I do a lot of planning workshops, including a lot of small-group work with front-line staff and their immediate supervisors. I love the energy and creativity that flows from these groups. But one of my reservations in working with front line people is the risk of giving my participants high hopes and dreams for real …
It seems that so many of us are working through some kind of COVID-19 reopening plan right now. I thought I would do a case study to see how a museum in my part of the world is dealing with the challenge. Here is an interview with Dr. Kelly Black, executive director at Point Ellice …
I’ve been spending a fair bit of time researching and pondering what “experiential interpretation” actually means. Here’s what I’ve come up with. Interpretation is experiential when the interpreter uses a recognizable activity as the structure of the program, and imposes passive listening on the audience less than 10% of the time. It uses traditional activities, …
Part of the work I do in visitor experience planning involves defining essence of place—those heritage values, tangible and intangible, that define your site. It’s a fun exercise but it can be a little bit abstract at first: what exactly is a tangible heritage value, anyway? A great place to start is simply by asking …
Which is not to suggest that your resource is without meaning. I’ve been spending a lot of time lately putting together basic training for interpreters, and one of the first things we always try to do is define exactly what our profession is. You’d think that’d be easy; it ain’t. Every time I try to …
Read more “There are no meanings inherent in your resource.”
A lifetime ago when I studied playwriting, there was a concept that has stuck with me ever since: “point of departure.” In a story, there is a journey along a dramatic arc that is launched when the protagonist is faced with some kind of challenge, after which their life will never be the same. The …
Think of it as a one-page interpretive plan. Writing a plan is tough work, and writing an interpretation plan is one of the more daunting tasks many of us in the nature-heritage sector face. So daunting, in fact, that many of us would rather chew off an arm than set aside time in our busy weeks to …
The point of market segmentation is not to make visitors unwelcome; it is the opposite. This article is part of a series, Understanding Our Audiences, on market segmentation for interpretive planners and other visitor experience professionals. You should probably start at the beginning, here. Managers and boards of directors are sometimes reluctant to focus their …