November: Moving Forward - Celebrating and Developing Your Event

Following the evaluation of your participation and encouraged by your success, you will be ready to prepare next year’s event. You may have identified some areas where you can do things differently or better. How will you sustain the interest in your building or programme in the future? Perhaps you have been running HODs for some years and feel it has come to a dead end?

Malcolm Cowan from the Welwyn Garden City Society, describes the dilemma most repeat organisers face at some point: “One of the problems of running HODs every year is that visitors want something new. First year, they visit. Next year, they bring friends or relatives. Third year, they may not come any more.”

How can you keep your event fresh so that in the long-term, visitors keep coming, your enthusiasm doesn’t dissipate and the media remain interested?

To start with, why not go back to some of the previous chapters. There may well be some ideas that you can pick up from other organisers and which could inject new life into your event.

• Partnerships: Why not contact another organisation and invite them to develop something jointly with you? They can add new ideas, perspecitives, skills, resources and audiences.
• Interpretation: Can you renew the interpretation of your property and explore new angles and stories? Are there anniversaries your event can tie in with?
• Audiences: Which audience groups in your community are missing? Maybe you can design special activities that will attract families, people from different cultural backgrounds or people with special needs.
• Sponsorship/Fundraising: Having started small, you may want to grow bigger and become more ambitious. Perhaps you’d like to run an education project, cevelop a trail that links different buildings or faith groups, or you might want to work with a consultant to interpret your building or engage different audience groups. For this you are likely to need additional funding. there are sponsors and grants out there that can help you realise your plans.
• Volunteers: Has it been the same group of people that have been organising your HODs event for years? Would your organisation benefit from some fresh blood? You could combine you event with a volunteer programme that will attract people with specific skills, from different backgrounds and age groups. Remember that volunteering is a relationship of mutual benefit and you have a lot to offer.
• Marketing & PR: Increase your visibility by using banners or put up an information stall at a central location (e.g. market square, railway station, shopping centre) in your town. You can turn your town, village, area into a true destination and give your event some added value by involving restaurants or transport companies in your programme.
• Media: Why not run a media campaign some months before HODs to engage your community in identifying their favourite hidden places and histories they wish to share?

But whatever the right solution for you might be, it makes sense to develop a strategy that maps out how your event can evolve from year to year.

In this season of misty days and long dark nights, it’s certainly the right time for bright ideas.

Case Studies

An Alternative Take: Taking it in Turns

“Organising HODs every year is quite hard work, you can easily start the work in January, and complete in September. So I thought, how about sharing it around the district? With two towns and several large villages, there should be enough resources for a rotating participation. Another factor was to try and show the district council that it wasn’t just one part of their patch hogging the grant. It isn’t yet a proper rotation though - the other town (Hatfield) takes part, and we make sure we don’t clash. I wanted a three-year rotation however, but I haven’t got a third partner yet.
I hope that sharing the event round helps build awareness accross the patch, although I don’t have any information to prove or disprove this.” Malcolm Cowan, Welwyn Garden City Society

Thematic Approaches

“We introduced themes to renew our event some five years ago. The themes so far have been: “War and Peace","All Change","People and Places","Sticks and Stones” (which looked at the building materials and their influence on the architecture of the district) and “Civic Price”. Offering a new angle of interpretation, these themes don’t necessarily exclude different building types from participation.” Rod Shaw, Mole Valley Distirct Council, Surrey

More Thematic Approaches

“We choose a differnt theme each year to bring variety to the programme of events and to involve event organisers from a number of different disiplines. Each year we aim for around 60% of the events in the theme. The theme for Lincolnshire Heritage Open Days 2007 was “New Frontiers - Lincolnshire pioneers and explorers.” In 2006 it was “Homes and Families” and in 2005 “Transport in Lincolnshire.”
The themes are actually agreed a couple years in advance. In 2008 the theme will be “Lincolnshire at Play” and in 2009 it will be based on literature, poetry and theatre to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Tennyson’s birth.” Sandra Kelley, Heritage Trust of Lincolnshire

From a Faith Trail to a Community Festival

“The Bradford Trident Faith Forum began opening their buildings for HODs in 2004. In the first and second years two mosques, a Sikh gurdwara, a Hindu teple, a Catholic church and a Moravian church, all located in the BD5 area of Bradford, took part. The first year was very successful with fantastic visitor numbers bolstered by excellent press coverage. In 2005 visitor numbers started to drop by the end of 2006 no-one wished to participate in following year.
English heritage Outreach and Bradford Trident (New Deal for Communities) came to an agreement to offer the Faith Forum funding to revitalise the event and encourage people to continue to take part. The idea was to bring all the different faith communities in the area together in a day of celebration of their different, and shared, cultural heritages.
With the help of local freelander a programme of music, dance and workshops was put together that reflected as many of the different cultures as possible. All the performances and activities on the day were hosted by local people. Representatives from the different faith buildings attended the day with their displays and talked to people about their buildings and the activities that went on inside them. We also had a 1940’s merry go round and food from around the world.” Hellen Keighley, English heritage Outreach Manager for Yorkshire & Humber