Essex National Heritage Area
Tom Leonard, President, ENHC

Tom Leonard,
President Emeritus, ENHC

Tom Leonard writes a monthly column for the community newspapers in the Essex National Heritage Area. This is a reprint of this month's column.
tleonard
at essexheritage.org.

Columns
Essex Heritage Using Technology to Communicate with the Region

Last month, in this space, we provided a recap of the activities that the Essex National Heritage Commission helped organize in 2006, and this now seems like a good time to look ahead to 2007. The next ten months will be a busy time, and the events and initiatives described will play an important role as the broad, collaborative community that makes up the ENHC works together to accomplish its mission.

Online Guides on the ENHC Web Site

During 2006 ENHC launched a pair of Online Guides to Essex County that proved to be most popular and heavily visited. Birding Sites in Essex County on the ENHC web site can be accessed at EssexHeritage.org/birding. This Online Guide has been wonderfully successful, since the launching of this “trail” thousands of birding enthusiasts have used the on line guide as a means to discover the best sites for both novice and experienced birdwatchers to catch a glimpse of the 400 plus types of birds that call Essex County home for a part of the year. The second Online Guide introduced in 2006 was developed in a collaborative effort with the Peabody Essex Museum and the North of Boston Convention and Visitor Bureau. This effort produced a Guide to Art Escapes in the region, which includes lists of historical societies, museums, galleries and artisans in the area, and celebrates the connections between art and place. Additional information about this Online Guide is available on EssexHeritage.org/artescapes.

In 2007 the ENHC will launch two more Online Guides. The first guide will be a Guide to First Period Architecture in Essex County that will be available in the first quarter of this year. The Guide will list dozens of homes, buildings and sites that tell the story of Seventeenth Century life in Massachusetts. Architecture enthusiasts can learn more about this initiative at the ENHC web log on First period Architecture at EssexHeritage.org/firstperiod. The other On Line Guide, to Farm Fresh Essex County will celebrate Essex County’s agricultural heritage and will allow residents and visitors to explore the area’s farms and active farm stands. That On Line Guide will be available in May 2007. All of this On Line Guide activity along with the many other ENHC initiatives has made the Essex Heritage web site at EssexHeritage.org a busy place in 2006. For the year just ended, the ENHC website had over 190,000 unique visits to the site, and that activity reflected a 15% increase over the previous year. We expect to see even greater visitation in 2007.

Monthly Electronic Newsletter Produced
The ENHC produces an electronic newsletter that is “mailed” to over 3800 “friends” of the ENHC each month. The newsletter provides information each month on the activities of the Commission, and provides to our hundreds of friends a wonderful vehicle that allows the chance to communicate with the region in a most efficient manner. The newsletter is free and to sign up to receive a copy every month simply go to the ENHC website at EssexHeritage.org or contact the newsletter editor Elizabeth Rankin at elizabethr at essexheritage.org.

ENHC Partnership Grant Program
The ENHC Partnership Grants were due on March 1, 2007. We are particularly pleased that in 2007 we will be able to fund more grants than in recent years. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts and our new Governor have provided first time funding for the ENHC and we are pleased to announce that much of that resource has been allocated to the Grant Program. This will allow ENHC to distribute funding to diverse projects across the region. The support received by ENHC from the State delegation that represents this region is much appreciated. We believe that adding additional resources to the Partnership Grant program is the best way we can say ”Thank You” to our area legislators. Without their ongoing support it would be difficult to continue our work, and this program continues to allow broad community access and help to fund meaningful individual regional programs.