Conference Planning

This page is for planners for the Living History Reenactors Conference that takes place in the Intermountain region each year, brought to you by the Intermountain Living History Consortium that includes the American West Heritage Center, This Is The Place Heritage Park, and the Oregon Trail Center. Expected participants for 2008 include Golden Spike National Monument and, hopefully, others.

The second conference will be held Mar. 7-8, 2008 at the American West Heritage Center in Wellsville, 10 min. from Logan and 20 min. from Brigham City (80 miles from Salt Lake City). Since so many families like to do living history reenactment, we're making sure this will be a family event! We're keeping prices low to so families can afford to come and have a great time.

COST: (Many folks indicated that $5 was way underpriced, especially since it includes meals. I recommend raising the price to $10/person and $35/Family—still an AMAZING deal, and will allow us to be more financially)

Schedule

March 7

Dinner, dance and storytelling was a bit much. It would have been fine with dinner and dance.
Can we possibly have our own folks call the dances—who would like to learn to call dances? I can call two dances now, and others may want to learn how (—DS).
The simple dinner was terrific. Soup, as long as it's good, was just right for a light dinner.

March 10

• The sessions for adults and kids was great.
• Many attendees would like more specific training for their sites. I recommend more sessions that cater to fewer folks next year. Specifically, I recommend:
  • "Pioneer Basics"—learn the basics of pioneer interpretation (two hour session)
  • "Mountain Man/Fur Trade Basics" —learn the basics of the fur trade (two hour session)
  • Keep one session per break-out still oriented toward general public skills and interpretation
  • Keep one session per break-out kid oriented
• Advanced and More Specific Session Ideas:
  • "Beginning teamster driving skills" How to hook up and drive a wagon (only beginner/advanced because many hours must be accrued before one is safe to do this for the public.
  • "Soap Making"
  • "Dutch Oven Cooking"
  • "Pioneer Bread-making"
  • "Spinning basics"
  • "Finding your Fashion" —workshop on finding and making historically accurate clothing
  • "Advanced pattern making" —workshop on actually making patterns based on paintings and photographs
  • "Modern Photography Skills of Historical Subjects" —digital photography workshop, but using historical subjects; how photos can be created and used for marketing, record-keeping, and other uses.
  • "The Pioneer Herbalist" —native plants and how pioneers used them.
  • "Pioneer Blacksmithing"
  • "Engaging Children with Historic Interpretation"
  • "Using Nature and Nature Activities in Historic Interpretation"
  • "The Seven Rules of Interpretation"
  • "Dealing with Bus Tours and Tour Groups—An Idea-Sharing Session"
  • "Dealing with Large School Groups—An Idea-Sharing Session"
  • "Geurilla Marketing Techniques for Living History Sites"'
• So each session break-out might have five sessions:
  • One "Basics" session (i.e. "Pioneer Basics")
  • One kid-oriented session (i.e. "Pioneer Games and how to get visitors to play with you")
  • One Advanced or specific session ("Soap-Making")
  • One session devoted to effective historical interpretation ("Using Nature and Nature Activities in Historic Interpretation")
  • You might even include an all day workshop, such as the team-driving one)

Responsibilities

Site host: American West Heritage Center. This includes coordinating meals, collecting lodging information, registration, etc. Lots of work, David!

Workshops:
Each site should be responsible for bringing 2-3 workshops. The "Basic ___" workshops should be done in partnership with each relevant site. So This Is The Place, AWHC and National Oregon Trail Center should assign specialists to a team that would come up with the basic workshop about Pioneers, for instance.

General Marketing: AWHC

Questions & Concerns:

Budget for Conference

Each participating entity should commit to helping to fund the conference. If we keep good records, we can adjust each site's revenue participation based on conference attendance.

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Ideas For 2008

• Look for grant money to bring in nationally recognized specialists (UHC mini-grant?).
• Hold a mini-rendezvous time when folks can trade, buy and sell goods with each other.
• Actively seek vendors to help assuage costs.
• Have an online registration form! If possible, include a secure way to transmit Credit Card or Paypal information.
• Can local volunteers act as overnight hosts to visiting attendees?
• Have a few sessions friday evening—or make the evening dinner a session—attendees would MAKE dinner as part of the workshop
• Would a local tour of historic sites be feasible? (perhaps for an extra charge so we could rent a van)
• At AWHC, we're hoping to make this conference a large portion of our training, so we'll be sending our new volunteers to the "Basics" sessions.