Heritage Tourism Workshop Program 2: Telling Your Story: Interpretive Planning and Inclusive Narratives

This seven-part professional development series equips historic site stewards, preservation professionals, municipal leaders, and community advocates with practical tools to strengthen heritage tourism, enhance visitor experiences, and promote sustainable preservation. Through expert-led workshops, participants will explore topics including heritage tourism planning, inclusive storytelling, emerging technologies, site readiness, regional collaboration, marketing strategies, and sustainable operations.

Designed to support New Jersey’s historic sites and cultural resources, the series highlights innovative approaches to interpretation, public engagement, and community-based tourism while preparing organizations to leverage opportunities associated with America’s 250th commemoration and beyond. Participants will gain actionable strategies to increase visitation, foster economic development, build community partnerships, and ensure the long-term stewardship of historic places.

By bringing together leaders from across the preservation, tourism, and cultural sectors, this program creates a collaborative learning environment that strengthens connections between historic sites, local communities, and visitors while advancing the preservation of New Jersey’s rich and diverse heritage.

Program 2: Telling Your Story: Interpretive Planning and Inclusive Narratives

Speaker/Program Moderator: Jessica Bush. Director of the Charles J. Muth Museum at Hinchliffe Stadium, and Dr. Lucia McMahon

Session Description:
This workshop focuses on designing compelling and inclusive interpretation that engages diverse audiences. Participants will explore techniques for connecting local histories to broader state and national narratives, including America’s 250th, and for creating exhibits, tours, and storytelling approaches that reflect authentic and representative perspectives.

How and why do we collect objects, either in cultural institutions or in our own lives? What types of meaning, memory, and memorialization are embedded in objects and artifacts? How can the study of material culture provide fresh insights into our understandings of collective memory and historical narratives?

This workshop will guide participants in the skills and processes of collecting, curating, and interpreting material culture. We will lead participants through a collaborative object analysis and material culture workshop, discussing what typically gets collected in cultural institutions versus personal collections. We will examine various artwork and artifacts typically found in museum collections, as well as “everyday” objects, to guide participants in how we can use objects to speak to each other to create/curate narratives, stories, and exhibitions.

This interactive workshop will begin by providing hands-on training in how to analyze individual objects and artwork to uncover descriptive details, stories, and connections.  The workshop will put into practice the interpretative power of objects to tell compelling and inclusive stories about the past and present. The workshop facilitators will highlight significant art and/or artifacts from local collecting institutions to discuss how “witnessing objects” transform from everyday objects into historical artifacts when they are infused with historically significant value and importance.

 Learning Objectives:

• Develop interpretive plans that tell inclusive, accurate, and engaging stories.
• Connect local histories to statewide and national narratives.
• Enhance visitor engagement through storytelling and interactive interpretation.

Target Audience: Interpretive Planners, Museum Educators, Historic Site Staff, Heritage Tourism Professionals

This program is sponsored in part by a grant from the New Jersey Historic Trust.