Brooklyn Public Library: Teacher Professional Development at Brooklyn Army Terminal

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Black and white photo of young boys standing in a construction site holding buckets with scaffolding and the Brooklyn Army Terminal behind them

Chancellor’s Day workshop for New York City teachers // 2019

Turnstile collaborated with Brooklyn Connections of the Brooklyn Public Library to develop and host a day-long professional development workshop for history and social studies teachers. The program included lectures and tours on the history of the Brooklyn Army Terminal and its transformation from a military base to a nonprofit industrial park. Brooklyn Connections provided participants with take-home primary sources and lesson ideas to help students create connections between major historical themes and local history through the Brooklyn Army Terminal.

Humanities New York: Designing for Public Engagement

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Mind map on a whiteboard of the Food Cart Tour,

Professional Development Workshop for Public Humanities Fellows // 2016–2018

Turnstile hosted a two-part professional development workshop for three cohorts of Public Humanities Ph.D. Fellows at Humanities New York that explored the challenges and opportunities of creating publicly accessible resources and programming with community partners, informants, and collaborators. Using the Food Cart Tour as a common reference point, combined with a series of facilitated activities, workshop participants shared ideas, questions, and concerns about their respective community-oriented projects, learned about and discussed logistical and ethical considerations for designing and implementing public-facing projects, and reviewed project management tools that support facilitating mutually beneficial collaboration with community partners.

CUNY Graduate Center: Workshop on Guided Tours

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Engaging Guided Tours: Techniques and Best Practices // 2016

On October 28, 2016, Cindy VandenBosch and Andrew Gustafson of Turnstile Tours led a workshop at the City University of New York’s Center for the Humanities as part of Afterlives: Place, Memory, Story, a day-long conference hosted by the Public History Collective. This workshop introduced attendees to best practices in developing and delivering guided tour experiences that are accessible, engaging, and rigorously researched. Through case studies drawn from Turnstile’s extensive experience in the field, and through modeling practices, participants learned about strategies for developing content for place-based learning, storytelling techniques, group management, as well as other approaches to ensure that visitors have an enjoyable and educational tour experience that is meaningfully connected to the tour’s location.

Singapore Tourism Board: Destination Experience Workshop

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Photo of the Singapore Merlion statue spraying water into a pool with people watching and city skyline in the distance

Presentations on tour development and storytelling // 2016

Turnstile’s Andrew Gustafson was invited to attend a two-day workshop in Singapore hosted by the Tourism Board’s Tour & Industry Development team and attended by local tour operators, attractions, and guides. Andrew facilitated a workshop and presentation, “Developing Quality Tour Content,” on tour development, guide training, and effective visitor engagement techniques, and delivered the keynote address on the second day of the program, “Delivering the Story: Storytelling Techniques for Guided Tours,” drawing on Turnstile Tours’ experience with multi-sensory engagement, narrative development, and guide evaluation. Andrew also visited several attractions in Singapore and provided feedback on guide technique and interpretation, including the Chinatown Heritage Center and Singapore City Tours.

Rochester Institute of Technology: Oral History in Museums and Public History

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Presentation at Rochester Institute of Technology, Department of Museum Studies // 2013

Cindy VandenBosch was invited to speak with students and faculty in an undergraduate Oral History class in the Department of Museum Studies about Turnstile’s experience collecting, preserving, and utilizing oral history in the creation of tours, public programs, and online content. She spoke about her experience documenting stories of vendors and neighborhood residents in and around Brooklyn’s Moore Street Market, the use of oral history in our programs at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and her past work at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

Singapore Tourism Board & National Heritage Board: Guided Tour Consulting

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Guided Tour Consulting for the Attractions and Experience Development Series in Singapore // 2013

Staff from Turnstile Tours and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum were invited to Singapore by the country’s Tourism Board, Association of Singapore Attractions, Workforce Development Agency, and the National Heritage Board to provide trainings and consultations on storytelling skills and developing more engaging, interactive guided tours for cultural institutions, tourist attractions, and tour companies. As part of a professional development series entitled “Delivering the Story,” Turnstile Tours’ Cindy VandenBosch and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum’s Director of Education Miriam Bader conducted a half-day seminar, full-day masterclass, and keynote lectures on topics such as multi-sensory engagement on tours, training and retaining guides, responding to visitor feedback, current trends and practices in museum education and tourism, and community-based partnerships for cultural programming. 

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NYC Museum Educators Roundtable: Oral History in a Public Context

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Presentation at the New York City Museum Educators Roundtable Annual Conference // 2013

“Oral History in a Public Context: Fostering Human Connections with Broader Public Meanings”

This conference session, organized by Cindy VandenBosch, included case study presentations and facilitated small group discussions to examine how oral history can be used effectively in a variety of museum-based projects, from apps to place-making activities, walking tours to educational programs, as a means of fostering personal connections with the past, and with broader public meanings. The goal of the session was to allow participants to discuss the challenges and rewards of documenting and telling the stories of people and places that are not well documented, and of using both old and new methods and technologies to connect the public with those stories, and their contemporary implications. Presenters included Cindy VandenBosch, who discussed Turnstile’s project to record 20+ oral histories with vendors and neighborhood residents in and around Brooklyn’s Moore Street Market, and Andrew Gustafson, who discussed the use of oral history in the Brooklyn Navy Yard World War II Tour to not only tell the stories of shipyard workers and sailors during this time period, but also as a tool to elicit tourgoers to share their own experiences and family stories. The panel also included Molly Garfinkel, director of Place Matters, and Hanna Griff-Sleven, Director of Cultural Programming at the Museum at Eldridge Street.