stories in education

Workshops

Workshops for Natural and Historic Interpreters

A Palette of Possibilities

This workshop strives to open up the gates of new interpretive possibilities that could be accessed by staff from a broad range of backgrounds.   The focal question is: How can you shape your tours so that your visitors have a personal relationship with the characters, episodes, artifacts, and environment that you are sharing?

 -Warm-up Exercise:    Activate the body, mind, and imagination

1. Creating an Investment: Participants will learn to pose questions to visitors of various backgrounds and interests that will enable them to draw upon their own experiences in relating to the history and environment of the park site.

2.Guided Imagery: Drawing visitors into the world of your site via sensory and emotional identification, participants will experience the power and possibilities of guided imagery. This technique can waken peoples’ hearts and imaginations to places and issues that only their intellects had previously contemplated.

3. Enlivening Artifacts: There are two ways to approach an artifact or natural resident of an environment.   You can tell the story of where it came from and how it got to be ‘here.’ These are often quite interesting, tracing the roots of people, movements, and our natural resources.   There is another possibility.   You can imagine telling an objects story from it’s vantage point!    (3-4 hours)

Creating Original Tales   

Creating original stories based on authentic fact allows the interpreter to integrate their knowledge and objectives into an ancient art form that speaks to the hearts and minds of visitors.   History books tell us the   ‘who’ ‘what’ ‘where’ and ‘when’ of an event, place, or era.   They often venture a political, economic, social, or philosophical answer to the question ‘why.’   What they almost never include are the details that makes a piece of history into a story.   That is the human ‘why’ and the idiosyncratic human details that elevate an episode from text into the imagination.   In this workshop participants will learn how to use historic episodes, era information, characters, and natural environments to weave vital human stories.  

I can model this with brevity. (2 hours)

Creating a model stories from your site.   (3 hours)

Interpreters culling and creating original tales for their sites. (1-2 days)