From the Producer

A team of historians and researchers led by Rob Armstrong is developing the historical content for the "pilot" episode which will cover a unique and dynamic period in Philadelphia's story-the end of the Civil War to the eve of the Centennial.  What happened here during those ten years will make your head spin.  It was also a time of tremendous racial tension and conflict as well as a time of prolific achievement. We think people will find the stories and the people that lived them fascinating and inspiring.  Rob will be working with three accomplished writers—Hal Gullan, Cordelia Biddle and Nathaniel Popkin—to mold the stories into a dramatic narrative and to produce the script.  We’re hoping to start production by the middle of December and be ready to present the pilot by the end of March 2009.  

Our plans for the web site continue to evolve.  We plan to produce a set of short features focusing on some of the very interesting stories not covered in the pilot and that emerged during the 1864-1875 period.  We’re looking at the history of early founding and formation of Fairmount Park, the role of women in medicine and the founding of Woman’s Medical College, the development of the Disston Saw Mill Company and the town of Tacony, the early days of baseball in the city and other equally fascinating subjects.  Each short would 5 minutes or so and would be called web-isodes. We hope to work with several producers to create these.  Our goal is to demonstrate how the film and the web go hand-in-hand, how one can compliment and augment the other.  We also want to create a very content rich web site that will become one of the “go to” places for Philadelphia history together with the web sites of the established historical institutions.  During the development phase, we’ll create the architecture for the web site but won’t build it to completion. 

We have also launched two advisory panels working on community engagement plans and on educational outreach plans.  Ken Finkel, now of Temple, is chairing the community engagement panel which has retained Baltimore based consultant/historian John Durel to write the plan that focuses on creative and innovative ways to involve people and institutions in creating and using content from this project.  V. Chapman-Smith, Regional Director of the National Archives, is chairing the educational outreach panel that will devise the best practices for using the project’s content in classrooms throughout the region.  We’ve completed two “brain storming” sessions with a group of 30 historians, authors and journalists knowledgeable about the city’s history.  To say the least, these sessions have opened our eyes to an incredible array of stories and characters which will enhance our production.  We are also getting a terrific glimpse inside of some pretty amazing minds that make up our city’s talented community of historians. 

By the end of March 2009, we hope to have a terrific pilot episode, a “kickin” website, plans for civic engagement and educational programming and a detailed written proposal which collectively will make the case why the Remaking of America’s First City: Philadelphia should get the financial support it needs to get produced!

VIDEO
A Conversation with
Dr. Gary B. Nash
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