Advocacy

Volunteer at Historic Seattle!

Volunteer Opportunities - Advocacy

Historic Seattle is a catalyst for community preservation action, a proactive motivator for heritage issues, and a respondent to specific preservation issues, concerns, and opportunities. Christine Palmer is the Preservation Advocate for Historic Seattle. Advocacy takes many forms:

tracking the plans and policies of local, state, and national agencies and officials
attending and speaking at meetings of the local preservation commission
maintaining an interest in Seattle's built environment

The Advocacy program utilizes both volunteers and student interns which enables the organization to function with a powerful voice with policy makers, developers, and others who make decisions about the community's historic environment. Below is a list of the current opportunities:

ADVOCACY Volunteer Opportunities

Advocacy Records Management: Many documentary, photographic, map, and electronic resources are collected to keep the Preservation Advocate's files current. Those files no longer current need to be reviewed and archived at Historic Seattle's headquarters in the Dearborn House. This volunteer position requires extensive reading of local preservation literature and qualitative analysis to determine disposition, and must be performed at the Dearborn House.

Support data collection: The primary focus of Historic Seattle's Preservation Advocate activity is the creation of both proactive and reactive support for historic preservation efforts. To accomplish this, Historic Seattle's Preservation Advocate gathers information from a wide variety of sources including: phone calls received from concerned citizens, activists among Historic Seattle's Advocacy Committee and general membership, people engaged directly from Historic Seattle's development and education projects, staff members in the City of Seattle Historic Preservation office and in the King County Cultural Resources office, members of the media, as well as electronic resources. This information continuously supplements Historic Seattle's advocacy network, and identifies the issues and information crucial in creating preservation support systems.

Advocacy media scanner: Help Historic Seattle's Preservation Advocate scan for any electronic, print, or broadcast source referring to local historic preservation issues, concerns, or opportunities, as well as references to Historic Seattle's programs. This volunteer would be responsible for the collection of all the above references and maintenance of a reference file in the Advocate's office.

Online publishing: Advocacy content on the Historic Seattle website and in the online magazine, Preservation Seattle, is designed to educate would-be citizen advocates. Information about a variety of local, state, and national preservation issues and potential action items are described and explained. Articles from this online magazine have been reprinted in other publications and distributed through other digital advocacy networks. Guest authors are recruited by the Preservation Advocate and their products are edited by the Advocate prior to online publication.

Advocacy partnership coordinator: Link Historic Seattle's activities and activists with like-minded organizations (historical societies, arts and architecture groups, bipartisan political groups, etc.) who will work cooperatively on events, action items, and contribute articles to the online magazine. Historic Seattle's Preservation Advocate works to maintain relationships with individuals and groups including preservation-friendly developers, architects and preservation specialists, academic programs in history and preservation (and interdisciplinary programs interested in buildings), museums and historical societies, and organizations dedicated to the arts. This volunteer position would monitor activities of such organizations and suggest opportunities for cooperative endeavors.

Information dissemination: Historic Seattle's Advocacy program has tracked and sought solutions to systemic problems, such as city-wide policy issues that impede preservation, transportation-related projects, and preserving historic religious buildings. Historic Seattle's Preservation Advocate attends many City of Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board meetings and meetings of Seattle City Council's Urban Development and Planning Committee to provide information to the decision makers. This volunteer position would track issue development and provide input crucial to the presentation the Advocate presents to the decision makers.

Attend public meetings: Accompanied by Historic Seattle's Advocate, this volunteer would conduct preliminary research and observe public meeting proceedings first hand. This effort strengthens Historic Seattle's public visibility, and eventually this volunteer would be expected to attend public meetings alone. Then the volunteer would prepare a brief report regarding the public meeting proceedings for review by the Preservation Advocate and possible publication in the online magazine.

Research: Historic Seattle's Preservation Advocate provides information on preservation and historic research to the general public, with Historic Seattle’s website as the primary information source. The Advocate meets regularly with students, interns, professors, and those seeking jobs in the field to raise awareness of Historic Seattle as a learning place, and to nurture the next generation of preservation professionals. The Advocate regularly uses volunteer research to support informed advocacy planning.

Profiles of Citizen Advocates