If you are looking to use your community’s history and culture to attract tourists, new citizens or new businesses, the RHCA offers a wealth of experience and resources that can help you:
Historical Re-enactments
To get attention in today’s world where there is so much competition for everyone’s attention, history needs to come alive! Historical re-enactments allow visitors to experience the past by participating in it! The RHCA has staged several historical re-enactments and can assist with developing scripts, recruiting and training actors and promotion. Few projects can draw tourists, highlight a community’s unique contributions to the province and build capacity as effectively historical re-enactments.
Community Festivals and Special Events
Many communities hold annual events such as festivals, fairs and parades, that are popular in their districts. Other communities once held such annual events but as the community shrank they could no longer sustain interest. What only a few communities have done so far is find ways to generate interest and support for their events from outside of their districts. The RHCA assists communities that want to build on their existing traditions or revive former traditions by attracting visitors and outside funding to their programs.
Training Seminars for volunteers and staff
Whether you want someone to fire up your volunteers and attract new supporters or you are looking to provide training that will motivate your leaders, the RHCA has exactly what you need! Well-informed volunteers who know their roles are the backbone of building the leadership capacity in your community necessary to sustain tourism and economic development projects.
Conferences, Seminars and Exhibits
Periodically, the RHCA offers conferences, seminars and exhibits to help-develop community leadership capacities and promote rural history and culture.
Guided Tours
There are many elements to creating a successful guided tour that will entertain, educate and encourage participants to spend more time (and hopefully money) in your community. While identifying landmarks and recruiting volunteer guides familiar with local lore is a great start, to build your tour and your community into an attraction you need to add value to the tour and take steps to recruit individuals of a wide range of ages as guides. Adding value can include offering lunches, slides shows, entertainment and period costumes as part of the tour as well as co-operating with local businesses so tour participants spend time in their establishments. In rural communities guides often tend to be older folks. Their knowledge needs to be formalized and passed down to younger people. The RHCA can help with all aspects of building a successful guided tour.
Self-guided Tours
Some communities don’t have the resources to offer a guided tour but even where a guided tour is available it is a good idea to have a self-guided tour available. Visitors can drop into town unannounced to see something your community is famous for but no one may be around to show them the sights. The RHCA has developed self-guided tours that provide both walking history tours and information about local businesses, food services, accommodations and other amenities. These tours include a detailed map that also provides the community with an excellent promotional resource.
Interpretive Signage
Until recently the primary method of recognizing the locations of historic events or describing the significance of historic sites and properties have been plaques, usually sanctioned by a level of government. Interpretive signage is replacing plaquing because they can communicate more information and include pictures as well as text. The RHCA has been able to develop interpretive signage for some communities because they are less expensive than plaques and, therefore, allow local communities to interpret their histories without government involvement.
Promotional events such as media conferences and publicity events
Newspapers, radio and television stations are inundated with groups trying to get their attention. Attracting the attention of Regina, Saskatoon and provincial media outlets is especially challenging for many rural communities due to their distance from these centres. Despite these issues, RHCA events have been covered by Regina and other provincial media including CBC radio, Global news, CTV news and the Leader Post. This has been accomplished through innovative media events and communications strategies that the RHCA can adapt for your community and your projects.
Promotional vehicles such as brochures, media releases, advertising, web-sites, flyers and program guides
The RHCA has the in-house capacity to generate the variety of communications vehicles your community will require to support and promote your activities. Click here to view a PDF example of an RHCA produced program guide
Contact the RHCA for more information on how to take advantage of our planning and event management services.