OC Parks encompasses regional, wilderness and historical facilities, as well as coastal areas throughout the County of Orange. Featuring over 60,000 acres of parkland, open space and shoreline, Orange County’s award-winning parks and programs are enjoyed by millions of residents and visitors each year. Within OC Parks, the Cultural Resources Group manages and interprets eight historical facilities located throughout the County, each exploring different avenues of the region’s diverse history. These include, the Old Orange County Courthouse, Heritage Hill Historical Park, Arden: Helena Modjeska Historic House & Gardens, Irvine Ranch Historic Park, George Key Ranch Historic Park, Ramon Peralta Adobe Historic Site, and the Historic Yorba Cemetery. For the 2022 Humanities Out There Public Fellows Program, we are offering flexible opportunities to work at multiple sites within the Cultural Resources Group of OC Parks.
We are looking for two fellows. Depending on their skills and interests the fellow may work on one or more of the following areas of concentration:
- Art Programming in Historic Parks
- Investigate and plan ways to incorporate more art based public programs into our historic sites. The various mediums of focus could include, but are not limited to painting, sculpture, poetry, music, and charcoal sketching. There is an opportunity to utilize historic architecture, native fauna and interesting plant life at these facilities. The fellow would locate and engage with potential artists to hire, organize the events and create promotional materials.
- Agriculturally Based Public Outreach
- This work would be for Irvine Ranch Historic Park and/or George Key Ranch as both sites are tied to the region’s agricultural roots. The Fellow will research and compile thematically appropriate programming possibilities that will attract a diverse audience to the park. There is a lot of opportunity to think creatively on this project and explore potential scholarly lectures, workshops, living history experiences, seed museums, community gardens, and hands-on activities for children and adults that will connect the public to the history at these two sites.
- Developing Interpretive Programing and Engaging Digital Content
- This project may include developing new tour plans based on interpretive themes, researching and writing text for educational signage, developing exhibits or planning small public programs. The public fellow will also evaluate OC Parks’ current historical and cultural social media posts to view high and low trends for future content focus. They will review and compile data on current trends for social media posts with top agencies in the field, such as the National Park Service. The fellow should explore possibilities such as live talks, recorded programs, self-guided experiences, game nights, and children’s programs. Then they will develop recommended virtual education content for each of the historic sites with assistance from Curator staff.
- Virtual Tour Content
- The Fellow would assist with gathering historic photographs, writing text descriptions, editing videos and organizing 360s photographs for a virtual tour for some of our historic sites. The goal is to provide engagement opportunities for people who would otherwise not be able to visit our sites.
- Creating Docent Training Materials
- Many visitors experience a volunteer docent led tour on their first visit to our historic parks. Ensuring that docents have all the tools they need to provide visitors with a positive, compelling and historically accurate experience, often encourages them to continue to engage with local historic sites in the future. Using the materials that have already been developed for Arden as a standard, the Fellow will work on creating new materials or revising outdated existing materials for new volunteer docents at Heritage Hill, Irvine Ranch Historic, and the Old Orange County Courthouse.
- Update Historic Collection Records
- Work with Curator staff to update collection records and accession objects in the collections. Using Describing Archives: A Content Standard best practices, and established guidelines at the facility, the fellow will catalog a variety of historic items. Objects the fellow would be working with may include photographs, documents, furnishings, personal items, artwork and ephemera. The fellow will photograph items, assign object ID numbers, write descriptions, and utilize a standard lexicon to input metadata using Past Perfect Museum Software.
Please visit https://ocparks.com/historic-sites for more information about each of the historic parks managed by OC Parks.
Contact: Katie McKay, Historica Curator Arden