Friends of Garfield Park just wrapped up the progress report on our 2015 Grant from The Indianapolis Foundation, an affiliate of Central Indiana Community Foundation.
Thank you!!
We couldn’t have done this good work at Garfield Park without you! Some Highlights….
1. We fulfilled a significant component of the Garfield Park Cultural Landscape Report (CLR) conducted in 2004 by publishing the Historic Guide to Garfield Park, populating the hosted tour content, and installing the historical and artistic site markers in the Park to guide visitors to this expanded public knowledge. This furthers the recommendation for “Enhancing Park Interpretation and Public Knowledge.
2. We created stronger exposure and feelings for Garfield Park. (Buzz) Significant outcomes from marketing and communications outreach to promote Garfield Alive and use of Park assets including 10,000 plus visitors in the Park for the Independence Day Event featuring the Indianapolis Symphony and patriotic fireworks.
3. We accomplished the public launch of the Garfield Alive introducing the Visitor’s Guide to Historic Garfield Park. Since the public launch of the historic tour platform on July 3, 2015 we’ve attracted 938 inbound callers to the audio phone tour and 250 individual users to the mobile tour platform. We are very pleased with the traffic count represented with the results of the first 6 months of public availability.
4. Our followers on Facebook have expanded dramatically to1066 with this program, and as it turns out, Facebook is a great way to activate the neighborhood for bringing Garfield Alive. Participation in projects, programs, and ongoing advocacy for Garfield has grown exponentially with our professional and proactive approach to social media.
5. K-12 visitors increased significantly at Garfield Park for the first time in many years with 3559 student visitors recorded, including one major field trip with 138 second graders from Decatur Township that visited the Park in May 2015. We plan continuous outreach to educators and leaders particularly at the 15 schools we consider in the first circle field trip zone to Garfield Park. This represents an ongoing awareness campaign. We are also connecting to the educator community though our connection to Southeast Quality of Life (Education Task Force).