The History Center jumped head first into our first  Ithaca Loves Teachers Winter Recess as a member of the  Tompkins Center for History & Culture (TCHC). We hosted and collaborated on a whopping 10 events in just eight days, and had 754 visitors in the Exhibit Hall over the course of the week (to give a little perspective, our total number of visitors in January was 892). The Downtown Visitors Center run by  Visit Ithaca (a TCHC partner we share the first floor with) was one of two locations for the 6000+ Teachers Week participants to register, and through a lot of collaboration and communication between History Center staff and Visit Ithaca all our shared events over the course of the week went smoothly. 

These included an  Ithaca Kitty Loves Teachers - Sew Your Own workshop, Artisan Food & Cider Tasting, the exhibit opening for the Voting Vanguards Poster Project (an exhibit on display in the  CAP ArtSpace, and a collaboration with the  Dorothy Cotton Institute, another TCHC partner), three tours led by  Ithaca Heritage Ambassador Martha Preston, and the Henry Hinckley Chocolate Affair fundraiser hosted in partnership with  Historic Ithaca (also a TCHC partner), Lifelong, and  Ports of New York Winery . 

Moving into the TCHC building over the course of the last year, and settling into the changes and adjustments of a shared building and community space with 12 other organizations has been a learning experience for all of us. It was extremely rewarding for History Center staff to see what collaborative events between so many different partners could look like when executed on a large scale, and to see the ways our different skill sets and organizational missions complement each other. It was also exciting to get to share our new Exhibit Hall and Research Library with hundreds of educators who hadn't visited our new space yet.