Two weeks into the shutdown last year, we decided we needed to do something. We were canceling our programs and fundraisers left and right. We wanted to offer something to help people pass the time in what we naively thought would be a 2- to 3-month shut-down.
We dusted off a few programs we already previously presented at the Montclair History Center and decided to try them out on Zoom. On Thursday, April 3, at noon and 7 pm, we aired our first, free, History at Home program about groundbreaking women from Montclair. We learned a lot from that first program -- how to organize a Zoom call, how to mute someone, how to use the chat room – many things that have become second nature to us after a year of connecting via Zoom and other online conferencing services. We also realized we needed to record these programs for people who couldn’t join us live.
We continued to offer programs twice every Thursday through June, every other week in July, and took a hiatus in August. In September, we started back up with an every-other-Thursday schedule and have been doing it every since.
To date, we have 22 History at Home programs on our YouTube channel, covering topics about parks, people, architecture, books, neighborhoods, music, cemeteries, maps, the pandemic of 1918, and more. We’ve received many requests for the recorded version of our recent two-part Montclair Architecture 101 program, and that’s live now too. All in all, the History at Home programs on YouTube been viewed more than 2,000 times!
While many of the programs are Montclair-centric, there’s interest beyond the town’s borders. In fact, in a recent survey, about 70% of viewers said they tuned in from different towns, states, and even countries.
As Albert Einstein once said, “In the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity.” We were clearly in the midst of a crisis but these educational programs has been an opportunity for people to connect and a way for us to continue our programming. As one reader said, “your programs make history come alive, while [being] entertaining. They have been wonderful, produced under trying circumstances.”
We’re confident that even after the COVID crisis has passed, we’ll continue to offer these programs. Even COVID has a silver lining.