Kelly Arnold graduated in May 2023 from NC State’s Public History Masters program. We reached out to her to share her story.
During my time in the Public History program, I worked at a historic Wake County park, served as a teaching assistant, and helped design two exhibits as a graduate student worker with the NCSU Libraries. My focus has mostly been Public Memory and Interpretation at Historic Sites and Homes. I currently serve as the Programs and Events Coordinator with the Alliance for Historic Hillsborough. In this position I help operate the town Visitor Center out of a historic home and plan programs ranging from walking tours to town wide festivals.
As the Programs and Events Coordinator for the Alliance for Historic Hillsborough, I get really unique opportunities to support the local historical organizations and cover different time periods from the town’s history through a lot of different programming mediums. For example, one of the first things I created after being hired was a walking tour exploring the history of the two mills and mill villages that were established in town at the turn of the 20th century. I’m also responsible for keeping some of the town’s traditional events like our Revolutionary War Living History going while also expanding them to tell more stories and interest more parts of the community. Most recently I had the opportunity to revive the Outlandish Hillsborough Scottish Festival which played on the town’s connection to the Outlander series but brought people in to learn about the true history behind Outlander and learn more about the Scottish cultural roots of the town.
My favorite aspect of programming that I get to help coordinate is the Telling the Full Story project. TTFS is an interactive map that uses oral histories to highlight under-recognized parts of the town’s Black and Indigenous history in the voices of the residents. The history and decision making comes from our committee members, all of whom are locals who have ties to the history being told. I’m incredibly lucky to be able to continue programming with this project, bringing it into the community, and am currently working to apply for the next grant to support a new phase of the project. Day to day I get to interact with our visitors and lovely volunteers helping to share everything the town has to offer, both past and present!
The MA program really helped shape the way that I go through the programming process from early conceptual development all the way through the evaluation and feedback process. I feel like my degree helped give me a strong base to build on as myself and the organization provides programming that is informative as well as fun and engaging for community members and visitors. Lastly, the program definitely helped me build a professional network since many of my friends and classmates from the program also work in the field and are always available to share ideas or think about collaboration.
