Week Four: Assembling Our Initial Planning Team

After switching my attention to the National Endowment for the Humanities Planning Grant, the first order of business was to assemble an initial planning team. To be sure, this initial group is not the “project team” that will collaborate on the interpretive plan (though, surely, many of them will partake in the planning and implementation of the eventual interpretive plan). No, instead this group will help give us an initial sense of the strengths and weaknesses of the museum and its collections. Perhaps, then, it would be more appropriate to call them an initial focus group? Either way, whatever the appropriate name of this group, their task is important. Theoretically, if all goes according to plan, this planning team – err, focus group – will give us the consensus on the strongest themes and narratives found in the museum.

From there, we can then begin to identify experts in the particular themes identified. These experts would then serve as consultants during the drafting of an interpretive plan. But I’m getting ahead of myself …

After consulting with Dr. Beiler about forming an initial planning group, I returned to my computer to draft an email. The email invited relevant participants to join us on a group tour of the museum in its entirety, including all its exhibits and gardens. The date was set for Thursday, June 20^th. In the email, I explained the purpose of the exercise as well as our expectations of the potential participants: We would provide each of them with one 3”x5” notecard and a pen. As we progressed through the museum tour, the participants would be asked to jot down themes that seemed especially prevalent to them. Understandably (and expectedly), each participant possesses a different background and area of specialization. The hope is that they will all notice some variation of themes. They would be advised not to write more than five strong themes (but, please, no less than three either). After our tour, the group would convene in a room and commence discussion about the diverging views of the museum. My hope, if all goes smoothly, is that the group will be able to boil down their divergent themes into several coherent ones. After that, their jobs will be done. Easy, right? That was my hope anyway, as we needed as much help as possible.

I sent the drafted email to Dr. Beiler; after changing a few things to suit her tone, she sent the email out to our prospective group. We invited many historians from the University of Central Florida History Department, the Executive Director of the Daytona Beach Museum of Arts and Sciences, and the Public History Center staff. Their expertise ranged from topics including Florida history, Southern history, Native American history, histories of race in the South, political history, agricultural history, historic preservation and public history, and, lastly, the day-to-day workings of the museum. Not a bad spread, right? Of course, not all will be able to attend, but the more the merrier.

So, with all this discussion, perhaps you are wondering: “What are these ‘themes’ he keeps talking about?” The themes will be the focal points of the museum; broadly speaking, they will be the museum’s most identifiable aspects for the community, they will also underpin the main narratives ubiquitous among the museum exhibits. Barbara Abramoff Levy, in the edited collection Interpreting Historic House Museums, notes that interpretive “themes” must “express what it is the site wants visitors to know or understand.”¹ With that said, my initial inclination is to assume that “education” will emerge as a strong theme for the Public History Center. It is, after all, a former schoolhouse (built in 1902). Plus, at least a few of the existing exhibits engage ideas about education. Of course, “education” is not a theme; however, the growth and evolution of education in Sanford (dare I say central Florida even) certainly is. But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself … It will be exciting to see what our group identifies.

1. Barbara Abramoff Levy, "Interpretation Planning: Why and How," in Interpreting House Museums, ed. Jessica Foy Connelly (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2002), 51.