Strawbery Banke

Mommy, Jamesy, Joelly day this week was spent doing a little recon for Mommy's work (sssh! don't tell) and we visited Strawbery Banke.

For the readers who do not know, I recently became the Executive Director of a struggling history museum near my house.  The museum has been operating for many years on a 90-minute guided tour principle.  It is also popular for its one event a year, a Festival - in which re-enactors, role players, artisans recreate the Revolutionary War period.  There is no way it would continue to survive doing the same old.  It has an amazing collection, two awesome buildings and tourists who come from all over the globe.  Yet, people who live down the street do not know it exists, and we see .0001% of New Hampshire's school children.  Clearly my job is to change this.

So, I have been visiting other history museums, living history places, botanical gardens and more to see what they are doing, and the answer is - much, much more.  Historic House museums are popular in New England but they will never be massive destination places.  History museums where history comes alive, draws people in - of all ages, and keeps them coming back.  We get just as many people to our Festival in one day as we get at the museum year round - so my goal is to put a little bit of the Festival into each daily experience at the museum.  The only problem with this - is are we saturating the market?  Look at Strawbery Banke just down the road... So, I did, I took the boys.

You can't bring a 2 and a 4 year old to my museum.  As much as I like to promote our "Junior Curator" program, there is just no way James could go.  He has been twice and I have swept him out as quickly as he came in.  They came to my Festival, and they stayed for two hours.  They ate, they saw me shoot a cannon, they could have played games and seen the artisans do different things.  Again, I want to bring a little of that to our museum every day.  (Full Disclosure, we have to go through a major strategic planning process - we hired an outside firm so we will see what the end result is, but you can see my bias up front now).

Anyway, my major concern was: "What's the point of us trying to make all these changes to be a more welcoming site for all, when someone up the road offers the same thing?"  After my visit to Strawbery Banke on Monday - I am not concerned at all.  I am relieved.  There are two things at play here - one of which is that Strawbery Banke offers something totally different, multiple time periods, lots of different interpretations, but the general feel of an older village with lots of opportunity to learn how people lived through the ages.  My museum - all Revolution all the time.  We are a - learn about the founding of our country - place.  How people lived during the most trying times.  And, there are lots of ways for kids to learn hands on about this too.  The second thing is - the more people go to places, they more they go to places - so we can continue to exist and be together, and encourage more people to get out and go and visit other history museums. 2026 will be the 250th anniversary of 1776...  And you better believe whether you like or not there will be a lot of hype about that...  so I hope we can be involved!

At Strawbery Banke there are a ton of opportunities for the kids. They have one of their entire houses dedicated to kids learning, with a kitchen, store and all sorts of old fashioned toys from a jack in the box (James' favorite) to lincoln logs.  The creame della creame was the boat in the backyard of this house that the boys played in for what seemed like hours.  They just want a place to go to pretend and play and see new.  I just want to get out of the house, and see new.  It was a win win for all.

We had a nice picnic lunch outside, and enjoyed the day.  Sure, when we went into the hearth cooking demonstration all of the older people in the room wanted me and my kids out pronto, and it was too small for us to really go in and learn...  same with the weaver room as well.  But still, the boys had a great time and so did I.

Excited for the future, and making my museum a place the boys will always, really want to go!  Wish me luck.