Archive for April, 2009

The Alamo, San Antonio, Texas

by Russell Dickerson

alamoIt seems like each culture has a story of a battle where “few fought against many.” From my perspective, living here in the western U.S., perhaps the most famous battle took place at the Alamo in 1836.

On a recent trip to San Antonio, Texas, I had the chance to visit the Alamo. Having seen various films and television shows about the battle, and reading books like The Breach by Brian Kaufman that recreate in vivid detail the huge numbers of men involved in the battle, I had a sense of wonder about visiting the site.

I had so many grandiose visions of what I’d see once I arrived—huge fields with wave after wave of attackers, the defenders fighting from all sides down to the last man. So, walking up from San Antonio’s beautiful River Walk, I reached the top of the stairs to behold the great Alamo.

I saw a hall of mirrors, several tourist attractions (Haunted Attraction! World Records!), hotels, and tourist shops. To say that took the wind out of the sails would be an understatement.

Now, granted, the bar was pretty high in my imagination, so there’s a certain sense of setting myself up for failure. But this was just so…underwhelming.

Shaking off the feeling of being at a theme park, I walked across to the Alamo itself. I stopped in front of the main doors and, after snapping the typical tourist shots with my camera, went inside the great doors.

As I entered the building and was greeted by a smiling interpreter just inside, my feelings about the Alamo (across the street it was still flashing “Come see the Hall of Mirrors!”) began to soften a bit. I didn’t get the sense of moving back in time, but I did get a sense of the quiet in the building. Especially compared to the hustle and bustle of downtown San Antonio, the interior of the main building was very subdued.

After walking through the various rooms, listening as I walked to what the interpreters were saying to others, I realized that the quiet atmosphere reflected a sort of reverence to what had happened there. Despite often seeing tourists that are loud or rude at other sites, inside the building, everyone was quiet, reserved, and respectful. That was due largely to the staff on site, who spoke in quiet tones to the people inside, setting a reserved example for those around them.

Leaving the main building, I walked around the courtyard. There were more people out in the courtyard, but somehow inside the courtyard was quieter than in front of the building. The immaculately kept grounds give a sense of peace to a place that has seen the horrors of war. In the middle of a city as large as San Antonio, to have a place of quiet peace is a feat in itself. Outside the walls flowed the typical tourists, but inside they were a much calmer, more respectful group.

The Alamo is a dichotomy of a historical site in modern times. It has the advantages and disadvantages of being in the center of a major metropolitan area. It is an icon to America, and must somehow serve both the millions of tourists that visit each year and also pay reverence to the men who gave their lives for freedom. I don’t imagine that’s an easy balance to maintain.

What I took away from the Alamo is a sense that the site fights its own battle of the few against the many. The Alamo is completely surrounded by modern life and yet, within the walls, has managed to survive with its own freedom and peace intact.

Russell Dickerson is the creative technologies director for the National Association for Interpretation.

Feedback: Embracing the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

by Kris Whipple

kris-whippleLike many of you, I have a love-hate relationship with feedback. What author and business expert Ken Blanchard describes as the “breakfast of champions,” I consider more like eating vegetables—important, but not necessarily enjoyable. Lack of training, lack of time, fear of confrontation, fear of failure, and painful memories of being at the receiving end of bungled performance reviews are just some of the issues that many of us suffer from “feedback aversion.” The result is reduced staff performance that ultimately impacts your visitor’s experience. If this sounds familiar, the good news is you’re not alone. A study conducted by the University of Missouri found that out of a variety of skills, managers were rated lowest in their ability to give employees useful feedback regarding job performance. Yet properly prepared and delivered, feedback can be a positive, confidence-building experience and one of your best training tools. In fact, whatever your role, the ability to effectively give and receive feedback is one of the most important skills you can learn.

The best feedback includes careful preparation (observation and information gathering), thoughtful dialogue, specific instruction, and positive reinforcement. When delivering feedback, just remember the acronym FAST:

Frequent: As a kid it’s likely your parents provided you with a constant flow of feedback whether you wanted to hear it or not. They didn’t wait for an annual performance review or special occasion. In the workplace, limiting feedback to annual reviews is like attempting to lose weight by dieting only one day a year—both are doomed to fail. Outstanding performers become frustrated by the lack of recognition, while weak performers will interpret your silence as approval. Unfortunately, many leaders still treat feedback as a once-a-year event, rather than an ongoing process. Consider incorporating feedback into meetings, e-mails, notes, and voice mails. Ideally, time should be should set aside each day just for giving and receiving feedback. While this may seem like a huge investment of time, it will pay back handsomely in increased morale, motivation, and productivity.

Accurate: Nothing is more demoralizing than receiving feedback based on inaccurate information. Always base your feedback on expectations that have been agreed upon and communicated up front, rather than personal opinion. Before delivering feedback, do your homework. Observe, organize your thoughts, and be sure your assessment is based on fact, not hearsay. Avoid exaggeration (if the person has done something twice, don’t say, “You’ve done this at least four or five times.”) and always focus on the behavior, not the person. Wing it and you run the risk of losing your staff’s respect and trust. Remember that as you’re assessing your staff, they’re assessing your judgment, professionalism, and integrity.

Specific: Your staff can only improve if they know specifically what they did right or wrong. If it’s the latter, they also need to know specifically what the “new and improved” behavior looks like. Describe what you observed and heard, explain how their behavior (either good or bad) impacts the organization, and support it with specific examples and relevant facts. Avoid vague descriptions like “unprofessional” or “lacks focus.”

Timely: When it comes to training, timing is everything! It’s a well-known fact that a behavior rewarded is likely to be repeated. Reward and recognize desirable behaviors quickly and often. On the other hand, if you’re sharing feedback around an emotionally charged event, it may make sense to wait a day or two (but never more than a week). If the feedback is especially important or serious, schedule an appropriate time and place even if it means a delay. Never deliver important or negative feedback in the hallway or in front of others.

Above all, remember that the key to delivering effective feedback is intent. If your intentions are positive and sincere, and if you clearly have your recipient’s best interests in mind, your feedback sessions will be much more successful. However, if your purpose is to “fix” or blame someone, or your feedback is delivered out of frustration, anger, or revenge, it’s just as likely you won’t succeed. Writer, scientist, and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, “Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them become what they are capable of being.” Demonstrate your belief in their capabilities and make sure you communicate your positive intent in words, tone, and body language. Treat them as if they will succeed and most often they will. However, expect the worse and you have a very good chance of getting it!

And if you’re the one receiving feedback? Again, the key is intent. If you truly want to improve, assume the other person’s intent is sincere and take the feedback as a useful gift (even if it doesn’t feel like it at the time!). On the other hand, if you determine that the intent isn’t clear or at worse, is counter-productive, choose an appropriate time and speak openly about the dynamic that you felt during the conversation. Calmly explain your concerns, request clarity, and actively listen to their response.

The next time you give or receive feedback, consider its intent. Keep this in mind and you’ll be sure to find success no matter which side of the feedback conversation you happen to be on.

Kris Whipple, CIG, CIT, CIP, is an interpretive consultant/trainer in Naples, Florida.

Opposite Sides of the Pond: A Student’s Perspective

by Anna Reznik

This newer interpretive exhibit at the Checkpoint Charlie Museum in Berlin differs from older exhibits that are more likely to simply display artifacts.

This newer interpretive exhibit at the Checkpoint Charlie Museum in Berlin differs from older exhibits that are more likely to simply display artifacts.

During the fall of 2008, I had a unique experience as an intern and a visitor to many European historic sites. My perspective as a student of public history gave me the opportunity to look at techniques employed in museum exhibits, historical preservation, and archives. I couldn’t help but compare how museums in European countries displayed and interpreted their history compared to those in the United States and other European countries. Below are my observations regarding the differences between how interpreters on two continents approach public history.

In Europe, I noticed a difference in attitudes toward preserving history and interpretation when visiting controversial buildings or buildings that had been neglected. It seemed to me that sites related to events that a culture does not want to highlight will be forgotten and later neglected beyond repair. Buildings might also be neglected because there is not enough time or resources to fix every structure in need of repair. I see this in the U.S. as well, but instead of an acknowledgment of a history full of uncomfortable themes, I feel that European preservation leans more toward “forgetting” this history and moving to a more comfortable history. I sensed that remembering unpleasant history was not a priority, so certain buildings were more likely neglected.

How Europeans remember and learn history at public history sites differs from Americans. I noticed that signage describing historical background or why a location was preserved was minimal. This could be because Europeans are more likely to reuse buildings as opposed to leveling structures to build new ones. Also, a European structure might be important on multiple levels and therefore harder to interpret. It is common to see contemporary buildings next to ruins in Italy or Greece. These locations may not be the best for interpretation and signage. Sites with good locations seem to try to make up for another site’s interpretive obstacles. In some cases, sites were moved or rebuilt. In my experience, this is frowned upon in the U.S., but more acceptable in Europe.

Another reason for a site being underinterpreted is that while history sites are popular in Europe, there are many sites that address the same topic. Though there are other reasons for traveling to and within Europe, it is easy for a massive number of ruins, historic buildings, and museums to dominate any trip. In North America, other forms of tourist sites pull attention away from public history sites.

For these reasons, American public history sites have to compete with other forms of entertainment head on, as opposed to passively. This competition is obvious when comparing sites considered important to a country’s history. In my experience, American sites proactively teach visitors about history, while Europeans are more likely to show an artifact and let the visitor interpret it him- or herself.

During my travels, I noticed that European sites hosted a diversity of tourists, which presents an interpretive challenge. What is important to Germans might be a sour point for the French and vice versa. Interpretation exists in Europe more in the form of brochures and tours than signage, possibly because linguistic and cultural barriers can be tackled more easily with brochures and guided tours than signage. Topical brochures for sites cover and explain events in different ways. Material describing Malta’s military history, for instance, is longer in English than it is in Italian or French. The assumption I make is that those who read French or Italian are more familiar with their shared history. The materials merely remind French- or Italian-speaking visitors of this history before providing new information, while speakers of other languages may need more background information.

Targeted brochures present important information and allow visitors to read them at their leisure. Visitors can skip information they do not wish to learn about or already know to find information that interests them. However, one downside I see to this approach is that visitors read less information than they would listen to in a guided tour (especially if they are not aware that the brochures exist, which I have seen happen).

I noticed, too, that older museums interpret less, and this can be frustrating for those not familiar with a certain culture, history, or language of a nation or region. The National Museum of the Czech Republic’s original purpose was to legitimize that nation’s history through science and artifacts. The purpose was not to interpret the artifacts, but to give evidence that Bohemian and Moravian history was separate and unique from nearby German and Austrian history. Many of the site’s exhibits seemed outdated to me.

Think of the yellow wooden and glass cases that once dominated exhibits (and think, too, about why most interpretive sites have moved away from this approach). At some older museums in Europe, efforts have been made to change focus by adding interpretive and supplementary material. Temporary exhibits like those I am accustomed to seeing in the U.S. provide more flexibility and can be used to bring visitors into museums. These exhibits are often in multiple languages to reach a larger audience.

In cities like Berlin and Paris, tip-based tours are common. College students dominate these tours in both audience and guides. In these situations, one can see a new focus on expanding audiences by catering to specific, targeted groups.

In scholarly journals and books that interpret and explore a single topic, multiple perspectives exist. This trend can also be seen in public history. In Europe, newer interpretive sites and independently owned museums focus on niche audiences and try to explain why their site and new exhibits do something other sites do not. Older museums on both continents are geared more toward telling a united history or a shared history. Additions and changes allow later generations to interpret what unites the audience and how the audience sees its past, present, and future.

It is possible, and highly likely, that the audience-focused approach is a byproduct of Canadian, American, and Australian tourism in Europe. Sites dealing with recent and more sensitive topics tend to target a foreign audience. Some Europeans commented to me that they had no need to relive certain eras or that they already knew about certain subjects, and the experience would not provide new information.

This sign at the Lidice Memorial in the Czech Republic includes text in Czech and Russian.

This sign at the Lidice Memorial in the Czech Republic includes text in Czech and Russian.

The Communist era provides an example. My experience is that museums in the U.S. and other non-Communist areas display and interpret items and events from this period in the larger context of history. In countries with Communism in their past, museums portray that era more as an outlier, an era separate from the past and the present. At some sites, Communist-era topics are not fully tackled because many historians feel the events are too recent to interpret.

One byproduct of focusing on the Communist era is contested interpretations or a sense of unshared history. In east Berlin, near the former location of the Berlin Wall, one particular building was used as a recreational center and a housing complex. East Berliners associated this building with their history and considered it part of their identities. West Berliners saw it as an eyesore and wanted to tear it down. They compromised and kept the building with plans for beautification. Though the building was destroyed in November (not for political reasons, but because it was found to contain asbestos) and nothing has been planned to replace it, it does show compromises are at least attempted.

Europeans and Americans involved in interpreting public history can learn from each other. American preservationists can watch Europeans for clues on how to interpret historic buildings next to newer buildings, while the methods I associate with American public history sites, such as offering interactive interpretive experiences, are effective enough to be implemented on another continent.

The manner in which European and American sites deal with the interpretation of public history reflects cultural differences that visitors will clearly notice. Though as the world becomes smaller through travel and technology, it is interesting to watch as sites in both cultures learn from one another and adopt techniques employed overseas.

Anna Reznik is a history graduate student at Colorado State University.  Her emphasis is museum studies.

Telling Stories in Someone Else’s House: Heritage Areas & Public History

by Chuck Arning

Traditional Nipmuc drumming captivates the crowd on Grafton Common in commemoration of the 350th anniversary of the establishment of John Eliot’s second praying village at Hassanamesit. Photo by Don Clark / Grafton News.

Traditional Nipmuc drumming captivates the crowd on Grafton Common in commemoration of the 350th anniversary of the establishment of John Eliot’s second praying village at Hassanamesit. Photo by Don Clark / Grafton News.

History can make its presence known in just about any public space. Consider the commotion on Grafton Common in Massachusetts. It seems that in May of 1654, the general court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony approved John Eliot’s request for an Indian praying village at Hassanamesit (Grafton, Massachusetts). Centuries later, the discovery that the original landscape, still wooded, was up for sale brought an unusual coalition together to ensure that this rare and significant landscape would be preserved forever. Some remarkable archaeology has discovered that the Nipmuc presence continued on this landscape well into the 19th century, long after the Nipmuc people were thought to have vanished. The celebration of the preservation of the praying village at Hassanamesit was a result of many hours of community members getting together, forging new relationships, doing some of the tough work of overcoming old history, and making new history.

A traditional Calumet Pipe ceremony opened the celebration, then the story of Hassanamesit (as it relates to the 17th century as well as its importance here in the 21st century) came to life through storytelling, singing of the Bay Psalms, and native Nipmuc drumming. A people long denied their identity was now part of a modern-day community willing to embrace their story and build on it. Sharing stories and spaces, often difficult ones, can still manage to bring diverse communities together.

Not in My House!
On Monday Night Football, you often hear the chant by the hometown crowd, “Not in my house!” In the world of history, cultural heritage, and natural resource sites, this chant is all too familiar. Heritage interpreters tend to get a little territorial when it comes to telling what they think of as their story. (It’s our house; it’s our story and we’re the ones telling it. Period.)

In the world of public history, at innovative sites, particularly in heritage areas, that old model of “Not in My House” is being tipped on its head. Not only are stories being shared, but the places where they are told are shared spaces with a variety of voices telling the story. How did this happen? How was it possible to not only open interpretive sites to multiple stories, but to multiple perspectives as well? And what management strategies and practices have contributed to this change in behavior?

Heritage areas were designated by Congress as “large-scale, community-centered initiatives focusing on conservation and historic preservation that required collaboration across political jurisdictions to protect nationally important landscapes and living cultures.” Managed locally, the goal was to preserve the physical character, memories, and stories of the area that were representative of our national experience. This was not an easy task. There were difficult barriers to break down; often these same communities were in direct and contentious competition for limited resources, new markets, and workers. Different perspectives were common, though not all were given equal airing.

Yet somehow, through a variety of partnerships initiated by innovative interpreters and leaders, these individuals began to see how sharing their stories and their sites made their stories richer and their sites stronger, more relevant to their audiences. So, how did all of this happen?

First, it is important to acknowledge that the world, as we know it, has changed. Numbers of visitors to interpretive sites have been declining, and the reasons are not just a bad economy, high gas prices, 9/11, or some unique local culprit. It has far more to do with changes in how we process information and how we, here in the 21st century, learn. Now, this is not my great analytical skills at work, but rather the thoughtful reflections of Cary Carson, the recently retired vice president of the research division at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

In a November 2008 article in The Public Historian: A Journal of Public History, Carson talks about three major changes in how visitors view their museum experience. They are:

  • Visitors want to be transported back in time to experience history first hand.
  • Once effectively back in time, they no longer want to be just spectators, but participants, fully engaged with the historical figures, both common and well known, of the day.
  • It is the storytelling that they come for—not just to be back in time, not just to be participants meeting the people of the day, but to be engaged in the story.

While the development of new technologies certainly plays a role, the fact is that learning has evolved. For those of us who grew up in the Vietnam era, watching the nightly news brought us right from the comfort of our living rooms into the rice paddies of the Mekong Delta. It changed us and changed how we processed information forever. Not only did we feel like we were there, we acted as if we were. The intimacy of the nightly news gave us a view of the world that provoked many into action. The moment energized us through the evolution of technology and a strong story.

My understanding of what the bottom line is for Cary Carson is that storytelling (something all interpreters do) “is the powerful medium in which learning takes place.” While that is not terribly revolutionary, there are many places where good stories are being told but visitation is still dropping. So what gives? How do interpretive sites incorporate the other aspects of Carson’s three-legged stool (transportation back in time, participation, and story) into the equation? And how does this connect to the concept of interpreters telling stories at multiple sites as a means to engage the public?

Program at the Old Mill

The engineered landscape of ascending mill dams and mill ponds surrounded by mill villages is the dominant characteristic of America’s early industrialization found throughout the Blackstone Valley. Photo by Tom Saupe/Alternatives Unlimited, Inc.

The engineered landscape of ascending mill dams and mill ponds surrounded by mill villages is the dominant characteristic of America’s early industrialization found throughout the Blackstone Valley. Photo by Tom Saupe/Alternatives Unlimited, Inc.

The answer is that sometimes success derives from simply trying new approaches and through today’s buzz-word, partnerships. My organization, the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, participated in an event that illustrates this point.

This past fall, various states developed programs to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the foreign slave trade. In Massachusetts, a program initiated by the Mass Foundation for the Humanities, funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, promoted screenings of the highly acclaimed documentary Traces of the Trade. The documentary chronicles members of the DeWolfe family as they explore their family’s history, focused on their ancestor’s involvement in the largest slave-trading dynasty in the United States. The documentary traces their journey of awareness back to Africa. It is powerful material.

The focus of Blackstone River Valley NHC’s program on the abolition of slavery was to discuss the business of slavery as it was connected to the Massachusetts economy prior to the Civil War. The key was not just to show “Traces of the Trade,” but to provoke people to consider the issues of how elements of the Northern economy participated in the slave trade through a discussion that talked about slavery, manufacturing, and individual awareness.

The goal was to bring people to a site where strong visuals help convey a sense of place. We wanted to involve as many partners as possible. As a heritage corridor, the Blackstone River Valley NHC does not own any buildings or land. The site works through partnerships to tell the industrial history of our nation as it is revealed here in the Blackstone Valley. The landscape of the mills and mill villages is still a prominent feature of the valley’s landscape.

Blackstone River Valley NHC has more than 23 years of experience with working in partnerships, so both the Northbridge Historical Society and the Worcester Historical Museum were eager to sign up. We needed a historical industrial site where a National Park Service ranger could do a walking tour of the area prior to viewing the film. Such a site wasn’t difficult to find, because the heritage corridor had just assisted, along with many others, Alternatives Unlimited, Inc., in the restoration of an old mill. Alternatives Unlimited offers a spectrum of residential and vocational services to people with developmental and psychiatric disabilities. The company’s mode of operation is to focus on what we have in common, not about what separates us. Such thinking makes them an ideal partner. Its site has a theater and a meeting area, and is located right on the Mumford River, a major tributary of the Blackstone with a dam and a restored 1826 brick mill with a foundation that includes remnants of a late 1700s foundry. It was pretty clear that this was the place to tell this story.

Alternatives Unlimited was eager to bring members of a much broader community to its site (part of how partnerships can work). On a cold, late fall Saturday afternoon, 36 people joined me as I led a fairly typical walking tour of the mill and mill village. The story that we wanted to tell connected the foundry, where, during the embargoes of 1807 and 1809, heavy hoes and scythes were made and sold directly to Southern plantation owners for use by their slaves.The capital raised from their entrepreneurial efforts then allowed the Whitin family to build a cotton textile mill, now the restored 1826 Red Brick Mill.

With refreshments in hand, seated comfortably in the theater, the group watched the film. The film is powerful. It elicits emotions from those involved in the film as well as those seated in the audience. Following the film, we were fortunate to have an animated discussion facilitated by professor Seth Rockman of Brown University. The group recognized that 21st-century values do not always translate to a 19th-century world. Viewers were struck that slavery was one of the factors that contributed to America’s transition into a manufacturing powerhouse. Modern-day visitors to this site had the opportunity to discuss difficult, sensitive issues in a restored historic mill where these long-ago events played out. Participation, sound partnerships, and planning made the program memorable. Participants talked about what they had experienced. It clearly impacted them. Participation, however, was the key. I think Cary Carson just might be on to something.

Visitors Benefit from Partnerships

Dr. Stephen Mrozowski demonstrates the significance of finding an urban drainage system at the homestead of Peter Muckamuag and his wife Sarah Robbins, clear evidence that the Nipmuc presence upon the landscape goes well into the 19th century. Photo courtesy National Park Service / Blackstone River Valley NHC.

Dr. Stephen Mrozowski demonstrates the significance of finding an urban drainage system at the homestead of Peter Muckamuag and his wife Sarah Robbins, clear evidence that the Nipmuc presence upon the landscape goes well into the 19th century. Photo courtesy National Park Service / Blackstone River Valley NHC.

What else draws people out to experience something new? Sometimes traditional approaches in a new environment can work incredibly well, such as telling stories in someone else’s house, or in this case, yard. The Worcester (Massachusetts) Historical Museum is in the process of moving its museum to an old mill site and joining with the Worcester County Visitor’s Bureau and the city of Worcester, Massachusetts, to create a fun, informational museum site. However, in these difficult times, raising the $32 million needed to establish the museum is no easy task. So while the shovels may not be breaking ground soon, it doesn’t mean the site cannot be of value for visitors. The challenge was to promote awareness that this future museum site was going to be a special place. Interesting things will happen here. You and your family will want to be a part of it.

So, what about developing a traveling ranger campfire program where various partners (that important word again) use the very traditional ranger campfire to tell a wide range of stories right at the future site of the new museum? Sounds like fun and it was. People, regardless of where they live, love campfires. Urban dwellers face a more difficult challenge in finding opportunities for campfires, so when the opportunity arises for visitors to bring lawn chairs and blankets to sit around a campfire, who wouldn’t want to go?

The real beauty here is that these sites are not limited to stories of history alone, as fascinating as they may be. Public history partnership bases can include a wide range of stories and organizations that can best tell those stories. Cary Carson’s basic point was that people love a good story. So, we pulled together a fantastic group of storytellers from the Worcester City Public Library, the Massachusetts Audubon Society’s Broad Meadow Brook Conservation Center and Wildlife Sanctuary, the New England Regional Indian Council, an actress from the Foothills Theatre, and a National Park Service ranger to tell some stories on a hot August evening, right in front of the old mill where the new museum and visitor center was soon to be. Visitors were thoroughly entertained. And, even more amazing, the campfire turned into a cooking fire, so marshmallows and s’mores were had by all.

Successful programs result from sharing. All of the organizations involved in the program could have easily told their stories at their own sites, but they knew that by joining forces and sharing a space, they could make a bigger impact, from a program perspective as well as a family one. Crowds now have a reason to visit the library to find more cool stories, or to visit Broad Meadow Brook Wildlife Sanctuary to learn more about the horrible dangers of the Asian longhorned beetle (talk about chilling Halloween stories), or visit the next pow-wow of the New England Regional Indian Council. These partnerships benefit visitors and organizations alike. It is all about sharing stories and sharing spaces.

The essence of sharing stories at other people’s houses is that everyone benefits. It fosters relationships and interpretive opportunities that enhance the efforts of all the participants. Importantly, it brings together all the elements that enrich the visitor experience because it brings together all the groups that do public history. Partnerships create great visitor experiences through collective wisdom, collective creativity, and collective ability to pool resources. Visitors will discover that once-familiar sites are overflowing with many stories and will return again and again because excitement happens there. Fun activities, provocative reflection, and good stories that are well told can be the mainstay of a high-quality site that simply provides a space to create a shared experience that the visiting public wants.

Many sites will struggle trying to make this happen, but collectively, the richness of our resources, the diversity and vitality of our shared stories, and the wonderful, diverse spaces that we now have available to us will make these sites places where visitors want to come again and again.

For More Information
National Park Service. “What’s A Corridor?” John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor. Online at www.nps.gov/blac/parkmgmt /whats-a-corridor.htm.

Carson, Cary. (2008).The End of Museums: What is Plan B? The Public Historian: A Journal of Public History, 30. National Council of Public History and the University of California Press.

Chuck Arning is a National Park Service Ranger at the John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor.

Community History in the Canadian Rockies: Students Combine Stories and Technology to Map Their Town

by Laura Silver

Into the woods: Students check out the technology near the Bow River. Photo by Angus Leech.

Into the woods: Students check out the technology near the Bow River. Photo by Angus Leech.

It started beneath the earth, 175 million years ago. The Pacific tectonic plate inched under the North American plate. Land masses collided and enormous slabs of rock were forced upwards—the Rocky Mountains. Backdrop, destination, and testament to the area’s rich geological and social history, the snow-capped peaks surround the town of Banff in Alberta, Canada, and occupy a central spot in its past—and present.

A Town, A Park, A Landscape
Situated entirely within the borders of Banff National Park, the town is home to nearly 9,000 locals and welcomes three million visitors each year—not to mention the wolves, elk, and bears that live in the park and occasionally wander into town.

But it wasn’t always like that. According to the town of Banff, the first human settlement in the area dates to approximately 11,500 B.C., at nearby Lake Minnewanka. By 1750 A.D., mountain passes in the area provided fertile hunting and fishing grounds for Cree, Kootenay, and Plains Blackfoot tribes. The European presence in the area started 100 years after that, when representatives of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company descended on the Bow Valley to lay tracks that would connect British Columbia with the country’s other provinces. The town’s name comes from Banffshire, Scotland, the birthplace of two of the original directors of the Canadian Pacific Railway. But cars had a presence too. In 1911, the Banff-Calgary Coach Road made it possible for automobiles to access the mountain hamlet.

Today, Japanese restaurants, souvenir shops, and bars punctuate Banff Avenue. The town is also home to a dozen art galleries and several museums. The Buffalo Nations Museum chronicles the resilience and traditions of native peoples in the area. The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies highlights the natural and human history of the area and features modern-day representations of Rocky Mountain life in the arts.

Walking down the tourist-dominated main drag—rugged, towering Cascade Mountain on one end, the formal Cascade Gardens on the other—it’s easy to forget that people actually live here. But a group of students is helping to change that.

Charting the Past

The town of Banff in Alberta, Canada, has a rich and interesting history—told by a team of youngsters in a unique way. Photo by Doug Leighton/Travel Alberta/Banff Lake Louise Tourism.

The town of Banff in Alberta, Canada, has a rich and interesting history—told by a team of youngsters in a unique way. Photo by Doug Leighton/Travel Alberta/Banff Lake Louise Tourism.

Two seventh-grade classes at Banff Community High School used global positioning systems, mobile phones, and multimedia tools to tell personal stories rooted in the town’s past as part of an interactive walking tour of their town. Along the way, they deepened their knowledge of their hometown, honed their voices, and harnessed technology to share the stories of people who came before them. The Banff Mobile History Tour chronicles the mountain town’s beginnings through audio and video presentations, originally designed to be activated at hot spots (GPS-triggered coordinates) in town, and now available via an interactive, Web-based map with audio and video at www.banffmobilehistory.ca (click on “History Map”).

The tour, which debuted in spring 2008, presents moments in time that shaped the town’s history. Students’ recorded voices introduce tour-goers to native populations, explorers, and longtime residents.

The seventh graders started by pinpointing spots of interest in Banff, the highest town in Canada (elevation 4,537 feet). Then they researched related events in the town’s history and dug up historic images to illustrate the stories they chose. Students wrote and rewrote (and rewrote) scripts, which they recorded and paired with the archival images they found, presented in hard copy during the on-site tour, and now available on the Web.

The nonlinear tour showcases natural and cultural attractions within the two and a half square miles of the town of Banff. Student commentaries touch on the early days of the town library, the impressions of one of the first tourists to Banff National Park in 1905 (she married her guide), and the back-breaking work of a Canadian Pacific Railway worker (“The only thing I really wanted at the end of the day was sleep.”).

The origins of the settlement of the area are reflected in a reenactment of a conversation between explorers Duncan McGillivray and David Thompson, who, in 1800, were the first white men to visit the Bow Valley.

The students started with facts, but didn’t shy away from humor. The portrayal of railroad workers’ discovery of the hot springs outside Banff in 1885 provided an opportunity to insert some modern-day yucks.

A:    “It’s not very deep, but, man, it sure is hot.”
B:    “Let’s get a move on, I haven’t bathed in a week.”
C:    “So that’s what that smell is.”
B:    “That’s not me, it’s the sulphur.”

Tools of the Future
Bringing history to life is a group effort. Luckily, the students had a large supporting cast for the creation of The Banff (Magical) Mobile History Tour. The project was a collaboration between the local high school, a government-sponsored arts initiative called Learning Through the Arts, and the Banff New Media Institute at the Banff Centre. The project was funded by Inukshuk Wireless, a partnership between Bell Canada and Rogers Communications, designed to build and manage a wireless broadband network throughout Canada.

Angus Leech of the Banff New Media Institute, part of the Banff Centre, says the idea to involve students in creating a tour sprang from a training session for educators. One instructor, social studies teacher Irv Semenok of Banff, said he wanted to add some pizzazz to a standard part of the seventh-grade curriculum. Each year, Semenok assigned reports on local history and each year, his students uncovered little-known details of their town’s past, but each year, the bulk of their work ended up in a file drawer. Semenok wanted to create an online archive of the students’ work.

Mount Rundell dominates the Banff skyline. Photo by Laura Silver.

Mount Rundell dominates the Banff skyline. Photo by Laura Silver.

Leech told him that the Banff New Media Institute could take the project a step further by using GPS, audio, and video. As senior researcher at the institute’s Advanced Research Technology (ART) Mobile Lab, Leech leads teams who study and create location-based art, technology, and media design. His lab conducts research on new technologies, leads trainings for diverse audiences, and develops software for use on mobile devices such as iPhones and BlackBerries. One of its goals is to explore interactions between people, media, and the out-of-doors.

Before coming to the ART Lab, Leech spent a few years as a low-tech interpreter at Dinosaur Provincial Park in southern Alberta, where he examined the relationship between text, place, and performance.

“My job was to do guided hikes— heavily scripted—to bone beds where hundreds of dinosaurs died at once,” he said, “and to lead bus tours and do live theater where we dressed up as animals and dinosaurs and did stupid dances.”

Technological Alliances
Leech didn’t ask students to do any fancy footwork, but he was excited about the prospect of involving a younger generation in the Mobile Lab’s work. But even with first-hand experience in the field, the Calgary native knew that the Banff New Media Institute couldn’t go it alone. “We needed to team up with an organization that had a rigorous curriculum-development experience,” said Leech.

The institute already had a relationship with the New Media Program of Learning Through The Arts (LTTA) at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto, which works with schools throughout Canada to bring teaching artists into classrooms to enhance the curriculum using dance, music, painting, and for the last few years, media arts. Its new media manager John Scully has been involved in designing and delivering training sessions for educators at the Banff Centre for the last four years, with positive results. He noticed that teachers were excited about seeing how locative media could be used in the classroom. So, the notion of sharing the technology directly with students wasn’t that far-fetched.

“It just kind of bubbled in our brain for six months,” said Leech, “until we noticed there was this funding opportunity out there.”

The project partners applied to Inukshuk Wireless for a grant in the area of mobile media and secured more than $100,000 for the pilot program—the first time a mobile technology project had been funded.

Do the Locomotion
Locative media is an evolving field that uses technology—most often some form of a global-positioning system (GPS)—to help augment an experience of place. And in the case of this project, it provided instructors with an opportunity to learn about a new medium for learning as well. One of Scully’s goals was to engage teachers in new software—Apple’s GarageBand for audio recording and editing and iMovie for video editing—already available on Macintosh computers at the school.

“We wanted to enable the teachers who are working with the Banff community school to work with the tools that are in their environment,” said Scully.

To facilitate the process, he used some of the funding to hire Calgary filmmaker James Reckseidler to help students with the technical and artistic aspects of the project.

“He wasn’t just a media artist,” said Scully, “He actually had quite a passion and an interest in the history.”

Reckseidler, who spent four years as a historical interpreter at Fort Calgary, said the technology gave students the chance to add another layer to the scenic and historical backdrop.

“The technology was actually only a device,” said Reckseidler. “We had wonderful landscape to work with already. What was surprising was how much more the stories came to life when you provided a bit more information about them.”

Scully said the multimedia aspect can add a sense of immediacy.

“You’re able to bring another sound, another voice, another picture right into their hands,” he said. “Plus, there’s real power in having someone speak in their own voice.”

Where there is technology, there are technical glitches. Many students complained about complications with software, the frustration of losing work on computers, or the challenge of writing for the ear rather than the page. But Scully had a strategy to combat those challenges: “Let’s go back and revise your script,” he told students when the equipment did not work as expected. “Let’s go back and work on drama, develop presentation skills.”

Banff National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage site that attracts nearly four million visitors a year. Few of them get to hear a teenager’s interpretation of the site. The Banff Mobile History Tour was presented to parents at a special reception and was open to the public during a single rain-soaked weekend in May 2008. The turnout was dampened by the weather, but students had other opportunities to share their work. School classes from the neighboring town of Canmore and from an Aboriginal school in southern Alberta also participated in the tour as audience members.

“They thought it was really cool to walk around in Banff and hear these stories told by other students their age,” said Angus Leech. His mobile lab developed the Bluetooth receivers that allowed the phones to communicate with GPS receivers. The receivers kicked into action at locations that students had tagged.

Not every locative media project has access to the same set-up. Learning Through The Arts’s latest locative-media project—based at a school in Calgary—uses Mediascape, Hewlett-Packard software that disseminates place-based audio and video stories on hand-held GPS-enabled devices.

Scully is optimistic about advances in the field of GPS—originally invented for military use—and looks forward to seeing what artists will do with the technology. “The more we get comfortable with this, the more we can do it on an ongoing basis,” he said.

Leech of the Mobile Lab agreed that technology helps pave the way for opportunities that might not otherwise be available to students.

“A story is so much more powerful, has so much more resonance if you tell it in the place where it happened,” said Leech. “There’s a lot of potential in that, in terms of learning.”

For More Information
The Banff (Magical) Mobile History Tour.
www.banffmobilehistory.ca

The Banff New Media Institute.
www.banffcentre.ca/BNMI

Learning Through the Arts.
www.ltta.ca

Banff National Park.
www.pc.gc.ca/pn-np/ab/banff/ index_E.asp

James Reckseidler.
http://james.reckseidler.com/

Hewlett-Packard’s Mediascapes.
www.hpl.hp.com/mediascapes

Savannah, an educational adventure game that uses hand-held devices.
www.futurelab.org.uk/ projects/savannah

Laura Silver is a freelance writer, independent radio producer and licensed New York City tour guide.

The Poetics of Interpretation

by Wren Smith
March/April 2009

wren_smithIn Interpretation for Park Visitors, William Lewis introduces the concept of the interactive threesome. In describing this dynamic “Y” intersection where You the interpreter meets Your visitors at Your site, Lewis inspires the poet in me to see the similarities between the interpretive and poetic processes. After all, at the heart of interpretation is a poetic sensibility that is dynamic, creative, and inspiring.

Exploring the Work and Words of Poets can Inspire our Interpretive Efforts
We interpreters are as busy as most in the whirlwind of modernity. However it’s good to slow down and listen to other voices, to find amid all the details and deadlines still pools for reflection that resonate with our inner landscape. The poetic landscape is such a place. Freeman Tilden said, “An interpreter must be some kind of artist and at best a poet.” He understood that the same processes used by poets to hone their skills are also necessary to create powerful interpretive experiences. As you read the following excerpt from Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook, substitute the words interpretation and interpreter for poetry and poet and you will see that the passage rings true. Both disciplines arise from the same fertile earth and the inner landscape and both, arguably, have similar aims.

Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began, as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth. Also it began through the process of seeing…feeling… hearing … smelling, and touching, and then remembering—I mean remembering in words—what these perceptual experiences were like, while trying to describe the endless invisible fears and desires of our inner lives. A poet uses the actual, the known event or experience to elucidate the inner, the invisible experience….

Whether writing poetry or prose, employing certain poetic devices helps make our language livelier and more evocative. In his book Interpretive Writing, Alan Leftridge reminds us that “poetry can provide emotional/intellectual responses not always possible in prose.” He also discusses how interpreters can and should use active verbs, alliterations, analogies, metaphors, similes, contrast and comparisons, and other techniques to clarify and energize their message. Although most of us routinely employ many of these poetic devices, we can become more attuned to their interpretive implications when we ponder our shared processes.

Poets use tangible things to convey intangible ideas, linking the known with the unknown.
Poet William Carlos Williams said, “There are no ideas…but things.” Williams was not suggesting that ideas don’t exist at all, but merely reminding us that ideas (whether shared by a poet or by an interpreter) are only available in the context of real things.

Mary Oliver echoes this notion in A Poetry Handbook.

In every instance something has to be known initially in order for the linkage and the informing quality of the comparison to work…. In the metaphoric device, this essence is then extended so that it applies to an unknown thing.

Beginning poets often omit concrete details from their early efforts. They try to tell rather than show their readers what they mean. They may write verse after verse containing “beautiful, lovely, peaceful days” and other similar abstractions. As they gain experience, however, they learn the value of using a more rooted language. Instead of saying “the beautiful blue sky,” they might say, “the sky, like a piece of polished turquoise shone above our heads.”

The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda celebrated everyday things in much of his poetry. The following lines are from his poem, “Ode to a Pair of Socks.”

Maru Mori brought me
a pair
of socks
that she knit with her
shepherd’s hands.
Two socks as soft
as rabbit fur.
I thrust my feet
inside them
as if they were
two
little boxes
knit
from threads
of sunset
and sheepskin….

By naming, knowing, or noticing the details of that which they love, poets can celebrate these “things.” In 1920, German-speaking poet Rainer Maria Rilke makes it clear in a letter to a friend, however, that really noticing or knowing about these “Things” can be difficult.

These things, whose essential life you want to express, first ask of you, “Are you free?”… and if the Thing sees that your are otherwise occupied, with even a particle of your interest, it shuts itself off…. In order for a Thing to speak to you, you must regard it for a certain time as the one and only phenomenon, which through your laborious and exclusive love is now placed at the center of the universe….

Interpretive Implications: Like inexperienced poets, new interpreters may be tempted to tell their audiences about beauty, loss, or the threat of extinction but fail to show them, either literally or figuratively, what they mean. Like poets, our awareness and our language should be “rooted” in the good earth of particular “things” or concrete imagery. Such attentiveness honors the vital force that we find there. Attention to the small details is essential but so too is the larger picture.

Poets sometimes bridge a perception gap between the small details and universal ideas by using a “telescoping” technique.
Poet Leonard Nathan, in A Diary of a Left-Handed Birdwatcher, tells of a phenomenon discussed among quantum physicists known as the Principle of Indeterminacy. According to this principle, the more we concentrate on the details the more we miss the whole and the more we concentrate on the whole the more we miss the details.

Using contrasting perspectives poets strive to reveal how the large world is infinitely connected to the small. When a poet focuses on something small and close at hand (say an acorn), then attempts to perceive the tree or even the forest, he or she is employing a telescoping technique. The following familiar lines by William Blake illustrate this approach:

To see the universe in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wildflower; hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.

When poets contrast the small world of details with the larger world of ideas and vice versa, they invite their readers to experience the ordinary in the light of the extraordinary.

Japanese poet Issa evoked the image of a mountain reflected in a dragonfly’s eye. Photo by Cris Knopf.

Japanese poet Issa evoked the image of a mountain reflected in a dragonfly’s eye. Photo by Cris Knopf.

The Japanese poet Issa appears to have employed this telescoping approach in a famous haiku, by evoking the image of a mountain reflected in a dragonfly’s eye.

Interpretive Implications: Try switching back and forth between the small details, for instance the flowers of big bluestem, back to the big picture, perhaps noticing how prairies are havens of diversity, and back again. Telescoping is one way to scope out and develop potential themes. This technique also helps ensure that our interpretive efforts don’t become so immersed in details that we lose the big picture.

Like poets, we interpreters simultaneously delve into the processes of distillation and expansion. You give either a poet or an interpreter a peach, and both may attempt to share the hum of the whole orchard.

Poets use imagery not only to paint a picture but also to create effect.
Mrs. Shye, my seventh-grade teacher, took our class on an imaginary journey into the heart of a lemon. She invited us to close our eyes and imagine a lemon on the desk in front of us. She suggested we notice the shadows cast by the lemon, to feel its weight, to hold and roll it around in our hands. She encouraged us to notice the tiny pores and the knobby place left by the stem. She invited us to slice our lemon with an imaginary knife, to pick up and examine a lemon half, to notice the little translucent packages of juice and the white rind forming its wheel-like pattern, to smell and squeeze the lemon, to hear its juiciness. Soon, all of us were virtually bathing in this sensory-rich citrus experience. But that wasn’t all! Mrs. Shye ended our journey by asking us to take a big bite of that lemon! An audible gasp erupted from the class as we felt our faces contort and the saliva flow.

Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to a Lemon” invokes imagery to help us see this fruit as a cathedral. Photo by Vangelis Thomaidis.

Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to a Lemon” invokes imagery to help us see this fruit as a cathedral. Photo by Vangelis Thomaidis.

Notice how Pablo Neruda leads us on a journey into the heart of the lemon through his use of imagery in a few lines from his poem “Ode to a Lemon.”

Cutting the Lemon
the knife
leaves a little
cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light of topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades…

So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch.

Interpretive Implication: Learning to speak “imaginese,” poets and interpreters can evoke hidden worlds.

Although my first journey into the heart of the lemon was over 30 years ago, I never forgot the experience or what I learned about the power of imagery. Interpreters who effectively use imagery can help visitors experience the tangible world in new ways. Through imagery, we can offer our audiences experiences rich in mood and meaning and sometimes even transport them to other times and places.

Conclusion
Basho advised the poet writing of a pine tree to learn from the pine tree. When we interpreters go directly to the source of our wonder and inspiration we “fill the well from which we will draw.” When we allow our focus to switch from the small details to the bigger picture and back again, we create a footbridge across perception gaps. When we use language rich in imagery, we cultivate the possibility for illuminating encounters with the resources we cherish. The interpretive value of such a synthesized encounter is often greater than the sum of its parts. Both we and our visitors not only hear the music of prairie flowers but also of distant stars. Not only do we help our visitors forge emotional and intellectual bonds with our resource but we enable them to see the “trees” and the “forest.”

As interpreters, we share much in our labor with many fine poets and songwriters as we attempt to convey the passion we feel for the places we love. Kentucky poet Wendell Berry puts it beautifully in “Life’s a Miracle”:

I believe that this need for a whole, vital, particularizing language applies just as strongly to the sciences as to the arts and humanities. For the human necessity is not just to know, but also to cherish and protect the things that are known, and to know the things that can be known only by cherishing. If we are to protect the world’s multitude of places and creatures, then we must know them, not just conceptually but imaginatively as well. They must be pictured in the mind and in the memory: they must be known with affections, “by heart,” so that in seeing or remembering them the heart may be said to “sing,” to make a music peculiar to its recognition of each particular place or creature that it knows well.

***

Wren Smith is a poet and an interpretive programs manager for Bernheim Arboretum & Research Forest. Wren welcomes your insights and comments.