Article Summary: "At the Corner of History and Innovation: Using Public History to Influence Public Policy"

This article, entitled "At the Corner of History Innovation: Using Public History to Influence Public Policy," was published by The Public Historian in 2010.  Its author is the executive director of the Boston History and Innovation Collaborative Robert M. Krim.  Throughout the article, he describes the origins of this collaborative and the evolution in mission it has.  At first, the Collaborative formed with the intention of highlighting the vast history of the city of Boston.  This was meant to bring in other topics of historical intrigue aside from the importance of Boston to the Revolutionary War.  As part of this goal to highlight other areas in Bostonian history, "The Collaborative has produced a number of projects...perhaps most uniquely, 'The Innovation Odyssey,' a public history project that focuses on Boston as a hub of technological, financial, educational and cultural, medical, and social innovation" (63).  According to Krim, the Collaborative brought in many supporters from various disciplines.  Such individuals include historians, business leaders, cultural and education institutional heads, tourism promoters, federal, state, and local government officials, technical experts, and managing consultants" (65).  The overall goal was to partner with already existing organizations to share resources and utilize the expertise of those institutions to contribute to the growth of tourism to Boston.  It was estimated that just one extra day of visitation to the city would result in $15 million of income for the city and businesses.  In addition to local organizations, the Collaborative also joined with federal entities such as the National Park Service and the National Archives to create programs for visitors and Boston region residents alike.  The thought was, that if the organization could get local and regional residents involved with the theme of innovation, the education of the public would increase-especially for school age children.  The Collaborative created many programs and tours based on literary, social, political, maritime, and so on to allow visitors to get a better grasp on the importance of Boston to the history of not only the United States but to the international community as well.  Krim spends a lot of time describing the measures taken to connect the scientific to social innovations of Boston through a vast amount of historic research.  He writes, "We changed the Collaborative’s structure, and even some of our mission, over time to reflect the people and institutions who became vitally interested in the region’s history when we reframed it around themes, stories, and sites that helped them to understand what defined the region" (81).

Robert M. Krim, "At the Corner of History and Innovation: Using Public History to Influence Public Policy," The Public Historian, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Spring 2010) University of California Press, 62-81.

Link:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/tph.2010.32.2.62