For my project, Anne Ladyem and I have joined with the Sanford Student Museum to incorporate digital elements into their efforts to save the museum. The museum, erected in 1902 and originally used as Sanford’s grammar schoolhouse into the 1980’s, is a registered historic landmark. However, since 2009 the museum has been listed as one of the nation’s most endangered historic sites. Owned by the Seminole County School Board, the museum has experienced grappling budget cuts and is in dire need of, not only operational funding, but renovation funding, also. 

   After meeting with Dr. Beiler, the leader in UCF’s collaboration with the museum for a possibility of turning the museum into a Public History Learning Center, and Christine Dalton, the Historic Preservation Officer for Sanford’s City Planning Committee, Anne and I have been able to establish a clear plan for our goals. While Anne builds a new website for the museum using omeka,  I will be building a social media package for the museum with the purpose to drive participation on local community events and hopefully also raise interest in fundraising. 

  Immediately after meeting with Dalton and seeing the pictures of the museum, listening to her co-workers talk about their memories of it as a schoolhouse and looking at all the exhibits the museum has to offer, I have begun to feel very strongly attached to this project.

   In discussing my new project with a few friends, one of my friends said something that has stuck with me. He said that it is always astounding how Americans will pay so much money to travel abroad and look at buildings that are hundreds of years old, but are so quick to abandon their own historical buildings before they reach any significant age. Looking through Dalton’s photographs of other historic Sanford buildings in past photographs, most of the buildings she showed us are now empty lots or just used for parking for other buildings.

   In the initial meeting, it was clear that Dalton has invested a lot of her own time into exploring possibilities for the museum. She already had many ideas but said that simply, nobody on the City Planning board or School Board has the time to put any of the ideas into action. The museum has been gifted various tools from independent artists, as well. Dalton was able to show us a digitally created cartoon character of the museum, named “Stu,” that could be used to advertise to school-aged children on flyers or coloring pages. They also had a lot of ideas for daytime events the museum could host and keep open to the local community as fundraising efforts, but I think they worry about lack of participation or interest.

   I think by using sites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. that it would be easy to build on the idea of the museum as a community and to give citizens incentive to save the museum. Anne and I have a follow-up meeting this Thursday with Dalton, and we will be touring the museum and its gardens to get a better idea of how we can use visuals and online media for our separate projects. 

   I already feel like this could be a project I see myself working on for much longer than the duration of this class, but I think my biggest concern is that if we are unable to raise enough funds not only will this project be ended abruptly, but there is no telling if the building will be left abandoned or bulldozed completely. There’s a lot at stake in this effort, and it would be tragic to lose such a large part of the community’s history.