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Overloading your audience with facts and dates will be of no use. Visitors can only keep 5 or 6 facts in their short term memory. One way to approach the selection of information is to choose a central theme around which the interpretative message is delivered.
When selecting the information the first issue to tackle is the character of your public. Different audiences react in different ways to the information provided. You cannot deliver the same information to locals, seniors or children.
The characteristics of your public will give you information about its motivations and emotional expectations. According to Dr. T. T. Cable, interpreters must relate the subject to the lives of the audience in order to spark an interest. It is a fact that people will have stronger reactions when the presented information relates to them on an emotional level. Interpreters should be alert to this emotional connection and tailor their message accordingly.
When selecting information there are two types of elements to be considered: the tangible and the intangible. The tangible elements are physical, those things that can be touched, seen or experienced directly. The intangible qualities of an object belong to the realm of the symbolic and represent beliefs and values from which a culture is built up.
The most successful approach when creating an interpretative message is to merge these two aspects together, moving from the tangible to the intangible.
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When preparing an interpretative activity for the village of Jaraba, we have decided to target the group of senior citizens that visit the village for health reasons. They are middle-class and most of them can relate emotionally to the information of the rural world, as it is a familiar background for them. The theme we have chosen for this particular activity of interpretation is “Rural and traditional ways of life”, although other themes such as “Roman Past” or “Health and Water” are also a possibility. Thus, when interpreting the “peirones”, we will just mention their archaic origin and focus our message on their traditional and religious meaning, engaging the audience in an exchange of information about their own experience. We may even sing the popular song about the saint and engage our public in their own rendering of the piece. |
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Section 3.3: Identifying Your Public | Section 3.5: Organizing the Itinerary |
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