Great expectations: The public interpretation program for the Central Artery/Tunnel Project

Abstract

The scope-of-work for this contract called for preparation of a Public Education Plan including 1,200 hours of interpreter’s time, school visits, site visits and lab tours, site handout sheets, traveling slide lectures, popular reports, volunteer programs, teacher training, and outreach to the public schools. A full-scale Interpretive Plan was also to be prepared for the purpose of guiding a second, even more ambitious phase of interpretation: museum exhibits, videos, traveling exhibits, wide distribution of popular reports, and more. The Public Education Plan was implemented in full; the Interpretive Plan was abandoned. The limiting factors turned out to be both organizational and financial. Nevertheless, the public outreach aspect of this project was certainly one of the most ambitious and successful of recent decades.