I came across this posting on AASLH Award Winner Gore Place’s Facebook wall the other day and thought, what a perfect way to engage people during the winter season outside of holiday-interpretation programming.
I poked around a little more on Gore Place’s Facebook page and website. Gore Place has a huge lawn and they get snow every year. In a way, they allow visitors to use the grounds as a Winter Wonderland. On weekends you can see families playing in the snow and the grounds are littered with snowman.
This is a great example of allowing your site to be a Third Place, the place after Home and Work where people socialize with the community. It’s a great, easy activity that allows people to have fun on the weekend. Most important, it creates lasting memories that lead to word-of-mouth advertising, which is still the number one reason people visit and become members of museums and history organizations.
If you have snow every year, use winter weather to your advantage and allow your visitors to play in your front yard.
Rebecca Price is Director of Membership Development, Marketing, and Communications at AASLH
