Now Playing on YouTube

Sharing New England History ON YOUTUBE

by SAM NELSON Marketing and Communications Manager

Open any social media app or news site and you’ll notice an almost singularly dominant trend—video, video, and more video. Although the shift to audiovisual content is not a new phenomenon, video continues to become increasingly prioritized and integrated even across platforms that once deemed it second-string. While new video apps and formats have recently emerged, many organizations, including Historic New England, have turned back to YouTube to engage with audiences.

As with most trends we’ve watched arise since March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic fast-tracked the social media world’s focus on digital content. The advent of virtual events superseding in-person experiences meant that more people from more places could attend more diverse programs; naturally, YouTube became the platform of choice to disseminate that material. After a year and a half of these virtual events and with many more on the calendar, YouTube is a vital artery through which we connect with you.

If you missed a virtual program or want to revisit one you attended, check out our Virtual Events playlist on the Historic New England YouTube channel, where you’ll find recordings of past events. We’re always adding new videos to this playlist, so even if you don’t see what you’re looking for initially, it may be there when you check back later. Through the Virtual Events playlist, we delve into the lesser-known aspects of our community’s history—from “Early Turkish Immigrants to New England” to “Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights”—and stories of modern New England—like “Triple Decker: A New England Love Story” and “Energy Efficiency and Your Old Home.” These virtual lectures feature speakers from all over the world who are

leaders in their fields, and we’ve made them available to you for free on our channel. While the Virtual Events playlist is a newer addition to our channel, it is not the first time we’ve posted long form videos. For our Everyone’s History projects, we partner with communities and organizations throughout the region to collect and share stories of life in New England from the twentieth century and beyond. Many of these projects, including “Woolworth’s: Remembering Haverhill’s Shopping District” and “Back to School: Lessons from Norwich’s One-Room Schoolhouses,” yield half-hour or longer interview-based documentaries that illustrate New England’s changing Press landscape and are accessible indefinitely on our channel. There’s something for everyone on Historic New England’s YouTube channel, which is updated weekly. Apart PLAY from virtual event recordings and documentaries, our channel is home to videos of conservators restoring and cleaning objects from our collections, demos by our preservation services team, in-depth discussions about the artistic process and using different mediums, visual historic house and garden tours, archival footage, and much more. Among the recent additions are interviews with preservation philanthropy experts as part of our Leading Voices series and there are clips from our Make History streaming special about different topics in New England history. The scope of Historic New England’s mission goes far beyond our thirty-eight historic homes, farms, and landscapes and our YouTube videos are an audiovisual entrée into our broader research and work. Subscribe to YouTube.com/HistoricNewEngland and discover what makes this region and the people in it so special.