Overview
This course of self-study can take you from novice to Audience Centered Experience ACE!
The Audience Centered Experience (ACE) approach to interpretation allows parks to become places where visitors can not only learn and enjoy, but also gain skills in critical thinking, problem solving, innovation, global awareness and scientific literacy. Rather than traditional one-sided presentations, modern park interpreters are using ACE techniques to adapt how they prepare and deliver programs and media products to meet the needs of the ever-changing public.
Download a complete PDF of the workbook, print yourself a copy and work through it at your own pace [updated Fall 2020].
Additional Resources
You can find many more resources on the fundamentals of ACE interpretation and helping audiences form their own deep connections with resources in the sections below, which mirror much of the ACE Workbook’s structure and offer you space to discuss with your peers:
- 21st Century Interpretation – The Shift and the Practice
- The Roots of Interpretation – Good Stories Well-Told
- Tilden’s Six Principles – The History of Meaning Making
- Rethinking “Content” – The Four Truths
- Essential Theme Questions – The Big Juicy So-Whats
- Dialogic Questions – “You” Questions for Audience Contribution
- The Arc of Dialogue – A Strategy for Scaffolding ACE Questions
- The MuseumHack Ethic – Traffic Light Experience Scaffolding
- Pop-Up Experiences – Short, Tasty and Meaningful Interactions
- ACE Interpretive Bingo – Starting Conversations about Our Work
- Recognizing and Reducing Bias – Looking through Johari’s Window
- Why Interpretation and Design?
- Techniques for ACE – Making Questions Easier to Answer
- Positive – Provisional – Specific – Quality
Looking For More on Audience Centered Experiences?
You can find links to seasonal lesson plans which support this emerging skill set in the Audience Centered Experience Trainers’ Guide.
I stumbled on this a while back and have only finally been able to work on my own workbook. I’ve been (almost desperately) wanting to attend the in-person ACE course for quite some time but various things have prevented me from doing so. But at least with the workbook and resource materials, I can do some self-study and explore the ACE concepts as I’m able to.
This is definitely for someone who can learn and study from printed/digital materials and doesn’t need classroom instruction. I haven’t looked yet, but if a group exists for ACE discussions, it might be useful to have a link to that forum so if someone needs to, they can get feedback as they work through the materials.
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This workbook and the associated lesson plans are great tools to use while putting together seasonal training. It walks through everything you need to introduce the new ideas and principles and make the shift from traditional interpretation to more audience-centered interpretation with your staff.
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We used this workbook and the trainer’s guide to help build the audience centered aspects of our seasonal training in 2017. We provided specific pages for staff, built sessions around the 4 truths, changing interpretation, and knowledge of self.
In addition, staff watched the great Pop-up example from Corinne at DEWA and used the pop-up development pages to start creating their own, during a training session.
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Great resource! I have been trying to take the ACE Forging Connections course but have not been able to find a class that worked with my schedule. This helped quite a bit to gain a better perspective of what ACE is and how to best use these techniques. I am recommending this for all of my staff to look over and we plan to utilize it more for annual seasonal training.
I just went through the online Dialogic Questions exercise and can easily relate it to the recent training I took at Harper’s Ferry as well as using the ACE workbook that really backs up these online lessons. The workbook is a great tool to refresh your memory for techniques, the purpose of 21st Century Interpretation, and getting your team to start brainstorming.
I plan on using this workbook with my team so that we can refresh our current programs and make them more inclusive with our visitors. What’s really great is that you can put any subject line in the workbook exercises to achieve a meaningful tool for your audience. It doesn’t matter if you are talking about history, resources, culture or any other subject. The workbook leads you through ideas that expand the options for whatever program you are trying to update, refresh or newly create. I am really grateful for this tool that we can use over and over again for every program, pop-up or theme we want to work on.
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