Building a rich and memorable park experience.

The Park’s strategic plan calls for “developing collaborative thematic programming between Park partners.” Funded by a grant from the Panoram Foundation we engaged FIO Partners of Chester, CT, a consulting firm that specializes in working with non-profits, to help us through this process. We started by interviewing 20 stakeholders from the community. These included heritage and cultural sites such as the Avery-Copp House, the Hempsted Houses, Friends of Fort Trumbull, Fort Griswold, as well organizations like the Flock Theater, New London Main Street and others.

Our goal was to find out how the Park could help our partner organizations and build an experience that would resonate with a variety of audiences. We then held a one-day retreat. Sixteen stakeholders and representatives from our partner sites attended the January 31st Collaborative Planning Retreat at the Lyman Allyn Museum. There we developed ideas for collaboration and started the exciting work of creating and delivering on the TRHP experience.

We had a productive and enjoyable day brainstorming and planning. We heard many common goals for taking advantage of the rich content and expertise found in each of the heritage sites and pooling these to develop programming and events. Many terrific ideas surfaced and we will be convening again soon to continue the planning. Thanks to our facilitator Anne Yurasek who kept us on track throughout the day.

Thanks to everyone who attended and to the Lyman Allyn for the inspirational venue.