Getting Out with Visitor: Information?
This June, after months of planning and preparation, my Humanities Truck project, Visitor: Information? was ready to go. With the help of the Humanities Truck graduate fellows and graduate students from the Public History program, and the Heurich House Museum, where I held a concurrent fellowship as Scholar-In-Residence, I did a few pop-up events to gather questions and messages from Washingtonians to visitors to the city. The questions and messages themselves were fascinating, and often quite touching! While more than one person cautioned visitors about standing on the wrong side of the escalator, or invited them to go beyond the Mall, others wrote out detailed agendas of their favorite places, or posed thoughtful questions.
From our Heurich House pop-ups!
It was now time to design the Truck installation. After months of gathering materials, and working with source images, I devised a modular design that, with the help of Inaya, Daiki, and the Truck’s strongly magnetic surface, I was able to quickly get on and off the Truck.
I had scouted out some spots near hotels downtown and on Capitol Hill, but because the NATO Conference was scheduled at the same time as our events, we ended up going somewhere closer to home: outside the National Zoo. We reasoned that since this was the only tourist attraction in the area, people might be willing to stop and talk to us either before or after their visit.
It was a humid D.C. summer week, and even though we were in a shady spot, tourists were trying to minimize their time outdoors. They rushed by us, on our way to or from the Zoo, and did not stop to talk. Interestingly, almost everyone who we chatted with was a local—they were both interested in—and very excited about—what we were doing.
In hindsight, we probably would have done better on a cooler day. It might have been useful to offer a souvenir. I had assumed that the installation, with its talkback boards, would be enough buy-in to get people to stop for a minute, but next time, we might try to bring one of the Truck’s button makers. Public programming is always an iterative process, and this was no different—it’s a lesson we talk about in the classroom, and it was a useful reminder to experience it firsthand.
Finally, I do wonder if the hotel areas downtown would have been more fruitful. Originally, I had been hoping to time the events for 5pm—sometime between sightseeing and dinner. But the rush hour parking laws make that pretty difficult—I think I would have to find a private parking area that’s still street-proximate. Looking ahead, I hope to take the Truck out again, with some of these adjustments.
All in all, this has been an enormously fruitful and generative experience. It was fun to practice a different kind of creative activity, and especially, to talk to people about my research. In thinking through the project and its outcomes, I’ve had some useful new perspectives for my ongoing research. Above all, the Humanities Truck fellowship helped reinforce for me the importance of publicly-engaged scholarship, and I’m extremely grateful to have had this opportunity.
