Another Five Project Ideas. Which One Should Be Awarded 3,000 STEEM?
It’s time to debate the PROS and CONS of our top 10 ideas.
In this post and yesterday’s we present a total of ten summaries of project ideas proposed by graduate students in public history.
The purpose: to decide how to invest in the missions of nonprofit organizations. What are we investing? We have accumulated STEEM since January.
In all, we have about 3,000 STEEM to invest in community.
Over the next weeks, we’ll be debating online and in class which one of these projects is the most desirable, achievable and impactful. We’ll want to know which promises to leverage additional resources. Which one represents the best investment for this course and for the community?
Here are the second five of the ten project ideas:
The Pennhurst Memorial & Preservation Alliance’s Museum and Interpretive Center
This center will present and educate local, regional and international visitors about the underrepresented History of Intellectual and Developmental Disability. The project at this vintage, authentic site includes restoring an early twentieth century building, the creation of seven exhibits, and the first opportunity for visitors to legally visit the Pennhurst campus and learn its true history. Learn more here.
Walking Tours that are Free, Relevant and Engaging
The vast majority of Philadelphia’s walking tours are for profit, centered in Old City and tell similar stories focused on colonial Philadelphia. They neglect Philadelphia history after the colonial era, and are too expensive for most local schools to afford. The Philadelphia nonprofit sector should develop free local history walking tours and then disseminate the tour materials to teachers so they can run tours for their students.
Invest in the Future of History
Support transition costs as the Philadelphia History Museum considers an alliance with Temple University. This would provide the opportunity for reconsideration and reorganization of the museum's mission and programs. Aligning with a major research, Philadelphia-based university would set the stage for mutually beneficial collaborations between the museum staff, collections, students, faculty and public.
Plan a New Museum for the “City Of Homes”
To many residents of the City of Brotherly Love, the Philadelphia Row House is more iconic than Independence Hall. For more than a century, Philadelphia has also been known as the City of Homes, most of which are row houses built between the mid-19th century and the mid-20th century. This project proposes the founding of a new Row Home Museum in an authentic row house. This 21st-century historic house museum would include an exhibit space and become a community asset in one of the city’s many row house neighborhoods.
A Community-Led Oral History Project
Support three organizations, Art Sanctuary, Juntos and Asian Americans United to develop a collective, community-led oral history project. By engaging civic-minded organizations of color (within as well as outside of the arts and culture sector) in a collaborative public history project, we would not only draw connections between the academy and the public at large, but also between disenfranchised populations themselves. Funds would also provide much needed operating support.
What projects do you consider the best investment?
As we asked at the conclusion of yesterday’s post, consider each of the ten proposed projects. Explain then rank the projects in your replies.
Please share your your opinions and insights with us.
100% of the SBD rewards from this #explore1918 post will support the Philadelphia History Initiative @phillyhistory. This crypto-experiment conducted by graduate courses at Temple University's Center for Public History and MLA Program, is exploring history and empowering education. Click here to learn more.
I'm a big fan of local oral history gathering projects. Throw in some alternative walking tours from locals and we can offer them for free and address two different proposals here.
But we need to be careful with our selections and not lean towards personal affinities. I think viability and scale are key factors. The Pennhurst Memorial seems the most suitable of this batch since the funds would go to one organization in a discreet amount that goes toward specific programs. The other suggestions, though noble, seem very daunting in scale. The oral history project amongst three different organizations is intriguing, how would 3,000 in Steem get that off the ground?
To follow up on my comment from the previous post, from the position of presenting the money and asking how these organizations would use it, I am most inclined to support the Free Walking Tours idea. Bob Skiba, with the William Way Community Center's John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives developed a walking tour to educate visitors on Philadelphia's LGBTQ+ history. I attended one of these in October 2016 and it was quite impressive. This past summer I heard that he was looking to fund additional walking tour programs along these lines and potentially bring in interns to lead these tours if he could find the funding. Perhaps that could be one way of funding a free walking tour and internship opportunity?
I also really like the idea of supporting a community-led oral history project with Art Sanctuary, Juntos and/or Asian Americans United. If this is something these organizations would want to tackle with these funds I think it would be an outstanding way of funding grassroots public history in Philadelphia. At the same time, it might also be worth asking what kinds of projects they would like to see done.
A paid walking tour internship would be awesome! Could we contact Bob Skiba about that? For the past couple of weeks I've been very team fund Art-Reach internships, but I'm open to other types of paid internships.
I also agree that the oral history project seems great, but we do need to avoid placing new programming obligations on organizations. I think that's why I'm so into the paid internships, because instead of creating new programming it would simply provide funding to something that's usually already in place in the form of an unpaid internship.
I proposed the tours to be created and disseminated to teachers (instead of led by paid guides) because of the cost of running a tour operation, but using interns might work. A few interns could develop the tours, then lead them for schools for free. They won't require the training and oversight needed for regular tour guides, and won't need to memorize scripts, as they did the research themselves. We'd have to keep the number of interns low to ensure they're adequately compensated, but I'm not sure how many it would take to meet the demand because I'm not sure how much demand there is.
Tours work best with groups of 20 or less; once you go above that it's hard to keep them together, you basically have to yell for anyone in the back to hear you, and you can't field as many questions. In my experience the schools bring anywhere from 50-100 students per tour, usually from the same grade, which would require up to 5 guides. I can't say for sure because I don't do the scheduling, but I think most of the schools I've dealt with are fairly small--smaller than Philadelphia schools at any rate. An entire grade wouldn't have to go on the same day, but with the number and size of Philadelphia schools 5 interns could easily be overwhelmed. I guess it just depends on how many schools have interest in taking the tours.
If the demand proves too much and using interns as guides is impractical, they could still be used to create and disseminate the tour materials. Or they could lead tours for teachers, then have the teachers give the tours to students. On the other hand, if they don't lead tours at all they might be able to create more tours overall to disseminate.
Since he already has experience creating a tour from the archives, I agree Bob Skiba is a good candidate to oversee the program.
Developing and giving tours would be great experience for the interns as well, as it develops their research and writing abilities as well as their interpretation and education abilities. It would prepare them for a variety of museum jobs, helping them break in to the sector.
Finally, the interns could post on Steem as they create their tours, generating funds for next year's interns and more tours.
The Pennhurst Memorial & Preservation Alliance’s Museum and Interpretive Center
Pros: The Pennhurst Memorial & Preservation Alliance would allow the donation to go towards a subject of history which is less covered. It would provide essential funds needed to create exhibits, and visits to the campus.
Con/Questions: Would are donation provide enough funds to help push this program forward, and cover all bases needed?
Walking Tours that are Free, Relevant and Engaging
Pros: By providing funds to this program, we would be helping teach history about Philadelphia including history after the colonial era. There have been many historical events after this period of time. I also think developing free/ or low-cost tours for students is a great idea. The concept of using are donations to further education is a great concept for us to pursue.
Con/Questions: How would we pursue this program? Would we pick one specific historical tour group to work with, or would we look at a collaborative approach? Also, if we provide the funds for this program, how would Philadelphia’s School District react to our program?
Invest in the Future of History
Pros: I think this program has a great concept. The idea of Temple teaming up with The Philadelphia History Museum would provide both parties with abundant resources, and talent. Each group has so much to offer the potential partner group. This program could also eventually expand to include other Universities.
Con/Questions: Would the Philadelphia History Museum be interested in pursing this relationship? If so, would we want to bring other Temple University Programs into the loop for are plan early on. Also, do we have any other potential museums, just in case the Philadelphia History Museum wasn’t interested?
Plan a New Museum for the “City Of Homes”
Pros: This project would provide funds to an area of Philadelphia history not covered very well. It would provide a look into the historic style row homes, which have housed diverse groups of people throughout many generations. This would provide a great opportunity for various historical groups to collaborate on a project.
Con/Questions: How would we pursue this project. Would there be a specific location predetermined that the New Museum location? Also what groups could provide essential help in creating this new museum?
A Community-Led Oral History Project
Pros: Collaboration between these groups three groups would be a great partnership. Reaching out to additional groups would also provide the potential for great progress in the future. The funds would help these diverse groups reach goals and create an amazing collaborative program.
Con/Questions: Would it be possible to include local youth programs into this process? It would be very interesting to see these groups collaborative work directly influencing the youths of these diverse communities.
I think this is a really good distillation of each proposals +/-. Thanks, @connellgregg!
Great follow up from yesterday's post. A big thanks to the @phillyhistory team for outlining the options, pros and cons to each. We're curious to hear the student views on each as they enter the final stretch of the semester!
3,000 Steem can and will go a long way to empower non-profits and community programs in Philadelphia. Bravo @phillyhistory!
I think the community-led oral history project is the most appealing of these strong proposals. It seems like oral history projects have the potential to make a long-lasting impact through collaboration. While a little more development or sharpening on exactly how a collaboration might look, a proposal to collaborate with any of the three mentioned organizations might yield a variety of new ideas.
Oral history seems to be a foundation of the cultural sector and it has enormous potential with the rich diversity of a city like Philadelphia and the growing consumption of audio sources, like podcasts, that work quite well with oral history. Because of this enormous potential, I endorse the idea of an oral history collaboration.
I also think this is an interesting idea, because it works within established organizations, but funds new directions that are really important. If we want to fund established organizations and these cultural initiatives are on board, the oral history project is the way to go!
I too think the oral history proposal would be a great project. As @hourofhistory stated, the oral histories lead to additional opportunities...perhaps a walking tour? I think we would want to grant the organizations and interviewers complete freedom in regards to how the histories are documented, but what if we expressed a desire to feature the final products in a walking tour for schools? Perhaps something like this walking tour that includes oral histories.
I really like the Row Home museum idea. The history of Philadelphia's row homes is definitely underrepresented in the Philadelphia history sector. I also think a row home museum would be very versatile and flexible--it could tell so many different untold stories, about so many different communities. It could tell the story of a neighborhood's change over time. It could talk about immigration or gentrification. And it wouldn't need to stick to one of those stories--exhibits could keep changing and rotating, bringing visitors back for the next untold story. The exhibits and their changes could be documented on Steemit, which could even be used in exhibit development for audience feedback. However, with all there is to like, I have many concerns.
First is the expense--we don't have the money to make a new museum, which I believe is why @tmaust suggested using it to fund the team that plans the creation of the museum. It would be sad if we spent the money, and the planning team ultimately failed. Also, we've raised the question of how many NPOs are too many in class several times, and adding a new one might just create more problems instead of helping revive the sector. I'm also concerned the museum format might not be the best way to reach the diverse and local audience we're seeking--although I may be wrong about that, and there are probably ways to address that issue that I haven't thought of. Finally, who will take this project? Most of our other projects have recipients with proven records of success; who will we find to create a house museum?
Thanks for your support, @engledd! This idea has been living in my head in various forms for a while and it's thrilling and terrifying (in equal measure) to get it out in the world. I am seriously considering embarking on this project myself in the next year.
However, I don't really think this project is very well suited for the scope of this particular funding source. To really embark on the #rowhomemuseum idea, I would need a lot of funding and probably some institutional support to make sure it doesn't all come to nothing (as you astutely observe is a possibility!).
What might be more possible is a smaller transfer of Steem capital to build the #rowhomemuseum plan out here on Steem with the aim of creating a viable plan for larger-scale funders (the IRL whales, if you will).
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very nice post
Nice your post
Pennhurst – Great idea! But they're still trying to get off the ground. Would the donation be enough? Would they have the requisite time/labor to invest in maintaining a Steemit account? Alternatively, because they're still developing, it might be easier for them to build Steemit into their infrastructure. (Note: the whole Board is white.)
Free walking tours – One can usually only take twenty kids (half of a class). Additionally, walking tours present a lot of problems for teachers who are already hard-pressed teaching to the test and negotiating issues of underfunding (e.g., lack of supplies, and art and music instruction). Also, I've often found walking tours to be ableist, failing take into account disabled people or people with physical difficulties.
Philadelphia History Museum – Negotiating a move to Temple from a historic site with the city government doesn't seem feasible given time and fiscal constraints.
City of Homes – $3000 wouldn't even begin to cover starting a whole new museum. And a planning committee shouldn't necessarily require payment. Regardless, there are already so many nonprofits doing good work struggling to maintain funding. Why add more competition?
Oral history collaboration – This idea is amorphous and would require a (volunteer) project leader to act as the go-between, organizer, and site host/maintainer. Might make a good student thesis project, but it's obviously much more constructive to simply allow these organizations to use the funds for general operating support and continue doing their great work.