NOAO Office of Public Affairs and Educational Outreach

National Association for Interpretation workshop report

I recently returned from an extensive certification workshop from the National Association for Interpretation, which taught attendees how to develop an interpretative master plan for an entire facility.

This workshop was an intense week-long program which broke the group down into five different teams that were dropped off and directed to take a critical look at a real-life visitor center.

The teams, made up of people from all over the US, came up with five very different interpretative master plans for this center, which were presented at the last day of the workshop. This interesting training will enable us to develop our own interpretative master plan for Kitt Peak, which will include major goals and objectives, the “message” we want visitors to leave with, and related issues such as the content of exhibits (inside and out), tours and mountain signage.

We’d be interested to hear about any recent efforts to develop a similar interpretive plan for an astronomy or space science facility.