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Archive for the ‘Interpreting Public History’ Category

The Alamo, San Antonio, Texas

27 Apr

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.

 
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Posted in Interpreting Public History, Visitor's Views

 

Opposite Sides of the Pond: A Student’s Perspective

17 Apr

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.

 
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Posted in Commentaries, Interpreting Public History

 

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

12 Apr

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.

 
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Posted in Feature Stories, Interpreting Public History

 

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

06 Apr

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.

 
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Posted in Interpreting Public History, Technology

 

The Art of Walking Storytelling

26 Mar

by Virginia A. Hirsch

The author leads the “Ghosts and Legends of Old Bayfield” walk as Mrs. D. Emmons.

The author leads the “Ghosts and Legends of Old Bayfield” walk as Mrs. D. Emmons.

A summer moon shimmers on Lake Superior, but it doesn’t penetrate the foliage of the ancient maples surrounding the old courthouse. A dozen guests are gathered on the dark side of the square, caught in the web of the walking storyteller as she weaves true tales of ghostly encounters, haunted houses, and chilling historic events: “Mary peered up the stairwell of the deserted building, but now she could hear the ghostly footsteps as they passed overhead on the upper floor. In a quivering voice, she asked again, ‘Who’s there?’” Seemingly in response, a dog on the other side of the square howls mournfully, “WooWooWooWoow.” The crowd laughs, the storyteller’s spell is temporarily broken. The storyteller laughs, too. The path of the walking storyteller is filled with the unexpected, including rain, hail, lightning, bats, and bugs, to name a few. Just go with the flow. She will have the audience back in a minute.

A walking storyteller? Yes! Walking storytellers are interpretive guides who literally take their craft “on the road.” They bring to life the challenges, hardships, triumphs, foibles, loves, and losses of people, places, and times. As storytelling guides, they make a dynamic contribution to understanding historic sites, homes, towns, cemeteries, battlegrounds, parks, and museums—any place with a story that needs to be told. In this case, the storyteller takes guests on walks through the historic town of Bayfield in northern Wisconsin, storytelling its history. At night there is a ghostwalk with guests carrying candle lanterns; by day, walks incorporate historic sites and a cemetery. Utilizing the skill of storytelling creates informative, interesting, and memorable interpretive walks.

But why a storyteller? Because the story format is the easiest way for guests of all ages to enjoy, understand, and remember the information. A story has a special impact on people’s emotions so that its kernel of truth—wisdom, folly, success, terror, humiliation, etc.—will be remembered long after details of dates and names may be forgotten. A “walking storyteller,” who may be in the costume and persona of an actual or representative person, combines the best skills of the interpretive guide, actor, and storyteller. Developing storytelling skills will be an asset to anyone who is engaged in cultural and historic interpretation. It can also be a useful tool for those working in natural history, science, ecology, or other areas of interpretation.

Doug Lowthian assumes the role of an early 1900s newspaper reporter on the “More Ghosts and Legends of Old Bayfield” walk.

Doug Lowthian assumes the role of an early 1900s newspaper reporter on the “More Ghosts and Legends of Old Bayfield” walk.

The starting point in developing a storytelling walk is a strong theme—the central idea that helps to select, then ties together the various stories to be told. The central theme of the Bayfield walks is the history of that community. Its subthemes vary with the walk but include stories of individuals and groups of people—snapshots of how they lived, labored, recreated, celebrated, and persevered in boom times and bust times.

Of course having good stories to tell is a key ingredient. In the context of a walking storyteller, a good story is true (unless it is presented as a legend), it has human-interest appeal (love, courage, good vs. evil, etc.), it connects in a meaningful way to a particular site on the walk, and it fits into the overall theme of the walk—the big picture. The sum of the stories told is history revealed in a meaningful and unforgettable way.

A good mix of stories on a historic walk could include dramatic, traumatic, or humorous events, stories about or incidents from the lives of founding fathers (and mothers), stories about a particular building or site, and stories that reveal what life was like at that point in history. Using Bayfield as an example, its most traumatic event was the Great Flood of 1942. Standing on the Old Iron Bridge overlooking the town, the storyteller helps the guests to envision the terrible July night that destroyed much of the downtown: collapsing buildings, cars buried under sand, the railroad knocked off its tracks, a section of the cemetery washed out, and coffins floating down the main street toward the lake.

The local Episcopal church is an example of a site rich in stories. Built in 1870, its first vicar was sent as a missionary from Scotland. He almost destroyed the church when he tried to stuff the kerosene stove with wood and light it to heat the church. That provides a great lead-in to stories about the hardships endured by early clergy of all faiths who served this isolated frontier community. They fought wildfires, blizzards, and treacherous Lake Superior storms serving distant communities on foot, on snowshoes, or by rowboat. They hunted to feed their families and helped to birth their own children, many of whom did not survive infancy.

The church’s Carpenter Gothic “gingerbread” architecture is photogenic. Built with lumber from northern Wisconsin’s immense white pine forests, it also offers an ecology story: the widely proclaimed “endless” supply of timber was clear-cut in fewer than 70 years. Here, a picture is worth a thousand words. The storyteller shows an 1886 engraving of Bayfield. “Look at the background. All that is ‘endless’ are receding waves of hills with the ugly stubble of huge stumps.”

Some of the town’s leading historic figures are a gift to storytellers. They have lived lives full of interesting stories that make what could be a dull telling delightful! The basic facts about William Knight are pretty mundane. He arrived in Bayfield in 1869, grew rich as a lumber baron, founded the first bank in Bayfield, married a visiting Scottish lady, was an avid gardener, and established the first of the area’s now famous apple orchards. Yawn!

It is the stories that illuminate life in 1900 Bayfield and make William a memorable person. He didn’t own the first car in Bayfield but he owned the second and third (what a show-off), and like Toad of Toad Hall, got into a lot of trouble with them (clouds of blue smoke, ear splitting roars, smash-ups, and flip-overs). Despite local ordinances, cows ran rampant in town and when one used her horn to “pick the lock” on William’s garden gate and regularly decimated his prize vegetable patch, he finally resorted to his trusty “.22” to deal with her. She staggered off to die on the front lawn of the Presbyterian church—where she obviously went to say her last prayers. William’s and his wife’s ghosts are still in residence in the lovely Queen Anne mansion he built in 1892, providing a haunting love story for the ghostwalk!

ghosts-3Nellie Tate, an 1870s resident and  wife of Bayfield’s first druggist, leads a lighthearted history walk. Her stories (gleaned from her four diaries) are of wild sleigh rides on the frozen lake, sneaking off on lazy summer days to go fishing, and sledding down Cooper’s Hill with her girlfriends. She has been known to startle tour guests by asking the ladies how they handle the buttonhole on their husband’s shirts when they turn the collars to make them last longer. “Do you make a new hole or do you reuse the old one on the opposite side?” When dreaded nor’easters forced sailing vessels to seek shelter in Bayfield’s harbor, Nellie was often called on to provide food and beds to stranded travelers on a moment’s notice. Sadly, Nellie, like so many women of her generation, succumbed to tuberculosis. Her stories reveal what life was like in early Bayfield.

Most stories don’t come to the walking storyteller ready-made. A good story is more than just “talking points.” It needs to be crafted so that it relates the essential facts and uses words and concepts to create the desired emotional response in the listener—laughter, empathy, anticipation, revulsion—universal feelings that people relate to. It also needs to be told in a “foot-friendly” amount of time. People like to walk but they get restless if they have to stand still very long. A good story is often pieced together from a variety of different sources, making the storyteller part detective, part historian, and part wordsmith.

Finally, the story needs to be told using the tools of any good storyteller: a sense of drama, timing, pacing, vocal control, meaningful movement, and an ability to “read” the audience. For this reason, many good storytellers have some background or training in acting. The walking storyteller also needs a good set of legs and feet, physical stamina, clothing for every kind of weather condition, excellent diction, ability to project their voice without straining their vocal cords, and a good sense of humor. The sense of humor is especially important when that dang dog howls at the story’s high point of suspense and the audience dissolves into laughter!

Virginia A. Hirsch is founder and owner of Bayfield Heritage Tours, LLC, a walking tour business located in Bayfield, Wisconsin. She has a Ph.D. in theatre and 29 years of experience as a teacher, arts coordinator, storyteller, and facilitator/trainer. She recently completed certification as an NAI Interpretive Guide. She can be contacted at bayfieldtours@earthlink.net.

 
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Posted in Interpreting Public History, The Frontline

 
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