Blog Archives
Urban League Grants for Senior Employment
Most cultural heritage organizations need more funding to accomplish more of the mission-essential work on their to-do lists. The Winston-Salem Urban League administers a grant program that has already helped several arts and humanities organizations in the Triad region and beyond build their capacities. By providing funds to hire older adults, this program offers sets of experienced helping hands to (often cash-strapped) nonprofits. The Arts Council of Winston-Salem and the Delta Fine Arts Center have both been beneficiaries of these grants. The Winston-Salem Urban League also operates a satellite office in Burke County and has extended its funding program to western NC counties. The History Museum of Burke County has taken advantage of this program for several years now with great success.
The Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP) assigns lower-income older adult workers to local nonprofit and government agencies and pays them minimum wage for 20 hours of work per week. Additional benefits to the employee include sustained independence and on-the-job training to enhance their opportunities in the local job market. Read more about the senior community service employment program here.
Why hire senior citizens when so many volunteers and board members are already part of that demographic—many serving on the front lines of visitor engagement like this docent at Tryon Palace (left)?
- Seniors’ life experiences can be wide ranging enough to allow them to think more comprehensively and creatively about the range of possibilities. Encore Awards honor great examples of community leadership among seniors and one recent recipient was a Baptist minister in Conetoe, NC. His story is inspiring and involves the kind of community engagement to which museums often aspire. By refocusing his congregation on healthful living and growing food, he has nurtured members’ physical and economic well-being, as well as spiritual.
- The Urban League senior employment grants target lower-income seniors as employees. This demographic focus may help bring diversity into the organization’s group of stakeholders, ultimately helping to construct new bridges to under-served segments of the community.
- For some, decreasing family responsibilities at this stage of life allow seniors more availability to work after regular office hours, at night and on weekends. This coverage can help relieve regular, full-time staff.
Ask yourself what jobs seniors could be good at in your organization; you’ll likely create a long list that the Urban League (or one of the additional 4 SCSEP partners across the state) could help with. Why not take advantage of this potential reservoir of helping hands?
Thanks to C2C workshop participant and History Museum of Burke County board member, Robert Paganuzzi, for this post idea.
Happy Holidays from Currituck to Cashiers (C2C)
Thanks to members of our cultural heritage community across the state for sharing these holiday photos. Our C2C team wishes you wonderful holidays and all the best in 2015!
A glimmering moon rises to brighten the dark solstice season sky behind the Currituck Beach Lighthouse. The Keeper’s House in the foreground is decked out in Christmas finery. The Murrayville Middle School Jazz Band provided holiday musical favorites at the Fort Fisher State Historic Site’s Holiday Open House.
Santa rides a tractor at the Sampson County History Museum in Clinton. Meanwhile, the Winborne Country Store in Murfreesboro showcases seasonal greenery and treats. A gingerbread house-making event delights visitors of all ages at the Rowan Museum in Salisbury.
The Transylvania Heritage Museum hosted a traveling exhibit of mid-20th-century aluminum Christmas trees, coordinated by The Aluminum Tree and Ornament Museum (ATOM). Visitors enjoyed the display from Saturday, November 29th until December 20th, when the museum closed for the season.
Beautiful decorations grace the dining table of the Lower Cape Fear Historical Society‘s Latimer House. Not to be outdone in the realm of fancy adornment, Tryon Palace focuses its annual decorating efforts on a specific theme. This year the peacock (right) was the inspriration.
Simpler ornaments predominate at humbler sites. For example, candlelight illuminates a spinning demonstration at the Joel Lane Museum House in Raleigh. Stockings hang from the parlor mantle at Historic Edenton’s Zeigler House.
A parade of Santa Clause figurines ushers in the season at the Caldwell Heritage Museum in Lenoir. A tall Christmas tree brightens the stairwell at the NC Museum of History in Raleigh.
Festive decorations surround the Fresnel lens at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras.
A crowd gathered around the pavilion on December 1st to sing carols at the Cashiers Historical Society‘s Lighting of the Town Tree in the Village Green. May your holidays be similarly filled with light, music, and many warm gatherings of friends and family.
NC Soda
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Have you ever wondered why the biggest carbonated beverage companies (Coke and Pepsi) originated in the South (Atlanta and New Bern, respectively)? In the years before air conditioning, the longer and hotter the summer months, the more customers might seek out variety in thirst quenching. Also, suffering through days of high heat and humidity can squelch appetites. Dyspepsia, something we’d call general indigestion today, was a common diagnosis in the 19th century. So it’s no accident that pharmacists, especially in the South, developed appealing concoctions, often with medicinal ingredients, to entice customers. In fact, the name “Pepsi” came from pepsin, a digestive enzyme that was a primary ingredient in the New Bern-originated drink.
What do North Carolinians call carbonated beverages like Pepsi? There’s no consistent answer, although this study of over 5,000 people found that the majority of North Carolinians ask for “soda,” with the brand name “coke” used generically as a close second, followed by “soft drink.” Pepsi did not start out as a soft drink, since alcohol was another ingredient in its 1893 drug store recipe.
Prohibition, which North Carolina adopted in 1908, forced alcohol out of legally sold carbonated beverages and meanwhile encouraged the development of new varieties. Pepsi became the most internationally renowned soft drink with origins in North Carolina, but several others came along in the early and mid 20th century and garnered loyal consumers—even fans.
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Created in 1917 in an empty whisky distillery in Salibury, Cheerwine’s name and redwine color nodded deliberately at the new alcohol restrictions. The Carolina Beverage Corporation, still based in Salisbury, is the oldest soft-drink purveyor continuously in the hands of the same owners—the Ritchie family. Distribution of the drink has expanded greatly over the past several decades, beyond western North Carolina and into 12 states. Cheerwine now boasts something of a cult following.
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Similarly named, the Bludwine Bottling Company also began in 1917 as an independent soft drink bottler on Main Street in Gastonia. Decades later, in 1953 the proprietor developed Sun Drop. The brand’s official relationship with NASCAR boosted sales throughout the greater Charlotte region and beyond. The Gaston County Museum showcases more artifacts and details about Sun Drop here.
Does your institution contain soda bottles or related artifacts in its collection? We have started supplying Cheerwine for our workshops and found it to be the most popular canned drink among C2C participants. What brands are most popular with your community?
Historic Structures: Sustainability, Revenue, and Access
A build-it-and-they-will-come, once-around-and-done tour model is not sustainable for all but a very few historic sites. The Biltmore is probably the most successful example of this approach in NC, and at $44 – $59 a ticket, the historic site sustains itself. According to National Trust for Historic Preservation President, Stephanie Meeks, house museums in 2002 incurred an average cost of $40 per visitor, while receiving (on average) $8 per visitor in revenue. In this opinion piece, Meeks profiled Tryon Palace as a good example of “re-programming for mission-related use” with its new visitor center and in particular, the Pepsi Family Center.
Other analysts of the historic house dilemma, however, warn against building visitors’ centers. The large capital campaigns necessary for these projects often overreach the organization’s capacity for revenue generation and fail to bring about long-term increases in visitation. Tryon Palace itself, despite its creative and high-tech method to engage children with the past, has struggled to sustain itself in the wake of its new visitor center and the gradual withdrawal of state funding. Ticket prices have increased to $20/10 for a day pass and $12/6 for a limited ticket that allows families into the history center alone (not the Palace). Consequently, even though the new Pepsi Center may attract newer, younger audiences, its cost to visitors limits outreach potential.
In 2007 AASLH published Donna Harris’ book New Solutions for House Museums. That same year the Kykuit II Summit on the “Sustainability of Historic Sites” echoed Harris by urging struggling non-profit groups, in charge of house museums and other types of historic sites, to consider shutting down their “velvet rope tours” and returning their properties to private ownership. The selling process, which can include protective easements, can relieve the organizations’ burdens while committing new owners (often wealthy) to historic preservation. Such solutions may have the positive effect of shrinking the stock of barely functioning historic sites and promoting the integration of preservation more fully into business ventures, but perhaps an unintended consequence is limiting access to those who can and will pay large sums of money for preservation and historical experiences.
An interesting NC example of historic preservation combined with “impact investment” is the Frying Pan Tower, 34 miles off the coast near Southport. A decommissioned lighthouse, the tower is now an immersive historic experience, a unique bed and breakfast run by a Charlotte proprietor. However, costs are $498/ person / weekend (2 nights). This does not include transportation from shore points—either by boat ($333+ roundtrip) or helicopter ($950 roundtrip). Such costs exclude a huge portion of the attraction’s potential audience.
image credit: Joe Standaert, SVM Facebook Page
The Swannanoa Valley Museum also provides immersive experiences as a way to generate revenue for the institution, but it provides a loophole in participant costs to allow access to interested community members who would otherwise not be able to afford the activity. By coordinating extensive hikes (each costs $25 for members and $45 for non-members), the museum accrues half its annual budget. This kind of outreach into the community and broadening of interpretation beyond the museum’s walls is a creative way to help sustain the institution. Even more unique is the opportunity to apply for a scholarship that includes an annual family membership and 11 hikes. This opens up a fairly expensive experience to families of limited means.
What revenue-generating enterprises has your institution tried? Which have been successful?
Thanks to David Winslow for his insights into this topic.
Tick Tock: The Old Year Passes
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Clocks may be becoming antiquated artifacts in our current digital age, but New Year’s Eve continues to lend them special significance each year. Clocks also comprise important elements in the collections of historic houses and museums across the state. This mantle clock from the Reynolda House Museum of American Art in Winston-Salem features Roman-style satyrs flanking the clock’s marble face and suggesting the revelry of a New Year’s celebration. The following sampling of clocks from a variety of North Carolina collections offers a range of design and provenance.
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Two clocks from different NC Historic Sites span nearly a century. The museum at Duke Homestead displays the clock on the left as part of a 1950s period room setting with a television that loops cigarette advertisements. Governor Charles B. Aycock marked time with the shelf clock on the right, c. 1861-1880. The piece is now in the exhibit hall at Aycock Birthplace.
The BradyJefcoatMuseum, part of the Murfreesboro Historical Association, houses an interesting piece (right) that multitasks as both a hall tree and a clock.
A tall case clock marks time in the foyer at Ayr Mount (left). Thomas Emond, a Raleigh clock maker and silversmith, made this piece for William Boylan of Raleigh in the early 19th century.
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The NC Museum of History‘s collection also reflects a century of clock evolution and innovation. By the mid-19th century, Northeastern factories produced most clocks. In contrast,this shelf clock dates 1845-1860 and was made in a North Carolina factory, although the factory’s name nods to the more prevalent Connecticut clock-maker. The label inside reads, “BRASS CLOCKS/ Made and Sold at the/ WATERBURY FACTORY,/ North Carolina,/ for/ Wright & Co./ Warranted, if well used.”
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An electric clock radio, also in the NCMOH collection, dates to c. 1950.
The Moore County Historical Association displays two similar mid-19th-century shelf clocks. The one in the c. 1790s Garner House (left) sits atop a paneled hearth and the other in the 1820s Shaw House (right) also rests on a mantle.
A small clock helped structure the day and added charm to the 1930s kitchen wall at the Penderlea Homestead.
Two more mantle clocks grace the 1820 Dr. Josephus Hall House in Salisbury. Both have well preserved reverse-glass paintings. The clock above with turned elements has a landscape scene and the one on the right includes a more geometric gilt design. Decorations for special holiday tours with the theme “Toyland, Toyland,” surround each.
More than 10 volunteers spent over a thousand hours restoring the 1911 Seth Thomas clock from the New Bern City Hall tower. The Fireman’s Museum, just down the street from the site the clock operated until 1999, hosted the work in progress. The clock was installed in the North Carolina History Center at Tryon Palace in 2010–in time for New Bern’s 300th anniversary celebration.
The turning of every year warrants some kind of festivity. Have fun counting down the last moments of 2013 and HAPPY NEW YEAR from NC Connecting to Collections!
Fire Safety Tips
State Fire Marshal Wayne Goodwin and Havelock chimney sweep Bob Priesing visited the colonial kitchen fireplace at Tryon Palace as part of National Fire Prevention Week.
From C2C’s Disaster Preparedness Coordinator, Matt Hunt, who is a trained fire engineer and firefighter for the city of Asheboro:
When was the last time you checked your smoke detectors, conducted a fire drill, or checked your fire extinguishers? This week marks the 140th anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire and the birth of Fire Prevention in our country. Each year school-aged children all over the United States spend a week learning the important lessons of stop, drop, and roll and basic fire and life safety. But how much time since elementary school have you (as an adult) spent thinking about your safety and the safety of your institution?
Last year in the United States, of the 1.3 million fires reported, 482,000 of these were in occupied structures–both businesses and residential homes. If you do the math, you can calculate that every 65 seconds a fire is reported in a structure. It’s a scary figure when you stop and think about it, but it’s better than what we were seeing 25 years ago, when the national average was about every 18 seconds!
We can credit this change to better fire and life safety education as well as stricter building codes and better inspection processes. Many times I hear how people dread the annual inspection of their cultural institution by their local fire marshal’s office. These yearly inspections are not being done to hinder our business or be personal burdens for us to deal with, but more to help keep the number of fires down in our country and to protect our lives and property.
Take a few minutes over the next few days to conduct a fire safety drill, check your smoke detectors, or even review with staff the proper use of a fire extinguisher.
Fire Safety Drill
Plan Ahead! If a fire breaks out in your home, or business you may have only a few minutes to get out safely once the smoke alarm sounds. Everyone needs to know what to do and where to go if there is a fire.
- Make an escape plan. Draw a map of your institution showing all doors and windows. Discuss the plan with everyone on your staff.
- Know at least two ways out of every room, if possible. Make sure all doors and windows leading outside open easily.
- Have an outside meeting place (like a tree, light pole or mailbox) a safe distance from the building where everyone should meet.
- Close doors behind you as you leave. (This can slow the spread of fire)
Check Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Detectors
Smoke alarms are an important part of a any fire escape plan. When there is a fire, smoke spreads fast. Working smoke alarms give you early warning so you can get outside quickly.
Most institutions will have a commercial system that is monitored and inspected annually by the company that installed it. However, many of our institutions rely on standard home models for alerting staff to smoke or fire.
If you are using a non-commercial system you should do the following:
- Install smoke alarms inside every room, and on every level of the building, including the basement.
- For the best protection, interconnect all smoke alarms so when one sounds they all sound.
- An ionization smoke alarm is generally more responsive to flaming fires and a photoelectric smoke alarm is generally more responsive to smoldering fires. For the best protection, both types of alarms or a combination alarm (photoelectric and ionization) are recommended.
- Replace all smoke alarms when they are 10 years old or sooner if they do not respond properly when tested.
Fire Extinguisher Use
Fire extinguishers are an essential tool in your escape plan. Remember that their purpose is not to extinguish a large fire or for you to go back into a burning building. They are designed to take care of smaller fires or to help you escape.
Never place yourself in danger. Always be near an exit and ready to escape if need be.
Remember the simple steps in using the extinguisher are P-A-S-S.
- PULL – Pull the safety pin out of the extinguisher
- AIM – Aim the nozzle towards the base of the fire
- Squeeze – Squeeze the handle on the extinguisher
- Sweep – Sweep the hose back and forth covering the fire
Another important thing to remember is to always use the correct extinguisher on the fire. Each extinguisher should have a label marking what it is good for. Take a few minutes this week to review your extinguishers with your staff and review their proper use.
Let’s work together to make fire safety our number one concern this year!
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