said the project will become a tradition that her team carries on.
“Anytime students can have a real, authentic outside audience, it helps them to work better because they know that real people are going to see this, care about it, and they might, in this case, have a chance to influence people to take action and to help protect the environment that they care so much about,” Roy said.
With social justice at the forefront of the ARS curriculum, Almaraz Ortiz said they are waiting on district support to install a Really Small Museum on their campus.
“What better place than exhibiting here on our own campus?” Almaraz Ortiz said. “We do that for our artwork. We do that for our capstone projects for seniors. We do that for our cornerstone projects for our sophomores. Why not do it for this creative opportunity?”
The museum’s final installation on the trail takes place in October, highlighting Nan Blassingame from Austin Powwow. TEMPO on the Trail will run again from 2025-26 and feature between eight and 10 new artists. With the end of 2026 comes the end of the museum’s home on the trail.
“Arts should be a part of the ways we research,” said Katie Dawson, UT’s Drama for Schools director. “The arts don’t have to be just a megaphone. They can also be a way of making sense of the issues and realities of climate change and how it is impacting us on a daily basis.”
