MODEL PROBLEM SOLVING: EVALUATING
THE PROBLEM AND DRAFTING A PLAN

1: FRIENDS OF ARROW ROCK — "NO MORE MAUSOLEUMS"
2: BLACK WORLD HISTORY MUSEUM — A TOO SMALL COLLECTION

 

PROBLEM 1: "NO MORE MAUSOLEUMS"

"In so many ways Arrow Rock is a stage that is set, with stories that have all the excitement and drama anyone could want, just waiting to be told!"

— Kathy Borgman, Executive Director, Friends of Arrow Rock

The Friends of Arrow Rock, located in rural Arrow Rock, Missouri, began first as a support organization to Arrow Rock State Historic Site. Since its inception, however, it has branched out and taken on its own preservation projects. Currently, the Friends of Arrow Rock owns and maintains twelve historic structures in the village of Arrow Rock.

The village of Arrow Rock had been steadily offering more to visitors by expanding its visitor services, but the Friends of Arrow Rock were having difficulty attracting "repeat visitors." In addition, the Friends were challenged by finding new ways to get its visitors to interact with the buildings and understand their historical context. Although the Friends of Arrow Rock had been conducting tours of its historic buildings for most of its 41 years, sporadic visitor attendance and the need for a tour that was more "alive" prompted the Friends to search for new ways to present their structures to the public.

As Executive Director Borgman stated in a newspaper article, "We [had] offered tours for a long time. They [had] been good informational tours, but we [were] looking for something with more pizzazz, that [would] appeal more to the casual visitor." In short, the Friends of Arrow Rock needed to figure out a way "to fully utilize the buildings [they had] worked so hard to preserve" and to "get the public inside [their] properties."

Essentially, as the Friends of Arrow Rock evaluated its exhibit and presentation, it realized that: 1) The touring program is an essential component to exhibiting its well-preserved structures; and 2) That form of interpretation, the guided walking tour, had changed very little since its inception "well over 25 years ago."

So, on November 11 and 12 of 1999, the Friends of Arrow Rock participated in a Missouri Humanities Council charette to address the problem of low public interest in their walking tours. Consultants who participated in the charette included: Michael Bouman, Executive Director of the Missouri Humanities Council; Alicia Cole of the Shoal Creek Living History Museum in Kansas City; Gary Kremer, Missouri historian; and Tim Bauman of the University of Missouri-Saint Louis Department of Anthropology, who had done archeological work on Arrow Rock's Black Masonic Lodge.

As Michael Bouman reported, members of the Friends of Arrow Rock staff first took the charette's participants on a guided walking tour of their structures. Consultants noted how long the tour took and what was contained inside each of the structures. Additionally, the participants visited the State of Missouri's interpretation center to analyze what, if anything, presented in the center would prompt a visitor to inquire about a Friends of Arrow Rock walking tour.

In taking the tour and visiting the State's interpretative center, Mr. Bouman reported that the consultants were struck by three main factors: 1) While the town of Arrow Rock offered itself as a beautiful setting, the Friends were not exploiting the town's resources to the fullest; 2) Extensive text panels within the historic structures, such as those housed in the Sappington House, offered a wealth of untapped stories about the human experience and the personalities of the historic figures who were once part of Arrow Rock's past; 3) The Friends of Arrow Rock seemed to be taking the river and the fertility of the land for granted.

In problem-solving, then, charette participants recommended that the Friends of Arrow Rock communicate the story of the people who were once there and explain the experience of Arrow Rock's past: what was it really like to be back in Arrow Rock when the town was larger and all of the structures were in use? Further, participants recommended that the Friends communicate these stories through the speech of characters portrayed in costume. With the Lyceum Theatre located in the town of Arrow Rock itself, charette consultants pointed out the proximity of resources to help the Friends implement these ideas.

Additionally, Alicia Cole, as an expert in presenting living history, talked to the Friends of Arrow Rock about how people who were homeschoolers might help the institution as members of a volunteer core. Gary Kremer introduced the potential of pursuing the area's rich African-American past. In short, as Michael Bouman summed up, the consultants "thought that Arrow Rock was blessed with a whole array of positive attributes that would solve the problem of an uninterested walking tour." The Friends of Arrow Rock was, then, left with the challenge of changing its methodology to exploit its resources and explore new avenues of making its historical structures "come alive."