In this post, I review the final six findings and conclusion of Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service. Readers should keep in mind the relation of these findings to the history community as a whole including state, municipal, and private organizations.

FINDING 7: PRODUCTIVE AND ENDURING PARTNERSHIPS FOR HISTORY

When I read in this finding, “History in the national parks depends on cooperation and collaboration with others,” I nearly choked. How often have we heard this jargon platitude meaninglessly been recited over the years? Can you even count that high? Of course, cooperation and collaboration matter, and of course, they don’t happen except as an exception. At the New York State History Roundtable convened by State Legislator Steve Englebright on May 29, 2014, with the Deputy Commissioner of the Office of Culture and Education sitting next to the chair of the Regents’ subcommittee on Culture and Education, the repeated comment made again and again by multiple attendees was the prevalence of silos within the history community including the State Archives, State Library, and State Museum all housed in the very same building. I heard the word “silo” mentioned so often I thought I was attending a farmers’ conference.

The system is rigged against cooperation and collaboration. No one is paid to cooperate and collaborate. People are paid to so something at a specific site and not to work with others. There is no funding for “Pathfinders” in New York, for people to create paths through history involving multiple locations. When I was creating Teacherhostels/Historyhostels for weekend and week-long visits to multiple sites, I learned first-hand that as an outsider I was the only one bringing multiple private, municipal, state, and federal sites together in a cooperative and collaborative program. Naturally, then, I was curious to see what would be  recommended for the NPS while recognizing that it is a national organization of geographically distant sites.

Recommendations

1. Maximize synergies with the professional history community
2. Develop relationships with institutions of higher education or other cultural organizations in their areas
3. Partner with universities and history graduate students to conduct needed research
4. Go digital in partnership with other repositories of related archival information
5. Create k-12 materials

I would like to focus on the last recommendation since it is the most local. It also is the most varied as each of the 50 states has its own social studies curriculum and guidelines. Therefore it is necessary for the NPS and any other historic site to work with state education department, social studies councils, or local school districts depending on the geographical extent of the desired school market. It is a reasonable bet to assume that the Battle of Saratoga and the Erie Canal will at least be mentioned in a New York public school at some point. At what grade? For how long? In connection with what else?

Several years ago, I worked on a curriculum program on Eleanor Roosevelt with the NPS. Lesson plans were developed in a variety of areas as part of a traveling suitcase schools could request. My subversive question was how much time do schools devote to Eleanor Roosevelt? Rather than creating separate lesson plans, it might be more beneficial to see how her life intersected with the political, social, and civil rights issues which were studied more extensively. On the other hand, one elementary school teacher loved Eleanor and was determined to include her in her class. As an elementary school teacher she had more flexibility than social studies teachers. In hindsight, it might even have been better to have hosted an Eleanor Roosevelt conference combining talks, tours, and workshops on how to integrate her into the curriculum.

The same Roosevelt site also hosts and annual Teaching the Hudson Valley (THV) conference. I am not aware of comparable conferences in the other valleys of New York State or in the city. Perhaps there are in other states. Do NPS sites share best practices? Would other sites know what is being done in the Hudson Valley? Ironically, it occurs in the same room where the NPS staff and one of the authors of Imperiled Promise conducted a workshop on June 12, 2014 which started this whole sequence of posts.

As originally conceived, THV did exactly what the report recommended. It partnered with nearby Marist College. The speakers in the program included history professors and authors as well as NPS and National Archives staff on designated themes. The attendees were teachers and staff from historic sites. There was funding to support teachers pairing up with an historic site to visit, to create lesson plans, and to have class visits. That is not exactly what is done now, but the THV did implement some of the recommendations of a study that hadn’t even been written yet. But again, one key obstacle is the state-mandated curriculum along with the challenges of school field trips.

As an example, a recent post in New York History Blog by Bruce Dearstyne, author of The Spirit of New York: Defining Events in the Empire State’s History, notes that Philip Schuyler, father-in-law of current superstar Alexander Hamilton, is not mentioned in the New York State social studies curriculum at the grades 4 and 7/8 level. Dearstyne then writes about Schuyler as a figure in New York State history. He mentions this in connection with a newspaper article on the increased attendance at the Schuyler Mansion, a New York State historic site in Albany. After the battle of Saratoga, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne was a “guest” of fellow gentleman Schuyler. In fact, Schuyler was a participant in the battle and had a second home right near the battlefield in what is today Schuylerville. That house is an NPS site and as I recall from visiting it as part of the Battle of Saratoga weekend Teacherhostel/Historyhostel, some NPS staff even live on the premises.

My point in mentioning these examples from personal experience, is to emphasize that the NPS is not operating in a vacuum. Right now history and social studies are a low priority in the k-12 curriculum compared to the Common Core. That initiative is about reading and math or in a more elaborate version, science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). The idea that if people are interested in something then they might want to read about it has no place in educational thinking today. It’s not as if we are a storytelling species or that there are any stories to tell in our own communities. So while I digress slightly from the Finding, it is important to recognize the concerns raised are part of a larger dilemma. All the more reason why the NPS needs to join the conversation by attending the social studies and history conferences at the national and state level and to add its voice to the discussion about the place of history in the k-12 curriculum.

FINDING 8: TECHNOLOGY AND THE PRACTICE OF HISTORY   

Nine single-space pages are devoted to this finding even before the specific recommendations are made. At times like this I think of the municipal historians who don’t use email (at least for “work”) or the counties that don’t have enewsletters (almost all of them). Technology has changed information storage, information retrieval, and information sharing. It changes how history can be experienced and how people in the history field can remain in contact. There are bureaucratic issues. There are financial issues. There are “creatures of habit” issues.

The recommendations under this finding relate to training, website design, integrating databases, use of social media, apps. The key issue here is the need for topdown leadership. It is absurd to expect every historic site to reinvent the wheel. And unproductive.

FINDING 9: STEWARDSHIP AND INTERPRETATION OF AGENCY HISTORY

This finding refers to the history of the NPS itself, an organization which has now celebrated its centennial. Apparently there once was a position of bureau historian within the chief historian’s office. The consultants recommend it be filled and other actions be taken to document and preserve the histories of the individual sites.

FINDING 10: THE CONSTRAINTS OF BOUNDARIES, ENABLING LEGISLATION, AND FOUNDING HISTORIES

“History at many sites seems to be understood as having ended at the park’s creation and stopped at its boundaries.”  The authors ask the NPS to take a broader view. They laud the creation of National Heritage Areas (NHA). They like the way NHAs blur the distinctions between natural and cultural resources.

Shouldn’t each NHA have an annual conference for the history community within its region and with the scholars who address its theme?

FINDING 11: FIXED AND FEARFUL INTERPRETATION

This Finding notes the tendency toward “defensive history,” by which they mean a “certain timidity in the face of controversy or criticism.” The result may be a reduction of portraying “what really happened” (a history credo) to the recounting of some factual details. As one might expect, this condition relates particularly to Civil War sites and slavery. The authors fault the NPS for imagining there is a singular national inheritance serving as the “civic glue” for all Americans. Instead they tout the recognition of numerous, complex, often conflicting interpretations.

Besides timidity, there is another problem. Ironically the quest to be political correct, that is, sensitive to the various hyphenated identities, also can distort a story. While it is beneficial to include people other than dead white men in the story, the emphasis on the women’s exhibit or a black exhibit at an American Revolution battlefield obscures the historical reality of the dead white men who made that site a memorial in the first place. If you have ever watched AMC’s Turn about the spy ring from Long Island you will see it is a product of 21^st century progressive values. Dead white heterosexual male John Simcoe, the founder of York/Toronto where there is a day in his honor, has become a vicious Darth Vader while historical housewife and mother Anna Strong has become a younger femme fatale with an enhanced role. The latter was a marketing decision announced before season 3 at a meeting at the New-York Historical Society with the production staff and “Anna” herself in attendance. But these very examples do reflect the ongoing nature of historical interpretation.

The authors cite a lack of coordinated approach to controversial interpretations.  They acknowledge that sharing authority with visitors would mean a change in NPS procedures. They then note the irony that historic sites often become historic sites precisely because they were not bland or non-threatening, but because there was something controversial going on at that site or by the person who was born lived, or died there. On a bureaucratic note the authors report that the NPS is prohibited from conducting formal surveys of visitors. Presumably that means here is an area where outside assistance may necessary unless the rule is changed.

The recommendations deal with various organization issues and the use of social media to get a better handle on the visitor perspective. Maybe there should be different tours for different viewpoints instead of the one standard tour seeking an e pluribus unum message. Why shouldn’t people who think 9/11 was an inside job, slavery was good for Middle Passage Blacks, and 5 million people voted illegally have their own tours? It is after all their own vacation. And why should people on vacation who believe otherwise be trapped in a tour group with those who differ? Don’t we self-segregate at home?

In a world where people are entitled to their own facts, the basic methodologies of history tours may need to change.

FINDING 12: CIVIC ENGAGEMENT, HISTORY, AND INTERPRETATION

The authors of the study embrace the function of civic engagement at NPS historic sites. “Indeed, the most exciting possibilities for civic transformation emerge at points where staffers and visitors encounter difference…people whose understanding of differences of history and civics differ from their own.”  They go on to write, “dialogue on controversial issues helps people develop new civic skills.” When was the last time you saw people dialogue on controversial issues? In Congress? On cable TV shows? At a presidential news conference?

Do the same people visit Civil War battlefields and Underground Railroad sites? Sometimes. Why? Do people get their news from multiple media sources with different perspectives or from one source? The NPS doesn’t operate in a vacuum so let’s not go overboard on the changes the NPS can affect in the American population’s understanding of American history. How much do professors transform students versus reinforce students’ views and that’s with an entire semester and the power of the grade at their disposal? The NPS should be thinking about other types of visitor experiences besides the 30-minute tour and viewing of exhibits.

CONCLUSIONS

The authors of the study Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service conclude where they began. They call for the dismantling of the elements of agency culture and structure that confine history and historians in small boxes separate and detached from the agency as a whole and from the larger field of professional history scholarship and practice. They champion the creation of the two councils:

1. The NPS History Leadership Council
2. The History Advisory Board

and more involvement with the Organization of American History. During the course of their research, they learned that a similar study had been undertaken a generation earlier. They unearthed it covered in dust buried deep in the bowels of the NPS underground vaults designed to withstand nuclear blasts and requiring multiple passwords, fingerprint and eye retina examinations to access. Once they passed muster and read the report they were upset to see it: considering that it had been relegated to the dustbin of history, wasn’t their report also so imperiled? For a post-mortem on it, see the next post.

In part 3 of the study on the state of history in the National Park Service, the authors turn to the findings and recommendations. The section carries the ominous title “The Endangered and Fragmented State of History in the NPS.” The opening paragraph uses such words as “an afterthought,” “stagnant and irrelevant,” “erratic,” “underfunded, undervalued, underutilized and misunderstood,” “deteriorating,” “losing ground,” and “threatened.” And these were the words of the NPS respondents to the survey!

While there are individual success stories as recounted in the previous post, they tend to be locally-driven and without system-wide support or encouragement. When I was doing Teacherhostels/Historyhostels, I would notice the teachers who were determined to include local history in their classes no matter what. They were the ones who initiated the class trips or created the lesson plans about the history in the class’s backyard. Then the teacher (or sometimes principal) would retire or transfer and the effort would die. Even if one teacher took the lead, it did not necessarily mean the other teachers in the same grade in the same school or school system would follow. Yes, there are individuals who make that effort but they are the exception and they stand alone. Can the situation at the NPS be changed?

The authors declare that it can. They present a series of findings from their work and propose recommendations. I am not going to rewrite the 60+ page section to fit into a blog format. Instead, I will provide the findings and some of the key recommendations. Some of them will seem strangely familiar to anyone involved with the situation in the state below the federal level.

FINDING 1: THE HISTORY/INTERPRETATION DIVIDE

This finding refers to the organization of the bureaucracy. Since here in New York we have just gone through an effort to get a full-time historian, we should be able to relate the challenges confronting the NPS. One specific comment made was that historical research frequently is compliance and management focused and not for the interpreters who stand before the visitors. Sadly people in historical interpretation often have little formal training in history, subject knowledge, or expertise in doing primary source research. What’s worse is when the high-quality works and research which does occur ends up on shelves unread, unused, and inaccessible to the public. There is a disconnect with the visitors.

Recommendations

1. Restore full staffing and budget for the chief historian’s office
2. Create a History Leadership Council within the NPS with an annual meeting [could that be done at a state level and/or regional level even if national office ignored the recommendation?]
3. Revise the Essential Competencies for both interpreters and historians to promote cross-disciplinary training [what are the standards for competency as an interpreters or historian at non-NPS sites?]
4. Create long-range interpretive plans with a research needs component vetted by scholars, i.e., non-NPS people.

FINDING 2: THE IMPORTANCE OF LEADERSHIP FOR HISTORY

“An urgent need exists for visible, and well supported leadership that articulates an inspiring and wide- ranging vision for NPS history, encourages new directions, highlights and enables quality scholarship and innovation, and fosters interconnection and community among history and interpretative professionals throughout the agency and with historians outside NPS.”

Besides restoring the staffing and budget for the chief historian’s office noted above, other action should be taken.

Recommendations

1. Create a History Advisory Board to include representatives from national history and museum organizations and leading scholars to work with the History Leadership Council. I would add the executive director of the National Council for the Social Studies to the list.
2. NPS staff should attend professional conferences, pursue graduate training, and publish. I will be writing about this recommendation in an upcoming post based on my own experiences at some conferences this spring and summer.

3. FINDING 3: THE CHALLENGE OF DISCONNECTION

This finding relates to the isolation of history in the NPS. It refers to the isolation of people “doing” history and to the history knowledge. Respondents to the survey referred to the “total fragmentation” within an insular bureaucracy leaving people disconnected, isolated, and powerless. One result of the lack of the internal capacity of the NPS has been the outsourcing of work to contractors who have little connection to the organization. The report states that NPS staff “are not offered sufficient opportunities to take advantage of the crucial opportunities that professional conferences offer for ongoing connection with other historians.” It wasn’t even clear to the authors if the respondents had online access to scholarly journals the same way professors do through their colleges. Of course given the workload of the staff, shrinking travel budgets, and the lack of support from supervisors, it was problematic how much time NPS even had to avail themselves of such online access or to research/publish in such journals.

One respondent quoted in Finding 3 wrote: “I have begged, pleaded, and scrimped to attend conferences and necessary training,” a sentiment shared by multiple respondents. People resort to attending such conferences at their own expense and/or on vacation time. Superintendents may consider such absences as a “junket” or “boondoggle.”

Recommendations

1. Implement multiple avenues of internal communication within the NPS history staff. Since I maintain lists of NPS (and NYSOPRHP) staff, I sometimes wonder who else besides me is contacting the collective history staff on an ongoing basis on history-related issues. And this is not to say my own lists are comprehensive or up-to-date.
2. Collaborate with historians at colleges and universities.
3. Attend conferences both within the NPS and external to it and present at sessions at conferences
4. Obtain online access to scholarly journals and publish academic articles and monographs
5. Collaborate thematically citing the National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites (similar to the example of American Revolution sites in New York I mentioned in a previous post and Civil War sites which are not common in New York but are an obvious theme nationally).

4. FINDING 4: HISTORICAL EXPERTISE IN TODAY’S WORKFORCE

“[S]upport for professional expertise in history is surprisingly weak….[G]reater emphasis needs to be given to the acquisition and maintenance of a strong base of in-house, professionally qualified historical expertise.” The consultants devoted 7 pages to this finding. Clearly it is one of importance to them. The discussion covered issues like place-based history, professional training, raising job requirement standards, and hiring people at those higher levels. Ultimately the key may come down to the comment of respondent: “the agency would have to undergo a cultural transformation and value history equally with nature and recreation.”

Recommendations

1. Analyze the current standing of history within the bureaucratic job grades.
2. Support staff training as a budget line item including travel.
3. Upgrade research and interpretation skills based on the analysis in #1 above.
4. Raise standards.

FINDING 5: A HISTORY WORKFORCE FOR THE FUTURE

One immediate concern is the “graying” of Park Service staff. Where will the next generation of historians come from? This section encompasses a general discussion on the status of history (and Humanities) at the college and graduate school level. Obviously that topic is worthy of a post in its own right. One general observation I wish to make is the issue of the appeal of public history in general to those people who do purse graduate degrees in history. As long as the tenured position at a college is the primary goal, other venues suffer. What is the history career track in the NPS (or OPRHP or NYCParks or private non-profits or municipal historians)? Is it the purpose of the Cooperstown Graduate Program in museum studies to produces wives for the husbands who have the real jobs (a comment made a few years ago by a Cooperstown Graduate Program admissions officer or professor, I forget which, at a MANY conference wrap-up session to an audience of almost exclusively white women).

Recommendations

Besides enhancing the status of history within the NPS, the recommendations are:

1. Host public history field schools
2. Reach out to Graduate School directors and surplus history PhDs.

FINDING 6: INADEQUATE RESOURCES FOR HISTORICAL PRACTICES

This finding has to do with staffing, budgets, and organization including the use of volunteers for non-expertise jobs.

The remaining six findings will be reviewed in the next post.

The report Imperiled Promises isn’t all doom and gloom. It does cite some examples of successful work already being done within the NPS prior to the recommendations listed in the report. In this post, I will focus on the examples primarily related to New York and offer some comments.

African Burial Ground National Monument

One success noted was the African Burial Ground National Monument in lower Manhattan. The discovery of the burial ground was a national media phenomenon in no way typical of historic sites. For one thing, it is a new site within the NPS and not a reconfiguring of an existing site. In the study, the authors cite “a remarkably inclusive, patient, and creative process of civic engagement” following the chance discovery of this burial ground north of the walled street that once marked the northern boundary of New Amsterdam. It functioned roughly from 1690 to 1754 and may have contained 15,000 burials. That civic engagement led to contentious discussions and negotiations before a mutually agreeable settlement was reached.

But while the establishment of the national monument site succeeded, the post-settlement process has been less than hoped for. I write this recognizing that the NPS staff who assisted the Lower Manhattan Historical Association (LMHA) in our Alexander Hamilton Immigrant Award Ceremony and parade on July 2 also manage this site. While the site does well with school groups unfortunately its location a few blocks north of Lower Manhattan and the security clearance required to entire the site of a functioning federal office building hinder its appeal with tourist groups. It would work as better as a stop on a New Amsterdam tour package or an African tour package. I suppose such tours do exist but in a general tour of Lower Manhattan where time is precious the extra few blocks and security procedures are a detriment.

Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail

One NPS success site mentioned with New York implications is the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. For the bicentennial of Lewis and Clark from 2003 to 2006, the NPS partnered with American Indian communities, state and local governments, the private sector, and other federal agencies. Why is this relevant to New York? We don’t have Lewis and Clark, but we do have William Johnson. His story touched upon many different peoples especially in the Mohawk Valley including Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, Tuscarora, Palatine, Dutch, French, and English among others. Much of that activity occurred within the Erie Canal corridor so the NPS already operates in that area. But what connected the peoples wasn’t the canal but trails and roads just as Lewis and Clark used for their expedition, in particular, what is now Route 5. Perhaps the NPS could take the lead in organizing a William Johnson National Historic Trail and in bringing together the American Indian communities, state and local governments, the private sector, and other federal agencies to create such a trail. Is the NPS permitted to take the initiative and a leadership role?

American Revolution: Lighting Freedom’s Flame

On a larger scale, the study touts the NPS’s success with an American Revolution curriculum called American Revolution: Lighting Freedom’s Flame. The curriculum material is available free of charge to teachers and school systems and is accompanied with educational resources.

I noticed in examining the Fort Stanwix and the Saratoga Battlefield some web sites of locations in New York that there are lesson plans related to their respective battles. My sense is that the lesson plans are for the classroom and not for the school trips to the sites especially since they are available nationwide wherever the American Revolution is taught.

The curriculum and the lesson plans on the American Revolution raise several questions.

1. Is it the function of the NPS to be national experts on the story American Revolution? Here I go with the baseball term WAR, wins-over-replacement. In these terms it means what does the NPS add to the story of the American Revolution that isn’t being told elsewhere? Why should the NPS seek to tell the entire story of the American Revolution? What the NPS has are specific sites where critical events occurred. In my opinion, it would be more beneficial to focus on the story of those sites within the context of the larger story rather than to seek to tell the larger story. It’s not as if it isn’t told elsewhere and the NPS is filling a gap.

2. The story of the NPS sites in the American Revolution shouldn’t be told in isolation from other sites and wars. For example, Fort Ticonderoga and Fort William Henry, private sites near Saratoga, also are part of the story and that story is really a three –phased one including the French and Indian War and the War of 1812. In addition there are multiple small sites including just over the border in Vermont that are part of the story as well. When I did Teacherhostels/Historyhostels called Forts of the Empire State (week long) or the Battle of Saratoga (weekend), we visited many of these sites. Besides meeting with the Rangers and education curators at the other locations, we were exposed to the curriculum the local sites had to offer. Fort Ticonderoga has annual conferences on both the French and Indian War and the American Revolution combined with some touring; Fort Oswego, a state historic site covering all three wars also has conference. Here is an example where the NPS should be collaborating with related sites about the local story rather than try to be the experts on the national story.

3. Related to the above, how are teachers to become aware of what the NPS sites have to contribute to the story of the American Revolution? Fort Ticonderoga has teacher programs and has attended social studies conferences including making presentations. The mantra of “if you put in on the web, they will come” works with comical cat videos but not necessarily less funny curriculum.

Here is where state actions would be beneficial, at least in New York. Although we temporarily(?) no longer have a state history conference, we do have some state meetings. Even a session at the annual Museum Association of New York (MANY) conference dedicated to forts of the empire state would help bring together NPS, state, and private sites with a shared interest and stories to tell. Same for the Erie Canal. In fact, the NPS could even host not just a session but working conferences. To some extent, the Women’s Suffrage conferences held the past two years and the subject of two posts represent an example of bringing together a thematic segment of the history community involving an NPS site.

Martin Van Buren National Historic Site

The report positively cites the Martin Van Buren National Historic Site in Kinderhook for successfully bridging the gap between nature and culture. Its work on Van Buren’s post-presidential farming activities. One might add, considering the growth in recent years of the local farm products, this approach fits in nicely with the cultural developments in the Hudson Valley. One sees local produce in markets, restaurants, and supermarkets. In effect, Van Buren’s past efforts synchronize well with current practices.

Flight 93 Memorial (not in the report)

Kudos to Ranger Robert Franz for his work at an unexpected and tragically new addition to the NPS umbrella. He is the “interpretive park ranger” at the Flight 93 Memorial.  His job is to tell the story again and again to visitors who often remember exactly where they were when they first heard about 9/11.  He tells the story of the plane that crashed into a field and not into a building. One should note that he tells the story to people sitting on benches at the Flight 93 Memorial and not standing in the sun for 30 minutes.

Franz is a military veteran and a pilot who brings his background to his storytelling. He has those 30 minutes to tell the story. He has to keep his own emotions in check at certain portions of the story which he repeats day after day to new visitors. There are unscripted pauses in his storytelling. He listens as people in the audience share their own memories of the day. He tolerates the conspiracy “theorists” who question whether the crash even occurred. The Holocaust never happened. The people were better off in slavery than back in Africa. The moon landing is fake news. Rangers are required to maintain their cool. Maybe there should be special tours or places for those from the far side. Robert Franz says “Let’s roll!” and the 30 minutes are up. Time to move on the next place after stopping at the gift shop.

We are a storytelling species but that doesn’t mean everyone is a good storyteller. History sites needs them. How do you get them? How do you prepare them? The recommendations of the Imperiled Promises study are next.

Part I Imperiled Promise: History and the NPS (and OPRHP)

Part II Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service

Part III Imperiled Promise: Recommendations

With the approach of the funding deadline for REDC awards for2017 fast approaching, I received this email in my own region.

Dear Colleague:

The CFA Application Deadline is just 2 weeks away. All applications must be submitted through the portal (https://apps.cio.ny.gov/apps/cfa/) by July 28, 2017 at 4:00pm sharp.

Round 7 Resources available on the REDC website (http://www.regionalcouncils.ny.gov):

• 2017 Regional Council Guidebook (https://regionalcouncils.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2017REDCGuidebook.pdf) 
• CFA Resource Manual (https://regionalcouncils.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2017ResourcesAvailable.pdf)
• CFA Application Guide (https://regionalcouncils.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2017CFAApplicationManual.pdf)

If you have any questions please let me know.

Thanks,

Meghan

Meghan A. Taylor
Regional Director, Mid-Hudson
Empire State Development
33 Airport Center Drive, New Windsor, NY 12553
Office: (845) 567-4882 | Meghan.Taylor@esd.ny.gov
www.esd.ny.gov  

In conjunction with that deadline, I am completing my investigation in the Marketing New York awards granted by I LoveNY for the 2016 REDC. Certain issues were noted in the previous posts on these awards Show Me the Money and I LoveNY Funding:

1. differentiating between marketing and capital improvements
2. squeezing state-wide and regional organizations into the REDC designated regional and county format
3. the non-existence of Path through History awards.

Exactly how the line is drawn between “marketing,” the basis for these awards and capital improvements. One wonders exactly where within the REDC process capital improvements best belong. Imagine if the funding for capital improvements by I LoveNY was freed up to develop and market tourist programs instead.

This post resumes where alphabetical review by region left off. It starts with the Mohawk Valley Region, a REDC funding region but not an I LoveNY region. The post continues with New York City, the North Country, the Southern Tier, and the Western Region to complete the state review.

Mohawk Region – $81.9 million awarded to 88 projects 

Fulton County – no awards granted in this category 

Herkimer County
City of Little Falls Explore Little Falls
The Explore Little Falls initiative will execute a strategic marketing campaign to position Little Falls, as the ideal “attraction-level” setting in which to experience the rich cultural and historical heritage of life along the Erie Canal.
Amount: $54,000

This award actually mentions cultural and historical heritage. Under normal circumstances, Little Falls can be considered the western end of the Mohawk Valley since the falls necessitated portage in colonial times. Its ecology contributed the logistics of Burgoyne’s plan in 1777 leading to the nearby Battle of Oriskany in which General Herkimer participated, a battle now “celebrating” its 240th anniversary. It is easy to imagine Little Falls as a day-stop on a multi-day trip along the Mohawk River be it for the American Revolution, the Indian Nations, or the Erie Canal. Little Falls is a perfect example of the benefits of collaboration and cooperation.

Herkimer Diamond Mines, Inc.
Herkimer Diamond Mines Expansion Project
The Herkimer Diamond Mines will use grant funds to assist in the expansion and upgrade of its current facility, including infrastructure improvements.
Amount: $125,000

Montgomery County – no awards granted in this category

Oneida County
Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute (MWPAI)
MWPAI Celebrates the Arts of New York
Grant funds will be used for a comprehensive marketing plan for “MWPAI Celebrates the Arts of New York,” a summer-long series of events that will showcase the work of New York State artists both past and present.
Amount: $110,534

Otsego County
Baseball Hall of Fame
Redesign of Museum Marketing Materials
Grant funds will be used to improve the impact of the Museum’s marketing materials in an effort to generate additional visitors.
Amount: $333,750

One notes that State Senator James Seward who represents this area is proposing that baseball be designated the state sport.

New York State Historical Association Spirit of the Ice:
The Art of Figure Skating Through the Ages
Fenimore Art Museum (FAM) will use the grant funds to support a major exhibition and programming to debut never-before seen collection of art and artifacts devoted to the sport of figure skating.
Amount: $120,500

One would never know from these two awards in Otsego County that the two sites involved  are only a few miles apart. How hard would it be to create a Cooperstown weekend history package?

Schoharie County
Iroquois Indian Museum
Iroquois Indian Museum Marketing Initiative
Grant funds will be used to further extend the current marketing outreach by promoting a diverse series of events and exhibitions in 2017 at the Iroquois Museum.
Amount: $20,000

As previously reported, each Indian museum operates independently. There is no collaboration.

The Mohawk Valley is an area with plentiful opportunities for revenue-generating history itineraries. From the Indian Nations to the American Revolution to the Erie Canal to Industrialization the area is ripe for collaborative and cooperative efforts which could bring valuable revenues to a hard-hit area. I speak from experience having created with substantial local help a Mohawk Valley Teacherhostel/Historyhostel. What a great place for an REDC Pathfinder application!

New York City – $80.2 million awarded to 121 projects
Bronx
The New York Botanical Garden
Conservatory Restoration Project
Grants funds will be used to help with the addition of LED lighting which will increase energy efficiency, create dynamic and vibrant visitor experiences and augment the landmarked Conservatory’s status as a tourist attraction facility.
Amount: $100,000

Kings (Brooklyn)
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Brooklyn Botanic Garden Woodland Garden and Accessibility Improvement Project
Grant funds will be used to support the creation of a new feature for the garden that will increase attendance, and provide a new location for education classes and visitors to learn about urban gardening while simultaneously creating handicapped accessible routes through the existing garden.
Amount: $500,000

Brooklyn Bridge Park
Brooklyn Bridge Plaza
Brooklyn Bridge Plaza, located under the iconic Brooklyn Bridge will be the final section of Brooklyn Bridge Park to be constructed. The Plaza is envisioned as a flexible space that will host seasonal markets, concerts, picnics, and multicultural events, attracting visitors from the region and the world. The grant funds will support the electrical services necessary to support an ice skating rink extending the outdoor season of the Park and attracting visitors year-round.
Amount: $740,000

Brooklyn Historical Society
Waterfront Exhibition
Grant funds will be used for final design, fabrication, and marketing of Waterfront, a 3,200 sq. ft., a long-term, educational exhibition that will be housed in Brooklyn Historical Society DUMBO, a new satellite museum in the Empire Stores complex on the Brooklyn Waterfront.
Amount: $176,283

New York
American Museum of Natural History
2016 AMNH Market New York
The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) seeks funding towards an exciting new capital addition to its nearly 150-yearold complex. The new facility will improve access to and circulation within existing Museum space, linking the current 25 buildings of the complex and providing visitors with a new entrance, while also upgrading and modernizing the Museum’s operational services.
Amount: $1,000,000

Lower East Side Tenement Museum
Tenement Museum Marketing Initiative
The Tenement Museum will use grant funds to support the launch of a strategic marketing campaign to boost visitation as it opens its new exhibit in July 2017.
Amount: $204,600

Richmond
Staten Island Chamber of Commerce Foundation
Staten Island Tourism Proposal
Funds will be used to create a new welcome center to enhance visitors’ experiences, and a new building façade to improve visibility. Additionally the project includes a branding and marketing plan for Staten Island with media and other outreach, a visitor campaign to facilitate bookings, new visitors’ brochures and guides, a website upgrade, and an update to an interactive kiosk at the ferry terminal.
Amount: $324,738

Staten Island Museum
Capital Improvements to Staten Island Museum
Funds will be used to support and provide a better visitor experience at the Staten Island Museum.
Amount: $77,976

New York City as might be expected is in a separate category. It has a substantial tourist operation of its own independent of the state organization. It draws the overwhelming number of tourists to the state although confined mainly to one borough. Its draws the overwhelming number of non-tourists from the business, college, and the diplomatic communities. As was mentioned in a Tourist Advisory Council (TAC) meeting, the goal for TAC is for the second trip to New York to be outside the city for and/or one-day trips from the city to other areas. The village of Nyack on the Hudson River in Rockland County for example is actively pushing that front in its REDC applications. Here is where great transportation is important plus coordinating local visits with the train schedules as the National Park Service does in Poughkeepsie for the Roosevelt sites. Getting people to spend a week in the Hudson Valley or Long Island is difficult enough but day or weekend excursions beyond the Big Apple has possibilities as well as using it for a springboard for sites even farther away. New York is a big state and foreign visitors don’t always appreciate the distance from the city to Niagara Falls.

North County Region – $61.4 million awarded to 77 projects
Clinton County – no awards in this category

Essex County
Cascade Ski Center, LLC
Ski Center Adaptations for a Changing Climate
Grant funds will be used for snowmaking and tourism infrastructure improvements to support year round operations and expand the recreational opportunities in order to diversify tourism offerings in the Olympic region.
Amount: $42,000

Destination, Inc. Ironman 70.3
Grant funds will be used to host a new internationally recognized Ironman 70.3 event, in Lake Placid, for 5 consecutive years starting in September of 2017.
Amount: $50,000

Star Trek Original
Series Set Tour Trekonderoga 2017
Grant funds will be used to promote and increase attendance at Trekonderoga 2017, a special event hosted in Ticonderoga, NY, featuring former actors who appeared on Star Trek and other SciFi TV shows of the 1960s, and centered at a CBS licensed Star Trek set replica.
Amount: $26,000

As a Star Trek fan, naturally I applaud this item. But it does seem that that there is more money for ghosts and Klingons than re-enactors.

Wildlife Conservation Soceity (sic)
Cycle Adirondacks 2017
Grant funds will be used to develop and initiate a marketing campaign to promote the Cycle Adirondacks, a multi-day roadbicycle event, focused on metro NYC can drive outdoor recreation-based tourism to the Adirondack Park and have a lasting economic impact in the Adirondacks.
Amount: $75,000

Franklin County
The Wild Center
New Markets for The Wild Center and The North Country Phase 3
Grant funds will be used to execute a strategic multi-media marketing campaign to bring more millennials to vacation in the North Country Region and to visit The Wild Center.
Amount: $300,000

Village of Saranac Lake
2017 World Snowshoe Federation Championships Special Event
The Village of Saranac Lake will use grant funds to assist with the hosting of the 2017 World Snowshoe Federation (WSSF) Championships from February 23-25, 2017.
Amount: $75,000

Hamilton County
Adirondack Museum
Fall Festival Special Event
The Adirondack Museum will use funds to support the development, marketing, and launch of a new annual Halloween inspired festival during October 2017.
Amount: $125,000

Jefferson County – no awards granted in this category

Lewis County – no awards granted in this category

St. Lawrence – no awards granted in this category

Southern Tier Region – $60.4 million awarded to 63 projects
Broome County – no awards granted in this category

Chemung County
Harris Hill Soaring Corporation
Flight Center Expansion and Rennovation (sic)
Funds will be used to renovate and repair four structural issues, update the facility, and install handicapped accessible rest rooms at the Flight Center.
Amount: $50,000

Chenango County – no awards granted in this category

Delaware County – no awards granted in this category

Schuyler County
Watkins Glen International
Racing Promotions
Watkins Glen International will utilize funds to engage in a marketing plan designed to attract millennial travelers from Canada and Pennsylvania to the NASCAR weekend in Watkins Glen.
Amount: $150,000

Steuben County
Corning Museum of Glass
New York Waterways Glass Barge
Corning Museum of Glass (CMoG) will use grant funds to install a mobile glassblowing studio on a canal barge (The Glass Barge) to provide live glassblowing demos to the general public at waterfront locations along NY waterways.
Amount: $57,830

Tioga County – no awards granted in this category

Tompkins County
Center for the Arts at Ithaca Inc.
Hangar Theatre 2017 Marketing Campaign
Funds will be used to increase programming with a holiday show in 2017.
Amount: $159,100

The Sciencecenter Discovery Museum
Sciencenter Reimagined: Renovating and Expanding Exhibitions and Facilities
The Sciencenter Discovery Musuem (sic) will use grant funds to replace and renovate nearly all the museum’s indoor and outdoor exhibitions, improving quality of life indicators and dramatically enhancing the region’s ability to attract workers and tourists to the region.
Amount: $150,000

Western New York Region – $62.0 million awarded to 105 projects
Allegany County – no awards granted in this category

Cattaraugus County
City of Olean
Allegheny River Canoe Kayak Launch Project
Grant funds will be used to support the “paddle trail” project which will consist of purchasing and installing two portable launches (one ADA compliant) in strategic locations that would expand recreational opportunities and support the idea of being part of a regional system of launches along the Allegheny River.
Amount: $44,600

Chautauqua County
Chautauqua County Dept of Planning and Economic Development
Marketing Chautauqua Countys Overland Trails
Funds will be used to promote and increase the usage of existing trails, including the
County-owned Overland Trails through a strategic branding and marketing initiative.
Amount: $16,945

National Comedy Center
National Comedy Center Tourism Capital Grant funds will be used for upgrades at the National Comedy Center for the purchase and installation of two large digital screens on the entrance building, and the purchase and installation of the Hologram Theater Projection System. These upgrades provide a strategic PR opportunity to create national publicity and increase visitation to the region.
Amount: $234,000

Erie County
Shared Mobility, Inc.
Bicycle Tourism in Buffalo
This project will work to increase bike tourism in Buffalo and Western New York. The funds will be used to develop a marketing and branding theme, and implementation to promote more participants from around the region to come to the many biking events.
Amount: $125,000

Tough Mudder, Inc.
Tough Mudder Western NY 2017
Funds will be used to implement and promote the Tough Mudder; an event at the Kissing Bridge Ski Resort in Glenwood, NY on August 5-6, 2017.
Amount: $250,000

Visit Buffalo Niagara
African American Heritage Marketing Initiative
Funds will be used to promote the 100^th anniversary of the formation of Buffalo Local 533. This momentous occasion in Buffalo’s cultural history affords the opportunity to highlight Buffalo’s role as a center of African American heritage tourism to those outside the Buffalo Niagara region.
Amount: $37,500

Visit Buffalo Niagara
Meet Buffalo
Grant funds will be used to carry out the Meet Buffalo Niagara initiative, a multiphase project that will target meeting planners and decision makers from professional associations, inviting them to visit Buffalo Niagara to be introduced to community stakeholders, cultural attractions and regional assets that will help to drive home the point that they should host their organization’s conference in Buffalo Niagara.
Amount: $45,000

Niagara County
Aquaurium of Niagara
Aquarium Renovation Project
Grant funds will be used to construct a new Humboldt Penguin Exhibit, incorporating into the Aquarium’s updated master plan, to address the needs of the facility and to significantly enhance the Aquarium as a key attraction for visitors to the Buffalo/Niagara Region.
Amount: $100,000

Arrowhead Spring Vineyards
Niagara Wine Country Fine Wine Marketing
Arrowhead Spring Vineyards will use grant funds to lead a marketing effort to create and promote Niagara Wine Country (NWC), thereby increasing awareness of the Niagara Wine Region and the entire wine industry throughout the State.
Amount: $16,500

Artpark Company Inc.
US Premiere of Plasticiens Volants
Artpark will use the funds to present a special event, Plasticiens Volants, a spectacular performing arts event never before seen in the nation, thus increasing the perception and consideration of New York State as a travel destination, as well as raising the visibility of the Western NY region.
Amount: $52,992

Historic Palace, Inc.
The Palace Theatre Expansion
Grant funds will be used to support much needed HVAC, plumbing and electrical upgrades, additional seating, an improved concession area, and an expanded orchestra pit which will enhance the overall theater experience.
Amount: $423.000

I realize it is late in the game for this year. For the history community, if you haven’t already reached out to your TPAs, county executives, or attended an REDC workshop and/or training session, you may need to wait to next year. Here is one area where collaboration and cooperation really could benefit the history community. Many locations are not destinations in and of themselves but collectively they are part of an experience which can be marketed if people work together.