Grand Marais Birding

Greg here - it's wonderful to have this tool to help all of us connect regarding the festivals.  Thanks to Sue for creating this blog.  Please think, share and return to see what others have said. A productive discusion will, I think, yield a shared sense of direction.

North House Folk School is in the process of thinking through the structure and flavor of the spring Boreal and Autumn Migration Birding Festivals.  This is an important process that aspires to focus on the strengths of the festivals while envisioning strategies for making the events ever-more welcoming and engaging for birders of all levels.

Both the spring and the fall events arrived on campus approximately four years ago as a cooperative project with the Grand Marais Area Tourism Association (GMATA).  Each year, we worked together to make the festivals more successful and dynamic. The results have been self-evident – comments from participants are almost always positive and enthusiastic.  In 2006, GMATA asked North House to take the festivals over entirely and stepped away, removing the primary funding source for the festivals.  Accordingly, North House is assessing how to make the festivals work within the school’s educational vision and administrative structure. 

Some transition in the festivals is necessary.  North House feels strongly that the festivals are very successful.  However, they require a disproportionate amount of staff time to manage.  Ideally, we’d like to maintain a focus on models that emphasizes abundant field-based exploration, shared small group experiences, and an overall commitment to cooperative learning.   Key components we need to think through are simplified scheduling, cost management, and fee structure, balanced with program quality.  Positioning guides to be an even-more central partner in the festivals may be part of the plan, as they personify the “craft” of observing and understanding the natural world.

For discussion purposes, outlined below are three examples of possible festival formats:

“CLASSIC  FIELD  TRIP”  BIRD  FESTIVAL

To date, the festival has utilized a “classic” bird festival structure that offers a menu of morning field trips complimented by workshops, speakers and even pre-festival courses: 

In many ways this structure works well, in part because it is time tested.  However, while it gives maximum flexibility to participants in terms of scheduling and planning, it offers significant logistical challenges managing the event from an enrollment and scheduling perspective.

This year, we’d like to look at and potentially experiment with options that participants and guides more actively shape the goals and field plans for each day.

“SESSION  BASED”  BIRD  FESTIVAL

 One potential vision for the future would simply have participants select whether they plan to participate in a three-day, a two-day or a one-day “session” that is part of the overall festival.  Each session would be hosted by a pair of instructors/guides and would have a series of field trips embedded within it (i.e for the three-day session on day #1 go east, on day #2 hike the harbor/point, on day #3 go west).  Field time would be emphasized but classroom time to discuss bird ID skills, share goals, review daily sightings could also be utilized by guides on an as-needed basis.  The sessions could extend into both an AM and PM slots depending on energy levels, future schedules, etc.  Evening activities may or may not be scheduled that would be shared by all of the participants in each of the sessions.  Some sessions could have a strong thematic focus such as “birding by ear” or “introduction to birding.” 

This vision positions each group of students and instructors/guides to build a strong working partnership that evolves as each day passes.  Plans for field trip destinations, departure/return times, etc. can all be adjusted.  In a sense each session is its own mini-course (much like Bob’s pre-festival courses) that share in the momentum of the other sessions that are underway.  Logistically for North House it allows the guides and the students to be in charge of each day, requiring less office coordination and oversight.

One advantage of this type of festival format is that is allows the two- and three-day participants to immerse into a birding experience, with the quality of the experience reflecting the planning done by and expertise of the instructor, and the sharing which occurs between participants.

“TOPIC  BASED”  BIRDING  FESTIVAL

A third vision/option for the festival would focus on afternoon multi-day, topic-focused courses that are complimented by morning field trips. To participate in the festival, participants would select the PM course of study that is of greatest interest to them and then they also get to participate in field trips each morning before courses in the afternoon.

Field trips might need to be shortened somewhat to insure that time and energy remain for the afternoon topic-focused courses.  Afternoon courses could return to the field as part of exploring their theme (i.e. field drawing) or might be entirely in the classroom (i.e. intro to woodcarving waterfowl).  With shortened field trip time in the AM, this plan may limit the range of destinations we can access, but it integrates shared topic-focused learning with free-form field trips.

No doubt, there are many other potential formats that could work as well.

Please note: we know that as the role of guides evolve or grow there will need to be an expanded level of compensation.  This is an important detail, but hopefully one we can leave to the next stage of discussion.

For now, your comments and ideas are needed!  Please feel free to share any thoughts you feel are appropriate and certainly feel free to call Rich, Sue or Greg if some conversation would help deepen your understanding of options.  In general, here are the types of questions we are hoping your comments might help us explore (but please don’t be limited by these questions in any way):

1. Have you experienced any of these alternate formats in other settings – either in festivals or conferences or other events - and how did they work?

 

2. Are there any of these formats you feel are completely unworkable?  

 

3. Is it realistic to ask guides to invest energy planning for how they will work together co-leading mutli-day sessions?  For example, while flexible enough to allow for last-minute changes and modifications based upon participants expertise and weather conditions, the second or “Session-Based” format requires the instructors work and plan in advance of the event to create a curriculum for the participants.  Is this achievable?

 

4.  Are there other organizational formats we are missing?  Please explain in detail. 

 

5. Do you personally support a particular format?  Would you be willing to instruct/lead using that format?

 

6. Is there a title other than “festival” that seems more appropriate to describe the alternative formats we are discussing?

Your involvement and talents have been central to the success of the festivals.  Thanks for your investment in helping the spring and fall programs emerge as the resources they have become!