Korea Trip and JV book may be published in Italy!

Hi folks. I have been contacted by Marta Brunelli PhD, Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Educazione e della Formazione Università degli Studi di Macerata, in Italy about publishing my text book "Interpretive Master Planning" in Italian! As you may know, the book was just published in Chinese last year. Besides being a real honor, it is nice to know that our successful interpretive planning strategies are being used in other countries and by other interpreters. I will keep you posted as this project moves along. Getting ready for my Korea trip on Saturday. We will be looking at interpretive planning for outdoor exhibits and demonstrations for the Mountain Sanctuary and Climate Change Center project. The photo is of a planning review at the Mountain Sanctuary site last month reviewing the draft development plans.

Korea and California

Hi folks,

Enjoying a quiet day off (Presidents day). On Saturday I head back to Korea for a week to work on the planning for the Mountain Sanctuary and Climate Change Center, then home for a day and off to CA. JVA was awarded a contract to develop a Interpretive Systems Plan for the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District's . Details are available at my web site: http://www.heritageinterp.com. More from Korea later.

Bangor Historical Society Plans New Museum

Just back from working with a team from Architecture + Design to conduct an interpretive planning focus workshop for the Bangor Historical Society in Bangor Michigan. They are great folks who want an innovative approch to celebrating the history of their city and community. This will include a new museum building and includes a "the city as the museum" program that will locate interpretive panels located in the downtown area interpreting historic buildings, and developing a variety of interpretive walking tours. To learn more about the historical society you can visit their web site at:http://www.bangormihistory.com/

Back from Alabama - New Project Comes In!

Back from Alabama with our Army Corps of Engineers training course. The photo shows the class going on their tour of the Wheeler Wildlife Refuge where they were going to do some exercises in Interpretive Trail Planning and Interpretive Panel Planning. While there I learned we were awarded the contract to develop the Interpretive Systems Plan for the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, Los Altos, CA. The open space district has about 25 preserves in its system. We will start work on that project in a few weeks.

Heading Home - then Alabama

At the Heathrow Airport in London getting ready to head home - for a day - then off to Alabama to teach our 3-day Introduction to Interpretive Services course for the US Army Corps of Engineers. As noted in the last post, JVA was awarded the contract to develop the new advanced interpretation course for the COE as well. It has been cold and rain most of this past week - lets hope Alabama weather is warmer.

New Training Project

US Army Corps of Engineers - Advanced Interpretation Course for Project (Park) Managers. JVA was just awarded a contract to develop a new interpretive training course for Corps of Engineer Project Managers and management level staff. This course is now the next advanced level course from our introductory Interpretive Services Course we currently teach for the COE twice a year at the Huntsville, AL Tom Bevill Training Center. The first course will be offered in June, 2010 the week after our introductury course at the Huntsville location. The contract calls for developing a new 4-day training lesson plan, course manual, schedule of instruction, course resource CD, new powerpoint presentations and related field trip logistics for on-site learning experiences in interpretive planning. The photo shows one of our COE courses which includes lots of hands-on activities, like planning interpretive panels.

The Great Fen

This week I am in England doing interpretive training for the staff of The Great Fen/Wildlife Trust. The photos show some of the scenes of this 17 square mile site. Mostly peat farmland (I have never seen such black soil), the plan is for restoration of the area into a Fen habitat, with new interpretive center, trails, interpretive and environmental education programs and more. Quite a bit different from the Mountain Sanctuary we were working on in Korea last week.