See a photo of David, his bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.
Q&A with David Sidwell, Question 5
Q: What’s your favorite story about a transformation that came about through a story or storytelling act?
A: When I was first hired to be program director at the American West
Heritage Center in Wellsville, Utah — a cultural center and living-history museum — the place was in a bad way. It has lost respect from the community, or was simply ignored, and was struggling to stay afloat. As a storyteller and storytelling teacher, seeing how story can influence an organization came naturally to me, and I immediately began studying what stories the Heritage Center was “telling” about itself, even if unintentionally. In practice, then, this was a very important branding issue for the organization. Unfortunately, little effort had gone into branding of any kind, and the stories circulating from the Heritage Center were uneven and unclear at best and very negative at worst.
Most of the images emanating from brochures, posters, and on the internet were of gunfighters and “wild west” folk. However, the largest audience living around the Heritage Center were families with young children. I knew we had to begin telling new stories about ourselves. With my team, we made several goals and several rules to get us where we wanted to go. First, I wanted to be in the media at least once a week with extremely upbeat, positive press written in a quirky, attention-getting style. We invented activities and events and news so we could get into the paper — some of the events we knew would “fail” by not having large attendance, but that didn’t bother me, because the larger goal was to get in the forefront of people’s minds. After only a few months of this, our attendance increased sharply, and we even began to get calls from local businesses who wanted to help sponsor events so they could be associated with us. We heard people begin to say, “You’ve got so much going on out there!’ and so much of their attitudes were now positive instead of negative.
Some of the rules we created were simple. In our photos, we wanted at least one child represented, having a great time. Additionally, if we could get an animal in the photo, and a costumed living-history presenter as well, that was even better. Our brochures and media materials began to be attractive to families, and as we “told our story” across the region, the American West Heritage Center suddenly became a well respected cultural center and living-history museum.
Within four years, our attendance had quadrupled, and ticket revenue suddenly became a significant factor in our budgets. Additionally, with this rise in interest, other products we offered such as building rentals for weddings and meetings and large group meeting opportunities dramatically increased as well.
In my mind, it was all storytelling. We simply told a different story about ourselves, and we told it loudly and clearly so people couldn’t miss it.