Image: Detail from Sidewalks of Poindexter Village: Market Street. Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art
Client Team
Ohio History Connection (OHC)
Shelbi Toone, Project Manager
Megan Wood
Jennifer Aultman
Erin Bartlett
Charles Wash
Sara Vandenbark
Kristen Koehlinger
We acknowledge and thank the partners for their continued engagement with Poindexter Village and the individuals who share their time, passion, skills, and knowledge in the development of
James Preston Poindexter
Maurice Alfred
Reita Smith
Patsey Ulmer
Mike Roberts
Tom Dillard
Sandra Jamison
Jimmi Love
Bettye Stull
Union Grove Baptist
Pastor Derrick Holmes
Maurice Alfred
Michael Adams
Bruce Campbell
Tim Grant
Jennifer Jordan
Allen Sudds
Background
This document is an addendum to the 2020 Interpretive Plan commissioned by the James Preston Poindexter Foundation (JPPF) and Ohio History Connection (OHC), addressing new opportunities in the form of Ohio History Connection’s ownership and management of the site, the City of Columbus’s active engagement, a developing partnership with the neighboring Union Grove Baptist Church, and expansion of the vision from the 2023 Visioning Study.
This addendum functions more like an Executive Summary, providing high level ideas and recommendations in a clear and direct format. For more details, refer to the full Interpretive Plan, which holds important background.
Foundations
What They Are
Direct, intertwined answers to foundational questions:
• Why are we doing this? Interpretation can do more than be a nice story. It can have a deeper purpose. We should be clear and transparent about the impact we seek in order to steer towards that.
• Who is it for? This starts as definition of the audiences. And it goes deeper: who does it serve? who benefits?
• Where do we stand? What resources do we have available? What challenges do we recognize that we have to face?
• What is it about? We begin with the top-level Big Idea: the main message or main sense that visitors leave with.
How They’re Used
• Everything builds from the Foundations. Or, to use a different metaphor, they are the North Star, guiding planning far into the future.
• Team use. These are not written for external audiences with no background in the project. This is not interpretive text or marketing language.
• Interpretive planning (e.g. exhibits, tours, programs), but also all other planning. Might influence architecture, partnerships, marketing, budgets, even staffing.
Why Are We Doing This?
Purpose Statement (updated)
The Ohio History Connection and its partners will bring to fruition a Poindexter Village museum and cultural center campus that looks to the past to build the strong, vibrant, and just communities of the future.
In order to ... (purpose)
Who Is It For?
Audiences
Unchanged from 2020
New clarifications
No matter who you are, this place should connect you to a better understanding of who you are.
We’re all rooted in Black heritage. Poindexter Village should feel like coming home.
Black history is an integral part of Columbus history. Everyone in Columbus is welcome and should find relevance here.
Black history is Ohio history. We serve people from across Ohio, whose stories are also integral to Ohio and American history.
Where Do We Stand?
Resources/Challenges
The complete list of resources from the 2020 Interpretive Plan (page 14) still applies as evidence that there are a wide range of resources available to the project.
The list of Challenges (page 15) has seen significant changes that should be acknowledged in this Update. Among these:
• In addition to other benefits of the developing partnership with Union Grove Baptist Church, the challenges of parking and limited large group capacity will have a resolution.
• The engagement of City of Columbus will help answer the question of engaging with the culture of historical devaluation. It also offers potential funding.
• Clear confirmation that OHC will manage the site is crucial for addressing capacity and ensuring long-term viability.
• JPPF’s role is also more clearly defined, helping this integral partner focus its capacity on the areas in which it has the greatest knowledge, strength, and ability: collecting stories and primary sources that falls under the category of “passing of generations.”
What Is It About?
Big Idea (Updated)
From a place called home, we flourish.
The American historical narrative has most often been built on stories of people creating opportunities by moving and building new homes for themselves. It has typically downplayed parallel stories of displacement and structures that have actively sabotaged families and communities, from enslavement and the wanton destruction of families to segregation, redlining, racial covenants, highway construction, and gentrification.
Poindexter Village and the neighborhood surrounding it both support and undermine that common narrative. Poindexter Village was a place to call home—a place from which Ohio’s longstanding and newly-arriving Black families could grow and thrive. Until, that is, outside forces isolated, broke up, ignored, and encouraged it to fail.
The Poindexter Village Museum and Cultural Center, as the hub of historic community, is above all a celebration and reminder of that promise and possibility, as it critiques the structures and narratives that undermine the village. Through state-wide and national connections and parallels, Poindexter Village is a microcosm of Black history and therefore of American history. It is, to paraphrase Aminah Robinson, “the missing pages of American History.”
Themes
Themes thread through the story. They pop forward and recede back, like a theme in a symphony. They ebb and flow, but they hold the experience together.
Future teams will use these as touchstones, connecting to them during the development of programs, exhibits, and the entire visitor experience
Village
The interrelationships of landscape, homes, businesses, schools, roads, and churches that make a place. Connections and relationships. The sense of shared community, of togetherness, that everyone seeks.
Recurring patterns of promises made and rugs pulled out, sabotaging stability and success. Funding/disinvestment. Overcoming/erasure ...
Activism
From Reverend Poindexter to the JPPF: being active, speaking up, and engaging with the past, present, and future.
Longevity
African Americans have been active in Columbus since there’s been a Columbus. We belong here.
Topics and Bounds
Topics represent groupings of stories that are authentic to Poindexter Village, that serve the Big Idea, and through which the Themes weave. The Interpretive Plan does not attempt to outline all possible Topics, but provides this initial list to help sketch out the bounds of the story.
Past, Present, Future
• The two remaining buildings of Poindexter Village (1940 to 2013) are a lens through which we explore the past, present, and future.
• Poindexter Village’s story begins well before 1940, rooted in the Blackberry Patch and Near East Side, with Union Grove Baptist Church as an anchor. It spans the entire history of Columbus and its African American communities.
• The story examines the disinvestment in Poindexter Village, its causes, and the ongoing efforts to preserve its history for future generations.
Near East Side
• Poindexter Village was integral to the vibrant Near East Side, enriched by professionals, groceries, restaurants, banks, entertainment, schools, and churches.
• The Near East Side also supported other Black communities in the metro area, including Hilltop, Milo Grogan, Hanford Village, Burnside Heights, Franklinton, Flytown, Hilliard, Sellsville, and American Addition. Due to segregation, African Americans from these areas came here for community, entertainment, and essential services.
Connections
• Because the stories of Poindexter Village are common across Black communities throughout the United States, we make connections throughout Ohio and nationwide.
Reverend
Poindexter
• Reverend John Preston Poindexter—Black, Native American, and white; activist, entrepreneur, preacher, and school board member—is a key figure in Columbus history. He embodies the values of education, faith, community, and activism.
Union Grove Baptist Church
• Before Poindexter Village, there was Union Grove Baptist Church, co-founded by Reverend Poindexter. The church’s presence influenced the establishment of Poindexter Village and has remained a vital faith resource and community pillar for over 135 years.
• Union Grove and Reverend Hale were constants for early the Poindexter Village community.
• Faith and church are entwined with the Black community and culture. Union Grove represents the full breadth of that, referencing other Black churches in this context.
Village and Culture
• Poindexter Village thrived as an intergenerational community where people cared for each other.
• Affordable, dignified public housing fostered a culture of hope and opportunity.
• Cultural traditions—including food, music, art, and other touchstones—remain essential within the community.
• Black culture’s historical centrality of faith and education is paramount; there was always a church and a school.
Values
Inspired by Reverend Poindexter, the Poindexter Village Museum and Cultural Center lives by and promotes these values:
Education
Faith Community
Step Up/Get Involved/Be Active
Integrity/Honesty/Character
Respect
Hope/Strength
We also call forward a value about history itself that is so ingrained we sometimes forget to say it:
From the roots of the past we create the fruits of the future.
This value of history and legacy can be stated many different ways. The 2020 IP said “We Were. We Are. We Will.” A more ancient and traditional version circles back to African roots: Sankofa.
History is not just a study that we learn from. It roots us. It is us. From it we thrive. (Without it we wither.)
Implications and Recommendations
Everything that precedes this page is foundational. Everything that proceeds this page should drive all planning moving forward. The Purpose Statement and Big Idea, at the very least, should become mantras for everyone involved, with copies posted in each person’s office.
This page and those that follow amend the 2020 Interpretive Plan by suggesting some possible implications of those updated foundations in the implementation of the interpretive program. Those updates, the addition of Union Grove Baptist Church, and the Visioning Study’s further expansion of the experience throughout the Near East Side neighborhood all influence this section.
Fundamentally, the recommendations from the 2020 Interpretive Plan, and all of the supporting appendices, remain strong. As stated above, this update continues to build on the previous document and should be read alongside that document.
The updated Foundations and everything that lead to them also suggest the strength of the 2023 Visioning Study. Its three-part vision of “Museums Bring Communities Together”, “A Hub of Culture”, and “Neighborhood as Museum” is a clear and effective expansion from the Interpretive Plan and deserves recognition also for helping to build the relationship with Union Grove Baptist Church.
Interpretive Plan Influences
The interpretive program is not limited to the exhibits and education departments. The interpretive program touches a universe of any public/visitor-facing experience, from marketing messages to restrooms. Anything in this universe has the potential to strengthen (or undercut) the impact and meaning of the museum and cultural center.
Principles
These are unchanged from the Interpretive Plan, but worth repeating here.
Principles for Interpretation and Poindexter Village
African American History is American History.
African American History is Ohio History.
African American History is Columbus History.
Whenever possible/fitting, use African American vernacular in the interpretation, including voice, style, and narrative structure.
Always seek to use the voices of people who were there over the thirdperson curator voice.
The site is for people. It speaks to broad audiences (rather than specialized audiences/experts).
A clear sign that a visit has been meaningful is that it generates an emotional response. With that in mind, we seek to engage our visitors’ emotions.
Visitors approach exhibits in a non-linear fashion. Even if they follow a specific path, they will skip certain elements and dig deeply into others. For that reason: everything must support a single big idea, some repetition is good, and each element must be able to stand on its own within the context.
Be concise. Too many printed words turn visitors away. Visitors are seeking a compelling experience; they are not interested in becoming experts. Interpretation can expect, at best, to make visitors excited enough about the subject to seek out more information. Therefore: layer information, provide a clear hierarchy of information, replace words with visuals whenever possible.
To this we add one:
Engage the senses to evoke memory, nostalgia, emotions, and the truths they hold.
We bring people together. Most forms of interpretation gain strength because they are social experiences. We encourage our guests to interact with each other and with us.
Comfort—including a sense of being welcome, clear expectations, wayfinding, seating, accessibility, restrooms, and food—affects visitors’ abilities to engage with the interpretation. These operational aspects of the site must therefore be considered in the planning of interpretation. Caveat: Discomfort can also be an effective tool, but only when planned within the overall scope of a welcoming atmosphere.
Flexibility is key. We are open to the opportunities of the future. It is not the destination but the journey that is important in carrying out the legacy of Poindexter Village.
We believe that our partnerships make us stronger and that we should encourage our guests to explore further.
We seek to be accessible to the greatest extent feasible (i.e. we consider the principles of Universal Design).
Art can reveal truths that facts alone cannot. Use it in all its mediums.
Engage. Engage the community in building, site, and exhibit design. Continue to engage and be responsive in the development of programs throughout the site’s lifetime.
Poindexter Village Interpretive Plan
Prioritizing the Findings of the Visioning Study
The Campus
The site is now expanded to include the two remaining buildings from Poindexter Village, a connector between them at the north end, and Union Grove Baptist Church on the south. Within this set of buildings and exterior spaces will need to exist:
Behind the scenes spaces (non-interpretive but make interpretive possible)
• Welcoming: gathering, ticketing, scene-setting, restrooms, gift shop ...
• Circulation
• Flexible program spaces, indoor and outdoor
• Classrooms
• Exhibit spaces, indoor and outdoor
The 2020 Interpretive Plan was limited to considering the two remaining Poindexter Village buildings and their outdoor spaces. That maximum of 18,800 square feet (if all floors remain, or half that if all second floors are removed) is far from small, but divided into multiple small apartments and with a maximum width of <30 feet, it was awkward and limiting. A partnership with Union Grove Baptist Church offers larger spaces for events, presentations, and exhibits, thereby creating new opportunities for the remaining Poindexter Village buildings and for expanded impact.
Imagining the Poindexter Village campus in the 2023 Visioning Study.
Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park in Atlanta is a model for the Poindexter Village campus, bringing together a National Park, the still-worshipping and independent Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, and the non-profit King Center.
Connector
The connector is the formal front door to the Poindexter Village experience. Its technical function is to link the two historic buildings and provide vertical access between the two floors. It also has direct interpretive potential.
Ticketing, wayfinding, gathering, seating, restrooms, water ... none of these welcoming functions are typically considered interpretive, but they are interpretive-adjacent. The experience of feeling welcomed, of being rested and ready, and of knowing where to go all affect a person’s ability to engage with the formal interpretation. All can also subtly reinforce or detract from interpretive messages.
A core hope of any interpretive program is to make people curious to explore further. A gift shop’s books, t-shirts, music, and food items should be offerings that help visitors on that journey. Also, as Colleen Dillenschnider writes, “retail can play an important motivational, experiential, and emotional role for visitors when it comes to underscoring the uniqueness of your individual cultural organization.”
The connector is also the common space that splits the experience between the program side (go left to the east building) and the exhibit side (turn right for the west building).
The space for the connector can establish the Big Idea through theming and more specific interpretive experiences, whether an intro statement, large-scale art, or by extending the exhibits into this space. Remember that the Big Idea centers on place, home, and flourishing. Reflect those in the conception of the Connector.
Views outside can be interpreted. The Connector centers a view into the village: the shared space between apartments and buildings, where laundry dried, kids played, adults talked, and elders kept an eye out.
Historical photo: between the buildings at Poindexter Village
Programs
The Interpretive Plan and the Visioning Plan both catalog suites of potential programs. These hold up as ideas and are not updated with this document. What has changed is the addition of Union Grove to the campus. This opens up opportunities that hadn’t existed before, both in terms of types of programs and spaces to support them. Nevertheless, the long lists of ideas needs to be focused so that they are manageable with limited staffing. The Foundations should be used as a filter for prioritizing among the ideas.
Left: Pages from the 2023 Visioning Study.
Below: Spoken Word at the Motown Museum
Right, top to bottom: Farmer’s Market at the Mill City Museum; Neighborhood tours at Wing Luke Museum; Public-facing collections and genealogy initiatives at NMAAHC
Exhibits
Exhibits are places for self-directed inquiry. People flow through them at their own pace, circle back to things they interest them, and skip others.
Exhibits are also places for social interaction. Encourage conversation.
Exhibits can also be tools for interpreters. Specialized tours can focus on a theme that reoccurs throughout the exhibits, for instance.
History museum exhibits are most typically recognized as objects in cases and graphic panels along walls, sometimes broken up by more graphics along angled rails. They are often arranged chronologically. This combination is understandable to visitors and it’s expected. Also expected: that history museums are boring. Poindexter Village exhibits should break with the expected. There are other ways forward and Poindexter Village should take those other paths.
The exhibit experience should begin with an introduction that frames the experience. As stated above, this might occur in the Connector, but it might have a fuller expression in the west building. Make this statement clear and direct (see page 40 of the Interpretive Plan). Potentially make it dramatic. Either way, give it space to exist as its own experience.
Perhaps as part of that introduction or as a next step following it, establish physical and temporal context. People need to understand where they are in place and time. Consider, for instance, a model of Poindexter Village, another that zooms out to the Near East Side, then a further zoom out to Columbus and Ohio on printed maps. Perhaps project onto these, with narration, to bring them to life and establish the story. In this same zone, the walls could express a 250 year timeline of Columbus Black History, highlighting Poindexter-related events, with other key national and global events as points of reference.
Physical and interactive digital maps/models at Musée Histoire De Paris: Carnavalet. History museums should generally try to avoid screens over tactile experiences. However, sometimes a digital interactive can do things a physical model cannot. For instance, a digital model can show change over a time through an animation. Photos do not do these justice. To see a short video of a time lapse animation of a map, try this: https://amplify.tiny.us/2s3be4s4
The exhibits overall will work better if they are not forced into a timeline. Get the chronology out of the way at the beginning so that the rest of the space can be a series of topical exhibits. The topic of disinvestment and decline, for instance, deserves a stand-alone exploration rather than being lost in a timeline. Likewise, Reverend Poindexter should not be placed near the beginning of a timeline only to be forgotten; instead, he should be treated as a central figure that connects the dots, reinforcing the continuity of values and historical threads such as Black Baptist activism.
Poindexter Village exhibits are likely to have access to great historical photographs and we would hope a fair number of archival and personalsized objects: yearbooks, family albums, an individual’s watch, etc. It is not likely to have larger-scale 3D artifacts.1 This opens options for purchased or recreated objects. These can be touched or even modified (adding interior lights or hidden speakers, for instance), making them more engaging and minimizing the need for protective rails and platforms.
Place these objects in settings. Maybe leave some of the interior walls in place or recreate them, with wallpaper and carpet as appropriate, to create the spaces and theming for meaning-making.
1 We are making a distinction between types of objects. Artifacts are objects in the care of OHC (whether owned by OHC or on loan) that have been formally acquired and for which the organization has an ethical and legal responsibility to prioritize their protection. Other objects may be historical (e.g. antiques) but have been purchased for use as educational tools. These do not carry the same legal requirements and can be modified, touched, or held.
Topical exhibits in settings at NMAAHC
Keep and use the building fabric, helping people remember that they are in a historic space rather than a generic white box gallery. Project onto brick, paint the outlines of removed walls on the floors, leave portions of walls or doors or stairs in place, driven by the needs of the stories and optimal flow of the visitor experience.
Also consider the exhibit opportunities outdoors. Those models described above could be cast bronze and placed outside the Connector, providing theming and a feeling of spaciousness consistent with a model of outdoor spaces. Very importantly: the space between the two buildings is as valuable an artifact as the interior spaces. This represents the village, the “we” in the Big Idea. We recommend theming it as back stoops, with metal chairs for sitting and talking, the sounds of children playing, and laundry hanging from lines. The laundry can also be an interpretive element, with quotes or graphics screen-printed or embroidered on.
Outdoor bronze site model/tactile map at Colonial Williamsburg
The Mill City Museum printed an historic cross-section of the building on the glass facade, showing the interior workings of the flour mill. Minnesota Historical Society
Poindexter Village also has a unique calling to use art in its interpretive expressions. This is one of the Principles but we reiterate it here. Go beyond incorporating the work of an artist as a framed print on a wall.
Poindexter Village can engage artists to envision and create the exhibits. This is atypical—a little-used path—but not untested. Follow the example of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, or think of the power of the gallery of shoes at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC.
Clockwise from top right:
Gallery of shoes at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC.
Exhibit experiences at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights are artist-driven. Instead of the expected photo of the Freedom Riders’ bus on fire and a separate panel with photos of the riders, for instance, this museum plastered mugshots of Freedom Riders across the surface of a section of a bus.
Memorial to the girls killed in the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church at the NCCHR.
Apartments
The Interpretive Plan explored ideas for keeping and recreating a couple of apartments. These are some further thoughts and more clear direction.
When deciding which apartments to preserve, the exhibit progression does not need to be a significant consideration. The visitor flow can either start with the experience of the apartments then move to exhibits to explore more deeply, or it can begin with exhibits and build to apartments. Either is fine. However, where people would enter an apartment is an issue of flow and story.
What’s the difference between two apartments? Choose two different time periods, providing an interesting contrast of eras and issues.
If we know about someone who lived in one of these specific remaining apartments, the most authentic of possibilities would be to recreate an apartment around them and their memories. If not, or if their story does not resonate, then perhaps build around the memories of someone who lived in a similar apartment but in a different building. The opportunity that is likely to have the greatest impact, however, would be a pastiche, combining the memories and stories of several people into a single thematically-driven story.
The form of the interpretation for the apartments could take any of a few different directions:
• Tour only, following the model of the Tenement Museum (explored in both the Visioning Study and the Interpretive Plan).
• Independent exploration, in which visitors can wander freely and touch objects, trigger a video projection from an oral history, or discover a quote on a napkin in a kitchen drawer.
• Dramatization: either holograms (which need a narrow viewing window, so few viewers at a time) or simply audio, shadows, and light. Limited time frame (3 minutes, with a defined start and end) or extended (visitors walk in at a point in time and stay as long as they want). This could be especially strong as a first person recreation of a moment in a normal day.
For Poindexter Village, the latter two are the best options.
Tenement Museum recreated apartment: effective because of wellresearched stories and highly trained dialogic tour guides. Don’t touch!
Left column: “Open House” exhibit at the Minnesota Historical Society. Recreates the lives of real people in single house, their stories discovered by exploring the rooms.
Right: Demo of a life-size “hologram.” The specific technology is an age-old “Pepper’s ghost.” It creates the impression of a three-dimensional figure to real space when viewed through a glass plane.
Below: Greenwood Rising in Tulsa, OK, adds AI to the hologram effect, giving visitors the opportunity to interact with ghostly barbers.
Union Grove
In addition to parking, security, and other operational benefits to both organizations, the addition of Union Grove expands the interpretive possibilities.
• Large group events—whether speeches, poetry slams, music performances, debates, or conversations sponsored by Poindexter Village—may occur in the Union Grove’s sanctuary.
• Smaller events might move into classrooms in the lower level.
• The lower level’s kitchen may be useful for food-based programs.
• Union Grove may also have exhibits about the Black church in Black culture and about Union Grove specifically. Those would want to be developed as part of the Poindexter Village exhibit development so that they all speak the same language and therefore offer a coherent story that flows among the buildings and sites.
• Finally, Union Grove may be the ideal site for changing, traveling, or temporary exhibitions.
In return, Union Grove may have occasional needs for programming spaces in Poindexter Village. Weddings at Union Grove may reserve exterior spaces at Poindexter for receptions and picture-taking. The details are to be determined but should be acknowledged here. How can the planning of Poindexter Village also serve Union Grove?
16th Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, AL
The site of a horrific bombing during the Civil Rights era, this historic site remains an active congregation. Tired of their story being told by others, they created an exhibit in their basement multi-purpose room. Striking graphics line the walls, with inset cases holding a few key objects. This leaves plenty of room for large bus tours to gather and for rows of tables for church functions.
Key to its success is a dedicated theater space, where the emotional core of the story can be effectively promoted. Sitting on church pews, visitors are immersed in the context that led into the bombing as they see striking visuals on two large video monitors and hear not only a high quality narration but music and sound effects that rattle the soul.
Neighborhood
As the hub of culture, the Poindexter Village Museum and Cultural Center will encourage people to explore wider than the campus. The Visioning Study suggested a heritage trail extending throughout the Near East Side. Amplifier has just completed a year-long study for a Black Heritage Trail, which has identified these key needs for a Heritage Trail, especially one that is somewhat dispersed:
Digital tools: Poindexter Village will have a website. It should hold all the typical information about visiting the site (hours, location, cost...) and an event calendar. It should also have interpretive information that extends the interpretation of the site, driven by the same Foundations but telling stories that the site does not. This includes stories about places throughout the Near East Side, grouped as a trail, and throughout Central Ohio and the state broadly. These will be supported by curricula for classroom use and a responsive face that adapts the same location-based information for use on phones.
Physical markers: In order to reach the great majority of people who will not otherwise know about the digital tools, sites should also have physical markers outside. These put a stake in ground claiming the importance of Columbus’s Black heritage. They also provide site-specific information and they would advertise the digital tools to people who just happen upon them.
Repository: There is an extra burden of proof required of histories that are not built into collective memory. That applies to Black history. As such, all interpretation at Poindexter Village and beyond must show its work by giving access to the primary sources that prove the messages. Doing so is a strength of the digital format, which is unbounded by physical space.
Therefore, underneath the interpretive face of the website should lie a digital archive of sources beyond the limited number that are shown on first glance. This then also serves as a research tool and may expand beyond this one project.
Tours: A live human, well trained in interpretive methods and in the history, can be the very best of interpretation. Missing either of those things, they can instead be a real turn-off for visitors. Because Poindexter Village is expected to have staff, such tours are a real possibility. (If Poindexter Village doesn’t offer tours, someone else may and Poindexter Village will lose control of the message.)
Poindexter Village
Asheville Black Cultural Heritage Trail, Asheville, NC
For both digital tools and physical markers, this brand new trail is a particularly strong model.
Next Steps
The implications and recommendations in this Update and the Interpretive Plan it is modifying are not prescriptions. They are meant to point in a direction, to inspire. As elements are implemented, opportunities and needs will change and the recommendations should adapt, as they have with this Addendum. The Foundations, however, should stay the same. The Foundations serve as the solid base on which all else is built, from collecting to architectural planning to exhibits and programs.
Looking at the next steps in the 2020 Interpretive Plan, OHC should be pleased to note that many of the items on that list have been accomplished or are ongoing. The list now in 2024 moves into the next Next Steps.
Collections: Define a collections plan and focus the efforts of collecting. Much of the actual collecting must build from community relationships. JPPF has made the relationships and has lists, but now it’s time to collect and organize, whether formally or digitally only. They need support, tools, and priorities from OHC.
Note that the Interpretive Plan includes a general list of people, organizations, and artifact sources on page 14. It may be somewhat out of date, but it’s a start.
As this document is being finalized, an article appeared about a NMAAHC collections initiative in San Antonio, TX1. This shows one way forward among many possibilities, but it is at least a good inspiration. If they can do it in San Antonio, you can do it in Columbus.
Exhibit planning: Begin exhibit planning soon. There’s a lot of effort going into deciding which walls and floors to keep in the historic buildings and which to open up or take out. Those decisions have to be made based on structural considerations and preservation, but for the building that will house exhibits, the visitor flow and storytelling—the program for the building—should be an equal consideration. In other words, exhibit design should be slightly ahead of but partnered with future stages of architectural planning.
The first step in that process is developing an RFP for exhibit design—which is not a small effort—and sending it out to make a selection. The initial stage of design, Exhibit Concept, will also be helpful for fundraising.
Union Grove: Establishing a formal relationship between OHC and Union Grove Baptist Church regarding operations and additional land through an MOA will provide clear baselines, making planning much more efficient and effective.
Ongoing: A reminder from the original Interpretive Plan: there is an ongoing need for Capacity-Building and Training. This includes training in the Foundations defined in this document.
Amplifier Experience Design is grateful for the opportunity to update the 2020 Interpretive Plan and reiterates our excitement in the possibilities of the Poindexter Village Museum and Cultural Center. It is an important story in a unique setting that holds promise to be engaging and meaningful to visitors and supportive of partners.
We are also pleased to see the progress since 2020. The activity may seem slow to some, but the changes are substantive and positive. This period has generated wider support, landscape and architectural planning, building stabilization, and new relationships.
The project has momentum. We look forward to seeing it continue and offer our support in any way going forward.
