Historic Sites and House Museums
Civic Engagement
Civic Engagement for Historic Sites, a new one-day advanced workshop for historic house museums, will be held on Monday, April 21, 2008 from 9:30 am to 5 pm at the Oak Park Public Library in Oak Park, Illinois (ten miles west of Chicago). This workshop will explore the benefits of community engagement, outline the successful skills and strategies needed for facilitating dialogues and discussions, how to identify appropriate partners and forge collaborations that are mutually beneficial, suggest methods for constructing tours that support civic engagement, and provide tools for assessing and planning civic engagement initiatives. Registration is $150 per person ($130 for members of AASLH and NT Forum). Attendance is limited. To register or for more information, contact the American Association for State and Local History at (615) 320-3203 or visit www.aaslh.org.
The workshop will be led by Steve Long, Vice President of Collections and Education at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York. The Tenement Museum, a National Trust Historic Site, has been a recognized leader in encouraging civic engagement between sites and their communities for more than a decade. Steve spearheaded the Tenement Museum's success in identifying stakeholders and involving them in the Museum and has led dozens of workshops where participants learned best practices and potential pitfalls to develop their own strategies for promoting their sites as active players in civic life.
This advanced workshop is specifically designed for educators, interpreters, curators, program directors, and other staff and volunteers responsible for the content and management of tours at historic house museums, historic sites, districts, or heritage areas who have at least 2-4 years experience in educational programming or site interpretation.
This workshop is sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, American Association for State and Local History, Illinois Association of Museums, and Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust and funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and is part of an annual series of workshops developed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Great Tours
Discover how to create great tours at historic sites in a one-day workshop for educators, interpreters, curators, and directors of museums, heritage areas, and history organizations. This workshop is based on bestselling book, Great Tours!: Thematic Tours and Guide Training for Historic Sites (AltaMira Press, 2002) and is traveling around the country to reach as many people as possible.
Each participant receives a copy of the Great Tours book and numerous handouts. Large and small group interactive exercises are based on a case study of an historic site, providing participants with practical experience. Lunch and refreshments are included.
Upon completion of this workshop, participants will be able to:
- create a thematic tour for an historic site
- integrate material culture and historic biography into theme-based interpretation;
- develop and maintain outstanding guides;
- adapt and respond to various audience types.
These workshops are funded in part by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the host organizations, and sponsored by the American Association for State and Local History and AltaMira Press.
Seminar for Historical Administration
For 49 years, the Seminar for Historical Administration has provided an intensive residential professional development experience for history professionals. SHA is specifically targeted to full-time, paid staff of history museums, historic sites, preservation, or other history/museum organizations with three to ten years' experience and who are now in a position of administrative responsibility or are preparing for such a position. SHA is the longest-running professional development seminar in the country and the only one sponsored by six major history organizations: American Association for State and Local History, American Association of Museums, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the Indiana Historical Society, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. SHA employs case studies, workshops, forums, and field trips to present and engage the best practices and ideas of history organization leadership and management. For more details and an application, contact the American Association for State and Local History at (615) 320-3203 or visit www.aaslh.org.
