Seminary Ridge Historic Preservation Foundation

Seminary Ridge Historic Preservation Foundation will create "Transformation through Dialogue,' an innovative theater program that will work to answer critical questions about how and why visitors actively participate in museum experiences and what museums can do to encourage these engaging opportunities. The foundation will design and develop four pilot programs that will combine theater and dialogue techniques tailored to four target audiences—school children, families, older adults, and African Americans—and develop a dialogue component for the program based on best practices in interpretation, educational theory, and counseling. This pilot theater program will allow the 19th-century dilemmas presented in the exhibition to set the stage for visitors as they consider historical questions and their contemporary equivalents in open-ended dialogue. It will also contribute new data to national and international conversations about how museum visitors engage in personal meaning-making.