Whether you are an affiliated area of the National Park System, an official park partner, a youth organization, or any organization that supports the mission of the NPS, your work helps us protect places across the country that connect us to our world, to our past, to ourselves, and to one another.
The Your Park Story campaign is designed showcase these stories of meaningful place-based experiences. Throughout 2023, we encourage our audiences to share and see others’ meaningful connections to these places.
In July and August, we’ll make a storytelling splash as the year-long campaign amps up toward the NPS birthday on August 25. If we all turn up the volume a bit throughout August, we can have a collective impact that benefits everyone.
So join us and let’s share some amazing stories!
Our Goals for the #YourParkStory Splash
The name says it all, right? We want to make a splash this summer! And we want it to ripple outward, too. We want folks to think about their connections to parks and the places impacted by our work and share their stories. And as much as possible—although it’s not any sort of requirement—we'd like to capture some of those stories and reflect them out, too.
Social Media
For the #YourParkStory Splash, invite the public to share their stories with you and us!
In July and August, we’re inviting the public and partners to share their stories via social media using the hashtags #YourParkStory and #MyParkStory for the chance to be highlighted on NPS national social media accounts. Stories can feature parks, programs, projects, heritage areas, volunteers, and any other aspect of our work. We will feature some of these stories on national social channels leading up to the NPS birthday on August 25.
Websites
Our partners and stakeholders contribute to the mission of the NPS and we want to hear from you. Tell the park stories and experiences that have left a mark on you and share them with your park or program partner so that they can include your experiences in their own storytelling. Don’t forget to include photos or other multimedia content.
- Stories can be crafted in a variety of approaches: Q&A format, free form/narrative writing, audio or video storytelling.
- Create a post on social media featuring your article, video, etc. and include the hashtags #YourParkStory or #MyParkStory (whichever works best for the grammar of the situation).
- Pitch some of the stories/connections to local media outlets
- Point media back to resources on NPS.gov like photo albums and articles.
- Incorporate the theme into your other communications—maybe add a story element into another product like a news release that is already planned.
In-Person Interpretive and Educational Experiences
Park partners can work with their colleagues in the park to offer in-person, audience-centered experiences to encourage #YourParkStory engagement and storytelling. Here are some thought-starters that you can use or adapt for in-person #YourParkStory audience engagement.What ideas can you come up with?
Create an area where visitors can share their stories.
- The selfie station returns!
- Invite visitors to snap pics or record their videos and post them using #MyParkStory and tagging you, your park, and the national NPS accounts.
- Set up temporary dialogic exhibits—we’re thinking whiteboards, post-its, notes in jars, etc.
Think about the “you” questions and prompts you could use to encourage visitors to engage and connect.
- What or who served as the impetus for your most (memorable, recent) national park experience?
- Parks and public lands are places where memories are made. What memories have you made that will fill your park story?
- Write a headline for a newspaper on how a park has made a difference in your life. Extra, extra read all about it….
- What park do you most closely identify with and why? Or what park most closely relates to your identity and why? This could include places where the NPS has engaged local communities in caring for special public spaces.
- How has a national park or another NPS-protected public space shaped your life today? Remember – there are 424 national parks, dozens of national heritage areas, national trails, and other public spaces across the country, not just the ones with “national park” in their names!
- How has a park experience inspired you? Write down the experience and mark the location on the map.
Offer Junior Ranger activities that encourage kids to think about their park stories.
Last updated: August 1, 2023