Whitney Plantation Reaches Further with Audio (with Amber Mitchell)

DOWNLOAD TRANSCRIPT

Hannah Hethmon (Narration): Welcome back to We the Museum: a podcast for museum workers who want to form a more perfect institution.

I’m your host, Hannah Hethmon, Owner and Executive Producer at Better Lemon Creative Audio, where I make podcasts for museums, history organizations, and other cultural nonprofits.

In this episode, we’re taking a look at how the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana is taking their work a step further through two audio projects: their first audio tour for onsite visitors *and* a podcast about the challenging work of interpreting slavery from the perspective of the enslaved at a site of enslavement. My guest is Amber Mitchell, Director of Education at Whitney Plantation. Located just outside of New Orleans, Whitney is unique among plantation sites, especially in Louisiana. You don’t go there to admire the beauty of the big house or get a whitewashed version of the antebellum south. That’s because Whitney is the only former plantation site in Louisiana with an exclusive focus on slavery and the generations of Africans and their descendants who lived and were enslaved on the plantation.

Before we jump into that conversation, I want to shout out our show sponsor, Landslide Creative. This podcast would not be happening without their support. Landslide Creative provides custom website design and development for museums who want to increase their engagement and connect with their visitors, donors and volunteers. With a custom website designed for the unique needs of your museum you can stop fighting with your website and focus on growing your impact. Head over to LandslideCreative.com to learn more.

Alright, let’s talk audio projects at Whitney with Amber Mitchell:

Amber Mitchell: I ended up here in June of 2021 after some stints had some local institutions in New Orleans and came here with the unique opportunity to be able to build out an education department that centers and elevates the stories of enslaved Africans, African-Americans, and Creoles of color using the space that we’re in as my classroom.

And so we have had some unique opportunities over the last year and a half to build out a brand new department to welcome all kinds of visitors, but especially our youth and school group visitors via my team where we have just the amazing opportunity to be able to share this history, but also to empower students to use this history as a tool for their own liberation. So we like to say that education leads to liberation around here.

And there’s no better place to learn about how that is when you’re actually in the space where people weren’t allowed to learn. It’s very exciting to be able to do that.

Hannah Hethmon: Is this new department part of the shift after 2019, right? Can you just like say a few words about the shift from, I think private ownership right to being a nonprofit?

Amber Mitchell: Yeah, so the site itself was founded and open to the public in 2014 specifically for the goal of telling stories about slavery. And then in 2019 December 2019, we became a 501c3 nonprofit. So a complete transition, which allows us to—rather than have the full guidance and control of a singular person—a private owner of the site—we can work towards grants and other sorts of outside funding to be able to gain more support from stakeholders both internally and externally.

It’s been an interesting transition because December 2019 was right before the end of the world. And you know, since then there’s been a pandemic. We’re arguably still in a pandemic, but we’ve been in a pandemic. In August of 2021, we were hit by a category five hurricane, which also impacted our site, which made us have to close after reopening from the pandemic close back to repair the site. Although we’ve reopened, we’re still in recovery mode from that experience. Although challenging, it’s been really great, we’ve had a really great team and ability to grow our team using the resources that are now at our fingertips based on being a nonprofit.

Hannah Hethmon: Yeah. So grants leads us into what we’re gonna talk about today. Both these are grant-funded projects, the audio tour, the new audio tour that’s app-based. And then a podcast, Tilling the Soil. And I’m always a fan of podcasts, so definitely wanna talk about those. But let’s start with the audio tour. So this is Whitney’s first audio tour, right? Why an audio tour now?

Amber Mitchell: So the audio tour actually was in development well before any of the emergencies came about. Prior to my coming on, my Executive Director and other members of the team realized that although we were primarily a guided experience guided by historic interpreters through the site for the majority of our visitorship—well, excuse me, not the majority, all of our visitorship, that was the only option—we realized that there were some levels of engagement that we were missing based on the fact that, you know, there’s language barriers, there’s accessibility issues, there’s also a lack of consistency when you have the unique opportunity to be able to have people who are really passionate about this history, giving the history. There’s also a lack of a consistent story that’s always told every time. And so to be able to fill that need of being able to to tell this history consistently every time and to as wide of an audience as possible. they started developing this program in, I believe it was 2019, 2020.

It became a lifeline once the pandemic really hit and we just were not able to safely have our staff out on the grounds and leading tours. And so by the time the pandemic really came in a full swing in March of 2020, we had closed down like many other sites had closed down. And so when we were able to reopen a year later, in about February of 2021, that was the only way for us to safely deliver tours for guests who were coming in.

As I mentioned, this was already in process, but the tour itself has its own script. It has its own unique storyline that allows us to explore various topics that we can’t necessarily go into fully on-site with a face-to-face conversation. And it’s primarily allowed us to welcome more guests.

So usually there was a set number of people who could go on a guided tour. Now, when folks come in, they can—as long as we have devices available, which we purchase from Acoustiguide who created our audio tour, or people are able to download the Whitney Plantation app on their phone completely for free and listen to it at their own pace—people come in when they want to borrow the devices and then set off on the site.

It also gives people more of an opportunity to spend more time here because our traditional tour would likely be done between 45 minutes and an hour and 15 minutes. And the only way for people to experience the site was to be walked through with staff.

Since the audio tour people are allowed to be on the site as long as they would like, we don’t kick anyone out if they are really here and absorbing the information and really going through all of what it is to offer on the app and via the device. They’re both the exact same tour of the exact same information. And so it lets people engage with us a lot deeper than before.

A challenge for us in introducing the audio tour was the loss of the human element. there’s a certain magic that is palpable here at Whitney Plantation when you’re engaging with our staff, who the vast majority are descendants of enslaved people, some from this very plantation and some from other places, like myself.

And so there is a richness of experience and just something that’s indescribable that you get from interacting with people in a space like this one and interacting with a trained staff and an excellent staff like we have in this space. And also, I mean, these are folks who are employed, right? So they all are very passionate about this history and they all deserve to be paid. So we were all just thinking about, well, how do we introduce this audio tour that has become really important to us, but also not lose that human element?

And so, you know, over the past year and a half we’ve been testing out different ways of balancing out when do we roll out the audio tour, how do we also still have guided tours? So as of right now, we’re doing both. We offer set times for guided tours that are pre-registered. They’re on a first come, first serve basis. And the rest of the tours throughout the day are via audio tour. And for some people, they’re fine with audio tours. For others, they want that extra special touch of that human element and just the extra bonus that comes with that. But I will say for large groups that come here, their only option is the audio tour. At this point, like most other places, we’re also dealing with staff challenges and not having enough staff to be able to fulfill the need. So the audio tour still comes in clutch for big bus tours and tour companies that come here and are able to still get an experience with us.

Hannah Hethmon: That’s great. I visited the plantation in I think 2016, and took the in-person tour and it was incredibly memorable. It’s one of those things, you don’t really forget the content, and you don’t forget the person who guided you. Like I can picture him very clearly compared to some other, you know, in-person tours that may be less memorable at other places. So it’s really memorable. So it’s interesting to compare that to the app and I was gonna just like listen to a few in using the app. I was just gonna listen to a few of the stops on the audio tour. But I started at one and then I couldn’t stop. It was really engaging and I felt it, it kind of, it had that really narrative feel. There’s three voices—I’m gonna describe a little bit—there’s three voices that you hear on the app. There’s a narrator intermixed with Ashley Rogers, your executive director, and Dr. Seck, your director of research, um, who have different voices. So you, and then a little bit of archival audio as well, like on the WPA oral histories. And so, um, it was really interesting to hear. Intermixed rather than just a narrator telling you the information. It felt kind of like that podcast listening experience that I like, like a narrative history podcast.

I felt like the pieces of the story coming together and even though some of it, I’m like, oh, I had heard that and I remembered that I wanted to hear it again and I wanted to hear how it was framed differently. It’s an interesting tour. And so I guess my question then is you, you’re a little, you came in after the tour’s already in development.

But speaking to the strategy generally, were there kind of like key, what do we want to do in an audio tour? Like what are the must-haves, what do we wanna accomplish that other audio tours don’t or that some audio tours don’t? And conversely, is there anything you wanted to avoid from, uh, audio tours generally? Things that were like, we don’t want to do this in our audio tour.
Amber Mitchell: Yeah, that’s a great question. So I, I think from, after speaking with other staff who were involved with that process, I think what was really important for them was that if we were gonna spend all this money on an audio tour, it better be something that is memorable for people that will keep people wanting to return to that information and really be a resource for a lot of folks who engage with us whether that be here on-site or online, we are their first stop on their journey to learning about the history of slavery from the perspective of those who built this country. Right? And I’m not saying like built this country figuratively—literally.  their labor, whether that be a physical, emotional, mental, and reproductive labor. Right? And so it was really important for us at the same time, while realizing that and centering things like that to also not re-traumatize people.

That’s very purposeful for us both onsite in the daily work. In our long-term strategy is like our goal is not to make people feel bad. Our goal is to empower you with this history to then start your journey or use us as a launching pad to be able to be more informed about how the history of slavery. informs everything else within American society, an arguably global society, right? And so that takes a little bit of collaboration. there were several visits, oh, and I’m looking at my notes here, so I’m sorry, lemme cut that out. But there were several visits with acoustic guide. where they were walking through the site with the team, getting the feel for who we are. Cause I think for a lot of people, when they think about plantations, they have a very very different thing in mind when than when they Yes. Right. And so it’s always better for folks when they’re like, “oh, well, you know, we’re gonna come and talk about Whitney” and blah, blah. I’m like, you need to come here first. So you even just realize, just blast out all of your preconceived notions, right? So, and that was the same with Acoustic Guide. They had to come out here, they visited with us, they were in the spaces, they were talking to staff. It was a collaborative writing of this tour. So in addition to acoustic guide doing a lot of editing and things like that, our Executive Director, our Director of Research and our director of operations and interpretation at the time, they all worked very closely together to make sure that the story was correct and also deciding what things do we supplement in here? What recordings do we use? What images do we use? What stories are highlighted and when on-site?

Right. Because we are a mix of, for people who haven’t visited us before, we are a collection of buildings that were brought here for the specific goal of interpretation and preservation. We’re a collection of buildings that were originally here. The site has been in existence since 1752, so we’re 270 years old. And then the last part, we are a collection of monuments and memorials about remembrance, right? So there are certain ways in certain places that we talk about this history that looks a little bit different, so we had to figure out how to translate that.

And then also lastly, which is I think kind of unique to our tour, at least I’ve never done an audio tour like ours and had this element is choosing voice actors. So we had to figure out— because our tour is offered in five different languages—and we had to figure out whose voice do we use to translate this history into all of these different languages?

Right. So obviously we’re, we’re, we’re in America, so we’re speaking English. We are a very French-heavy site, right? So obviously history of France and colonization. So we have to have French. We have Spanish offered as well. Another part of our history as a colonial product of Spain as well. We have German and we also have, I believe it’s Mandarin Chinese.

So how do we figure out how to translate every little bit of nuance on-site into these five different languages and be able to convey that in tone, right? Because they’ll never see that person’s face.

Hannah Hethmon: That’s a huge undertaking.

Amber Mitchell: So it’s, it was a lot. That’s why it took so long, right? They had to be very intentional about intentional about every aspect of the tour.

And I think what’s come out of it is a  wonderful. Wonderful offering that is free and available for anybody. You don’t have to be here on site to take our tour. but I will say that it hits different when you are actually here. Right. and I mean, AAM also thought that that was true too cuz we got an award for it, a bronze award in 2021. So, I mean, not to toot our own horn, but I’m, I’m gonna.

Hannah Hethmon: Yeah, please do. Just slide that award right into the conversation. That’s what I do with my AAM award.

[Musical ding for sponsor break]

Hannah Hethmon (Narration): We’ll be right back to my conversation with Amber  Mitchell, but first, it’s time for a digital minute with Amanda Dyer, Creative Director at Landslide Creative:

Amanda Dyer:  Hi, I’m Amanda Dyer, creative Director at Landslide Creative, and I’ve got a quick tip you can use to improve your museum website. Most websites now see the majority of their traffic come from people on mobile devices, but if you’re like me, you typically access your own website on your desktop computer while you’re at work.

That means there could be issues on your mobile site that you haven’t noticed, but your visitors will notice. Take some time to browse your website. Try doing common tasks like find your opening hours or current exhibitions, purchase a ticket, renew your membership. Find an upcoming event in register.

Fill out your contact form if you encounter any barriers or moments of frustration while completing these tasks. You’ll know where to focus your efforts. Any updates you make to your mobile site can dramatically improve the user experience for the majority of your visitors. Get more tips for optimizing your site at landslidecreative.com/mobile.

Hannah Hethmon (Narration): Now back to the episode.

[Musical ding to end sponsor break]

Yeah, it’s interesting talking about the, the translation because I, one of the things I noted was, The language seemed both, um, like when, uh, Ashley and when Dr. Seck are talking, it feels a little conversational like you might have caught them in the two, in the midst of a tour, but at the same time, the language is very specific…it’s very measured and very careful. But I remember just coming across one that says something like they cons, the plantations “consumed” a lot of labor or a lot of people, and I just, that that word stuck out and it did so much work to change the way you’re thinking about the entire operation without having to go into a lot of detail, without having to even tell a story or an anecdote, just that one word did a lot of work. So I can imagine doing that in five, six languages is, was quite the operation. So before we move on to the podcast, talking about the podcast, um, do you have a favorite moment of the tour or a part that you think is most impactful? Or maybe that you’ve heard is most impactful.

Amber Mitchell: It’s hard for me to talk about a favorite part of of our site because it all works together so well. But I would say that where people really seem to get what we’re doing, is when we’re in the field of angels and we’re talking about mothers and children and how we remember.
People. Right. So for those of you who haven’t visited the Field of Angels is our monument to the over 22,000 children and their mothers who we know of in this area that passed away before the age of five.

Hannah (Narration): I’m going to jump in here in post—before you hear Amber talk about the Field of Angels stop, let me play you the actual clip from the audio tour, which she was kind enough to send me to use on the show. It’s two minutes long:

[Audio from Field of angels tour stop plays – a transcript can be found by accessing the tour on the app store. Search “Whitney Plantation” to view the entire audio tour alongside transcripts of the content]

Amber Mitchell: Sugar is a very intense crop to grow, and mothers worked until the day they gave birth in Louisiana.

And oftentimes that meant that you have children who are already born, underweight and sickly who have to then survive outside of the womb. And then you also are in the middle of, you’re in, we’re in the northernmost part of the tropics. So you have all the environmental born illnesses, you have mosquitoes, there’s cholera, there’s yellow fever, there’s all of just the basic stuff that we get inoculated for today on top of the extra harm of being a child born, a Black child born under enslavement in the United States. And so in that space for people, that’s when they really get it. When was the last time you saw a monument to mothers and children? When was the last time you saw a monument to a Black mother and child? And who gets to be remembered and how and why?

And so as part of that audio tour, that’s where people kind of linger the longest in our monuments is not just reading the things on the walls around the statue, but looking at the statue and really just kind of sitting with this. This moment of understanding that these people were people and that there were a lot of people who did not survive and didn’t even get a real chance to live under this system.

Hannah Hethmon: Hmm. And I think it’s very impressive that that’s been conveyed through the audio tour. Again, like you’re talking about with the in-person experience, it’s very powerful, but to be able to translate that into an app essentially or a device-to-person experience, I think is a sign of success.

Hannah (Narration): I’m sure many of you are curious about the budget for this audio tour. Amber didn’t have the numbers on hand during our chat, but she was able to get that info to me afterward. The whole project was about $150,000. That was for the creation of the English language tour, which had a writer and audio engineers, plus a voice actor as the main narrator, and then the translation and delivery of the tour into French, Spanish, German, Italian, and Mandarin. They had a major grant to help with this project: $75,000 came from the Peck-Stacpoole Foundation.

Hannah Hethmon: So, moving on to the podcast, Tilling the Soil. Do you wanna describe in your own words really quickly what the podcast is, what you’re trying to do.

Amber Mitchell: Sure. So Tilling the Soil is a—how do I describe my little baby Tilling the Soil? So, so Tilling the Soil is essentially a conversation or a set of conversations that explore the reasons why Whitney Plantation is the way that it is as it stood by the summer of 2022. It really came from overhearing conversations at our front desk, especially with African American visitors who, once they get here and see that the majority of our staff who are doing the interpretive work day in and day out are also Black, we get this interesting question that I, that I have not really gotten in other museum positions, and that is “What is it like working here—specifically at a plantation—as a Black person? What is it like dealing with this history day in and day out? Like why are you here?”Or “Why would you ever want to work here?” That’s really what the really question is because for a lot of people, you know, especially African Americans, we left the South and we don’t want to go back to it. Especially not to sites of injustice, levels of harm that are unimaginable to our current psyche. Right? And so to step into a space like Whitney Plantation and at the front door you see Blackety Black Black staff all over the place, you’re being guided through the site by Black tour guides, you’re being confronted with this history and the way that we do it. There’s a lot of background work that goes into this, right? And we have to, even before people come here, and even before, you know, we have to come in every day as staff. There are things that we have to confront within ourselves. And so whether that be history, whether that be emotions, whether that be people projecting ideas about what this history is and isn’t and their own lived realities under this history, whether that be the history itself or at, during the event, the legacy of what happened afterward, we have to, to work through that.

And myself and our former director of marketing, Dr. Joy Banner, we’re just sitting around. I was just like, we sit and talk about this all day. You know, people really should hear about this. People would have a much better appreciation for the amount of work that goes into just unlocking the doors to this place every day if they understood why we are the challenging place that we are for not just white folks from this area, not just Black folks from this area, but for everybody.

And so I’d like to describe Tilling the Soil as my own personal love letter to Black public history, because I’m a public historian by training it’s what I have been in since I was a teenager. And so I’m always thinking about, well, what’s the history of the history? How do we get here? And then also like, so why do we do things in the way that we do them? Where does this come from? And so through exploring these topics on Tilling a Soil about well, what is a plantation museum? What’s a Black museum? What is plantation tourism? What does it mean to have an equitable workplace that’s literally at the home of inequity, right? And be able to explore these topics that are really important to public historians and museum people. And may not be a thought that general visitors have. Because all of this intersects in such a unique way at our site. And so it’s been a wonderful experience to be able to do it.

It is 11 episodes long and every single one of them has such a unique take on this history. It’s hard to get bored, and I’m so proud of my little podcast that could, that was just me, you know, sitting in my office being like, you know what? People should really hear my thoughts on these things.

Hannah Hethmon: [Laughs] Well, you know, it, it’s a lot more than just your thoughts. I, I think, like you said, it’s really hard to get bored. I mean, you start in with like episode one and it’s like, well, let’s talk about the history of how people saw plantations in the media and in popular culture and how that completely shaped everyone’s understanding of what a plantation is and created this whole like, you know, myth of the plantation even before Gone with the Wind. And that’s fascinating. And then the discussion on labor. You know, we don’t do unpaid interns. How do we pay people? What does it mean? How do we take care of our staff in a place where people were specifically, you know, abused in the sphere of labor and talking about descendant communities.

I listened to a few episodes and it was just so much to think about, and I think like you’re saying. for the public history audience, for the museum audience, it’s a fascinating look into how do you make a place like Whitney work and how do you engage with these ideas as staff, which again, seems very hard, but also I think it’s really instructive for everyone listening because it’s so focused where you are and it’s so obvious that these are the issues that you have to deal with.

But, you know, fair labor in museums, this is happening elsewhere. Racism and Jim Crow and slavery obviously didn’t just happen down in Louisiana. So being able to see it so clearly here, it could be very useful for other people to be able to then map those things onto their institutions and the questions that they’re dealing with.

Amber Mitchell: Absolutely. I mean, although we are obviously using the history of slavery and the African American experience as our jumping-off point, all of these things are activities that are happening elsewhere. There is, there is a long history of museums and museology and public history. Right? And no place that is open and available to the public is going to exist in a vacuum where none of those things are at play, right? So even though we use our own lived experience, or I use my own lived experience as a historian, but also as an African American woman to guide those conversations, the underlying course of them are how do we have an equitable, accessible institution that realizes that maybe it came from really backwards ways of thinking as its origins, but how can we prepare for the 22nd century of museums, right?

How can we make sure that we stay relevant because, frankly, being an accessible institution is not just making sure that people can enter your space, it’s also saying that people can enter your space where they are, be informed and empowered and take that elsewhere, but that you’re also empowering your staff and making sure they have what they need to do their best work, and that you’re constantly thinking about how do we as an organization cause more intentional good rather than careless harm? Because nonprofit organizations at their core can be exploitive, not can be, they are exploitive. Look at me being gracious. They can’t. They are exploitative at their root.

We are in a white supremacist, capitalist patriarchal society. It is what it is. So we have to actively think about and fight against the origins of our field and our organizations to make sure that we are going to survive for the next 5, 10, 20, 30, hundred years. Right.

Hannah Hethmon: Yeah. I love that. And I think everyone listening, you should go listen to the podcast.

Do you wanna say really quickly, like how you make the podcast and what the kind of practical aspect behind it is?

So we got a grant from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Rebirth Grant program in 2021 to be able to do this project. And I really had no idea what to do.

So we reached out to a friend Mark from Beyond Bourbon Street, which is a podcast that highlights various tourism-related places in the new Orleans area. and he gave some recommendations on some folks to contact, mainly an editor that he works with—shout out to—Joel Sharpton with Pro Podcasting Services—who took us under his wing and was like, sure, I’ll, I’ll do this. I’ll give y’all a discounted rate to be able to do this work cause I just am really excited about this podcast. And I was like, okay, cool. So that problem is solved. Now we have to figure this out.

Hannah Hethmon: Now what do we talk about?

Amber Mitchell: Well we had kind of an idea of what we were gonna talk about beforehand, but we had to really put pen to paper and figure that out.
So Joy and I spent many meetings just kind of listing out what we wanted to talk about how we should order it, things like that. And then just started reaching out to colleagues in the field, people who we either already knew or knew of. We paid everybody for their time and their experience cause I don’t believe in not paying people for their experience, especially sharing it and the way that they did with us. And then we just recorded on Zoom. It’s, it’s going to sound so low tech because it was, but we used the technology we had.

Hannah Hethmon: Remote recording is great. I love it.

Amber Mitchell: Right, right. So we, we used Zoom and our handheld phones and sat and recorded and it just, I mean, through the magic of editing you know, Joel was able to take some at times bad audio and turn it into something that is just wonderful. And so then we also worked with a graphic artist to really be intentional about the images that we use for each episode as well. It was originally 10 episodes. but then we had we had an event happen where people were talking about plantation sites being used as Airbnbs. And we had the unique opportunity to be able to talk to the person who kind of relaunched the conversation on social media. And so to be a little bit more responsive. So we after, you know, talking to him and having this really like immediate episode about something that was happening right then and in that moment it became 11 episodes. And what I think what I love most about what our podcast does is that over time, you know, from the big, very beginning of the podcast, that seems very much hard facts and like this is the history of the history. We sort of transition over by the end into something that’s a bit more raw emotion, right? Because we are talking to staff, we’re having these really deep conversations about what we do in and out daily and we don’t hold back about some of these challenges and unique situations that we’re in, especially when at the time the majority of our team was was Black female. And talking about what does that mean to be guiding through, guiding this history through us, right?

Hannah Hethmon: Yeah, it’s a great body of work on, on its own. So actually finally last question, I promise. These are two audio projects. Do you have any thoughts generally on using audio to communicate, to engage people with this site and its history, whether it’s on that kind of, “here’s what happened here” level of the tour, or “here’s how we work through what happened here in order to talk about what happened here” level like the podcast?

Amber Mitchell: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I think that audio as an engagement or programming tool is just another thing in your arsenal and it has been wonderful for us to be able to offer various ways for people to engage with us when they’re both here and when they’re offsite, to give them things to think about.

Because you know, as I said, I’ve been in museums for a long time. And I’ve interacted with the public in several different ways, but something that that kind of irks me about the public is that you know, they come in and they just wanna mindlessly consume and then leave. And it’s just like, well, that’s just not how actually this history—not just this history, but any sort of historical institution, cultural institution, whatnot, works, right?

You’re bringing in a lot of stuff, whether you know it or not that you’re dealing with when you’re here on site as staff, we’re here and we’re engaging with people who are coming from all over the world who are bringing in their own understanding of this history, tugging their own wagon behind them. And sometimes they leave things behind and then they go forward. Right? How do we make sure that they can, can, can continue to engage with what we’re doing and can channel the energy that hopefully, they take from their visit into action and so these audio programs allow us to go a little further than we might have been able to otherwise.

And I mean, when you add in offsite engagement, when the vast majority of people are likely never gonna be able to come to us, but can still engage with us, that’s a win like, that’s a w.

Hannah Hethmon: Great. Well, thank you so much for sharing your time and talking all about this. It’s nice that people can go listen to both of these right away and I’ll, I’ll put that information in the show notes for people.

Amber Mitchell:  Thank you for the invite, Hannah. I really appreciate it.

Hannah Hethmon (Narration): Thanks for listening to We the Museum. You’ve been listening to my conversation with Amber Mitchell, — at Whitney Plantation. My thanks to Amber for her time and insights.

For show notes and a transcript of this episode, visit the show website: WeTheMuseum.com. If you’d like to listen to the Whitney Plantation audio tour, you can access it for free via your smart phone by searching “Whitney Plantation” in your app store. You can find their podcast, Tilling the Soil, wherever you get your podcasts. I’ll also link to both of these things in the show notes.

Once again, a big thank you to our show sponsor, Landslide Creative. Making a podcast takes a lot of time and energy, and I wouldn’t be able to set aside the space to make this show without Landslide Creative’s financial support. If your museum is considering a new website, definitely make Landslide Creative your first stop.

And I’ve been your host, Hannah Hethmon. As Owner and Executive Producer at Better Lemon Creative Audio, I help museums around the world plan, produce, and edit podcasts that advance their missions. Find out more about my work at BetterLemonaudio.com