Join the Conversation
Help us forge meaningful connections between the past, present and future.
Mackenzie Campbell speaks with guests during one of our Open Door Days last summer.
Hello! Thank you for visiting The Homestead Journal. In today’s article, we will be sharing some more details about our 2025 General Audience Survey.
Since 2015, we have been working hard to transform this special place into a thriving community hub. At The Brown Homestead we consider ourselves stewards of the past. We celebrate Niagara’s past and present, while promoting a brighter future through creative education, nurturing human connection and inspiring a growing passion for learning.
We have made some noteworthy progress over the past years in our efforts to grow our audience and reach more people in the Niagara community. All this time, we have been supported by incredible folks like you who believe in our mission, with a passion for preserving the built heritage structures and spaces that hold value for our communities today. This includes our visitors, volunteers, sponsors, partners, heritage contractors, event participants, and more. In particular, we have been thrilled to see the ever-growing community response to our programs, events, and online educational resources. It was so fulfilling to see families milling around the grounds this past summer, children colouring at picnic tables, and parents enjoying ice cream under the shade of the walnut grove. It was wonderful to have people attend our heritage crafts workshops and try out some natural paint pigments and historic stenciling techniques. It was similarly rewarding to be able to introduce community members to the provincial land registry system, teaching people how to research the history of their property. So many of you have come out to the Homestead in recent years for a free tour or a ticketed event, to listen to a guest speaker, to create works of art and learn about heritage trades, to pick up free seedlings, to take in a theatre performance, or to explore our local history in a variety of ways.
We want to continue offering programs like this, that are of meaningful value to our community. To do this, we must learn more about our audience.
“What are the demographics that make up our community? Who is visiting and engaging with our site, and who isn’t? How can we make you feel welcome here… and feel help you feel like this is a place where you belong?”
Achieving Economic Sustainability
As we work towards the future, it is critical that we complete a fulsome audience survey. Knowing where we want to be, years from now, requires an accurate understanding of where we are in the present. By gathering these statistics through our audience survey, we can better target our strengths and weaknesses, develop and deliver programs that matter to people, and continue building the community that needs to exist here for The Brown Homestead to continue to flourish. As a charitable organization with no government funding, we depend on this community support for our continued existence. Our diverse and growth-oriented business plan is therefore partially focused on investment in meaningful activities and programming.
So please, if you can, take a few minutes to fill out our general audience survey! When you do, we will enter your email address into our draw. We will be randomly selecting three winners from the draw, which closes on March 8, 2025. The winners can each select one $25 gift card from the following list:
a $25 gift card to Henry of Pelham Estate Winery;
a $25 gift card to Pique-Nique Cafe;
a $25 gift card to Lee Valley Tools;
a $25 gift card to Thistle Bookstore; or
a $25 gift card to the grocery store of your choice.
We will use the information gathered to help us develop a new Strategic Plan and guide our decision making for the years ahead. Thank you for your support!
Sara Nixon speaks about the agricultural history of The Brown Homestead with curious guests at the Lincoln Museum and Cultural Centre’s Harvest Pioneer Day festival in September, 2024.