findingcommunityengagingaudiences.blogspot.com
Finding Community: January 2013
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Engaging diverse audiences in a historic house. Monday, January 14, 2013. A New Interpretive Planning Process. When the interpretive planning team began thinking about how to create a new interpretive plan for the Joshua Hempsted House. We quickly realized that before we could think about what. We could do at the site, we had to completely understand the who. That is the people who lived and worked on the. Property and its audiences today. The Joshua Hempsted House is an incredible place. Traditional his...
findingcommunityengagingaudiences.blogspot.com
Finding Community: Difficult Issues in History Museums
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Engaging diverse audiences in a historic house. Monday, December 9, 2013. Difficult Issues in History Museums. We all know that the past isn’t always pretty. It wasn’t always “simpler” back then. And it certainly wasn’t safer. The “good old days” could be pretty bad, to be honest. I’m pretty grateful to live in the 21. First, we specifically asked them about history museums tackling difficult issues of the past. Their response was almost unanimous: they feel that so long as the topic is mission appropria...
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Finding Community: December 2012
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Engaging diverse audiences in a historic house. Tuesday, December 18, 2012. An introduction: About this blog. Domestic spaces surround us, and in our daily lives are vibrant, living things. Yet historic house museums (as well as period rooms in art and history museums) have struggled to be relevant in a changing society. This blog shares with the greater museum field the process we have taken to find community at the Joshua Hempsted House in New London, Connecticut. Subscribe to: Posts (Atom). Connecticu...
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Finding Community: July 2013
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Engaging diverse audiences in a historic house. Saturday, July 27, 2013. Teen Visitors, Objects, and Stories. It is about stories. Having now spent time with the students (ages 11 to 16) this summer, and taken them on three museum field trips, that is my big conclusion. Not too surprising, is it? Except that it really isn’t that straightforward, and stories that are compelling to the students seem to be in short supply. The New Bedford Whaling Museum. And the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park.
findingcommunityengagingaudiences.blogspot.com
Finding Community: October 2013
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Engaging diverse audiences in a historic house. Tuesday, October 29, 2013. From “Scary” to Hide-and-Seek: Youth and Historic House Museums, Part 2. Picking up where I left off last week. Let’s now turn our attention to the content-based themes that emerged in our work with students this past summer. Throughout the summer, the students latched onto stories at the museums they visited, the stories of the Hempsted Houses, and the creation of stories for their Open House. Came in multiple ways. The open hous...
findingcommunityengagingaudiences.blogspot.com
Finding Community: June 2013
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Engaging diverse audiences in a historic house. Thursday, June 27, 2013. Listening to the Stakeholder for the First Time. She told us how she was unexpectedly sucked into Adam’s story. Of course all history stories are complex, especially to those that dedicate their lives to interpreting and understanding history, but what will speak to the average visitor? Many historical narratives provide an opportunity for 4. Graders to image a foreign world that once was, but for African American kids the history o...
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Finding Community: November 2013
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Engaging diverse audiences in a historic house. Monday, November 25, 2013. When I was a (very) young director of a historical society in New York State, I often wrestled with the question of “why.” Why did my historical society matter to my community? Why, for that matter, is history important? Why does it deserve financial support in a world beset with challenges? To be honest, I still struggle with these questions, and I still don’t have answers. Or, as Kat shared in more dramatic language:. 8220;̵...
findingcommunityengagingaudiences.blogspot.com
Finding Community: September 2013
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Engaging diverse audiences in a historic house. Monday, September 23, 2013. Historic House Museums: It’s about emotional stories, presentation. The culmination of our work with the students this summer was an open house, where we asked the students to share the stories of the Hempsted Houses with the public in any manner they liked. Well, we did give them some. To prevent utter chaos, we broke the students up into small groups, and each group had responsibility for a single room. First up, how. That is, ...
findingcommunityengagingaudiences.blogspot.com
Finding Community: April 2013
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Engaging diverse audiences in a historic house. Friday, April 26, 2013. Nine Souls: The Joshua Hempsted House in the Eighteenth Century, Part II. In 1729, tragedy struck the old Hempsted House of New London, Connecticut. An approximation of Hempsted House in 1729, from Delphina L. H. Clark,. 8220;Joshua Hempsted and His House” ( The Connecticut Antiquarian. Allegra di Bonaventura, “This Little World: Family and Slavery in Old New England, 1678-1764” (PhD diss.,. Yale University, 2008), 290. July 1958), 13.
findingcommunityengagingaudiences.blogspot.com
Finding Community: The Connecticut Cultural Consumers Panel
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Engaging diverse audiences in a historic house. Friday, November 8, 2013. The Connecticut Cultural Consumers Panel. Recent posts on this blog have focused on the extensive work we did with students, but that was only one component of our research. For historic house museums, expanding audiences is imperative, and that is going to entail new methods of sharing the stories of the past. Did with 24 Connecticut organizations for Connecticut Landmarks. And funded by Connecticut Humanities. But that’s OK.
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT