Key 1: Assess Your Community
Assessment tools
Assessment: Why take the time?
Don’t skimp on this step! Before you plunge into something big, take the time to assess and evaluate your community’s historical, cultural, and physical assets. As you do this together, good things will happen. You can:
- Discover what things your community values.
- Learn where you disagree.
- Identify great opportunities--and subtle threats.
- Begin building support.
- Jumpstart innovative ideas and partnerships.
- Begin to create a vision of a stronger community based on what really matters to its citizens.
- And finally: Gather the very information you’ll need as you start planning, talk to decision-makers, and find grants or investors.
Get people involved!
If even one person (you) begins to think about your place’s assets, that will be a great start! But eventually, you’ll want to involve many diverse citizens: schoolchildren and seniors, businesspeople and farmers, different cultures and religions, laborers and artists, athletes and politicians… you get the idea.
When you get more people involved, you’ll get more energy, more support, a stronger community, and better decisions (usually!). Yes, more people may mean more disagreements. But meaningful dialogue is part of the process.
You can gather information in many ways: brainstorming, interviews, surveys, public meetings, web sites, small-group discussions, etc.
Who?
Speaking of getting people involved, consider these people:
- Preservation groups
- Tourism officials
- Chambers of commerce
- Ethnic communities
- Native American communities
- Arts boards and artists
- Nonprofit groups and civic organizations
- Historic sites and museum personnel
- Historical groups
- Business owners
- Event organizers
- Local government
- Elected officials
- Planning and building department
- Economic development office
- Public works staff
- Parks and recreation staff
- Libraries
- University/college staff
- Church representatives
- Media representatives
- State History -- historic preservation , archaeology, learning and research
Tools
Assets assessment tool: Includes a lot of questions you might investigate. You don’t have to answer all of them—though you may! Use the questions that apply to your community.
Rural character analysis tool: Helps identify different resources and characteristics of place, analyze their use and importance, and map them. Also valuable for urban areas. From the Governor's Office of Planning and Budget.
National Register search: See what national register sites and buildings are already in your community.
More resources
See more resources for this step on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Cultural Heritage Tourism web site.