Field Forward: Challenge and Confront Workplace Burnout

Field Forward: Challenge and Confront Workplace Burnout

We believe the museum field’s hardest problems deserve better approaches than we’ve tried so far. The museum field’s hardest problems won’t be solved by doing what we’ve always done.

Rapid change, political turmoil, and increasing demands have pushed an already stressed field into cycles of reaction and defensive maneuvering. Too often, we spend our days responding to the next urgent challenge rather than having the space to imagine what could be different.

Here’s a chance to spend a day CREATING and INNOVATING instead of putting out fires.

Come Start Your Day with Creativity, Movement & Connection | 8:15 a.m. (Optional)

Before the competition begins, start your morning with creativity, movement, and connection through ARTfactory’s Morning Performing Arts Wellness Program.

Designed for adults of all experience levels, this engaging experience uses theatre games, storytelling, movement, voice exercises, and creative expression to promote emotional well-being, cognitive engagement, and social connection.

In a supportive and welcoming environment, participants will focus on personal growth, confidence-building, connection, and joy—not performance perfection. It’s an energizing way to begin a day devoted to rethinking workplace culture, building relationships, and approaching challenges with a fresh perspective.

Then, we’ll put that creative energy to work.

One Day. Teams of Five. One Big Challenge.

One deep-rooted problem desperately in need of fresh solutions: workplace burnout.

And an award 🏆 for the team with the freshest approach to tackling it.

During this day of friendly competition, you won’t find panel discussions, Q&A sessions, or sages on stages. Inspired by one of the tech world’s most effective innovation formats, this structured competition puts YOU at the center.

Working in teams of five, participants will dig into the systemic causes of workplace burnout, identify specific pain points, generate ideas, and develop one creative “intervention” by the end of the day.

Field Forward is designed to:

1. Engage participants in hands-on problem solving that results in one creative intervention per team.

2. Build skills in problem analysis and strategic idea generation that can be applied well beyond the hackathon.

3. Encourage team bonding, networking, creativity, and fun in a lightly competitive atmosphere.

4. Develop new understandings of the systemic drivers of workplace burnout.

5. Generate solutions with real potential to improve workplace culture and employee retention.

Why Workplace Burnout?

Many museum professionals in 2026 are coming to work exhausted, overwhelmed, and underappreciated. According to the Center for Effective Philanthropy, 86% of nonprofit leaders report concern about burnout.

If we don’t address these challenges head-on, the consequences extend beyond individual employees. Burnout affects our ability to retain talented professionals, cultivate the next generation of museum leaders, encourage courageous innovation, and create workplaces where people from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences can thrive.

But workplace burnout is not caused by one thing—and it cannot be solved by one thing.

Its many contributing factors can make the problem feel too large to tackle. That is exactly why Field Forward uses the hackathon model. Participants will practice approaching a complex challenge like a scientist: breaking it apart, examining its underlying causes, identifying specific pain points, and then applying an infusion of creativity to develop potential solutions.

Burnout, like many seemingly intractable problems in our field, can feel impossible to address without the right tools, perspectives, and willingness to experiment.

Field Forward gives us a place to start.

Who Should Register?

We’re looking for people with diverse museum expertise, perspectives, and skills because great solutions require many kinds of expertise, including lived experience. We need creative thinkers, systems thinkers, people-people, evidence gatherers, charismatic leaders, facilitators, problem solvers, and everything in between.

Want to meet new people? Great! We’ll place you with a team.

Want to participate with colleagues? Teams of five may register together. We especially encourage teams made up of professionals from different organizations to bring a broader range of perspectives to the challenge.

Wait… What’s a “Hackathon”?

In the tech world, a hackathon is a focused, time-limited sprint where small teams work together to solve a complex problem using creativity, collaboration, experimentation, and unconventional thinking.

The format is designed to break through the inertia that keeps hard problems unsolved—the kinds of challenges that regular meetings never quite seem to reach.

We’ve taken that format and tailored it specifically for museum professionals.

Field Forward uses the best parts of the hackathon format—the time constraint, team competition, experimentation, and structured problem-solving sprint—and applies them to the human side of museum work.

Come ready to move, connect, question assumptions, experiment, and create.

Because the museum field’s hardest problems won’t be solved by doing what we’ve always done.

Driving our Session - 

Andrea Jones is an independent consultant and master educator with over 20 years experience as a change agent and strategist. She works with museums across the country to reinvent storytelling and interpretive methods and support the development of empathetic museum leaders. Over the course of her career, Andrea has trained hundreds of museum professionals in strategies that help to create a more compassionate, creative, and equitable field. She is the current Director of the History Leadership Institute, an intensive leadership development program run by the American Association of State and Local History (AASLH). She held previous leadership positions with Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum, Accokeek Foundation, and the Atlanta History Center. As a consultant her clients include Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, Oakland Museum of California, Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, Huntington Library & Gardens, and many others. She holds a BA in Communications from Purdue University and an M.Ed from Georgia State University.

Leading our Movement & Connection - 

Talya Conroy is a community arts leader and nonprofit executive based in Manassas, Virginia, currently serving as Chief Executive Officer of The ARTfactory. With a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Mary Washington, where she double-majored in Musical Theatre & Dance and History, Talya brings both artistic training and strong organizational leadership to her role. Prior to entering arts administration, she spent 17 years in the finance industry, including serving as a Vice President at a regional bank, experience that now informs her strategic and fiscal leadership. Her connection to The ARTfactory is deeply personal—she first appeared on its stage as a child performer and later returned as a professional leader in 2022. As CEO, Talya is dedicated to expanding access to high-quality arts education, strengthening professional theatre and visual arts programming, and deepening the organization’s impact across the community. Her greatest joy is spending time with her amazing husband Jimmy and their beautiful children, Minnie and James.