How do you make an urban National Park engaging and relevant to the experience of who Americans are today? How can we attract diverse audiences, tell new stories, and engage the next generation of visitors at urban national parks?
Winner of the Van Alen Institute’s National Parks Now competition, "Great Falls, Great Food, Great Stories" re-imagines the future of visitor experience at urban national parks by bringing the park into the streets of the city. This project for Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park is a platform that connects the historical and environmental narratives of the Great Falls to contemporary life in Paterson, NJ, through the lens of food. It brings park visitors to the city and Patersonians to the Falls through non-traditional wayfinding, community engagement, and storytelling.
This project was developed as part of National Parks Now, an initiative of the Van Alen Institute and the National Parks Service. I was part of a multi-disciplinary team (with Manuel Miranda, Mariana Mogilevich, June Williamson, Willy Wong, and Frances Medina). We brought our expertise in design, communications, and community engagement to engage the next generation of visitors at urban national parks.
The project launched in September 2015 through a campaign of posters in restaurant windows pointing Patersonians to the Falls, and highlighting signature dishes to visitors. We also developed interpretive signage (we call these "storyfronts") scattered throughout Paterson's Market Street (also known as "Little Lima.")
In 2016, Manuel, Mariana, and I got a grant from the New Jersey Council on the Humanities to expand the project. We took the project to the predominantly Middle Eastern Main Street, and embedded new "storyfronts" throughout city: in the public library, in street kiosks, at the deli... the places where people go every day. The "storyfronts" tell a new story about Paterson: stories of Paterson's food, industry, and immigrants, developed from over a year of research and interviews with Patersonians. They are not stories of a white golden age and a non-white decline. They show how the experience of current residents are the same as those from the 16th century. All "storyfronts" featured the three most-commonly spoken languages in Paterson (English, Spanish, and Arabic) so that the stories be inclusive and accessible across the city. We also developed a visual language that felt very different from your usual National Parks interpretive signage.
The "storyfronts" together with the restaurant posters, help Patersonians find themselves in Paterson's history, and find their park.
We hoped to provide a model for thinking about Paterson and other urban parks like it not just as historic and natural places outside of the city, but as vital parts of the city that are relevant to the people who live nearby. And we hope it points a way for other institutions to think about how they contribute and connect to the communities they call home.
Great Falls Great Food Great Stories is a project by Team Paterson for the Hamilton Partnership for Paterson: Friends of the Paterson National Park. Produced with the support of the New Jersey Council on the Humanities.