“No Gatekeepers” Part 1: Make your own guerrilla National Parks Guides

I was living in New York City in the early 2000s when iPods came out. The beauty of the iPod was that anyone could make and share audio content that could be downloaded and available in anyone’s pocket anytime. One of the most interesting developments was that people started making their own audio tours of the city’s art museums and sharing them online for free. There were niche tours that focused on certain themes. There were tours that focused on lesser known works on display. There were many irreverent and spicy tours that caused some giggling the galleries.

Museum staff did not like this development. They had created their own audio tours and thought their expertise was valuable and saw the self-made audio tours as dismissing their knowledge. They thought that the audience was losing out on not having their voice in their ears, and could even be led astray by either experts that didn’t work for them or regular people commenting on the art work. Plus, they were competition for dollars as well as message: the museum generated revenue from renting the audio tours on their own devices. I remember hearing about museums trying to ban iPods from the galleries, but that may be apocryphal. In any event, it was some of the most earnest pearl-clutching I’ve ever seen and fascinating to watch develop. Not only did the museums look like micromanagers, they looked like they were against having any fun.

However, there’s no use shouting at the ocean to stop the waves, and the rogue audio tours trend was impossible to control. Museums finally embraced the changing times and started distributing their own audio guides free via download or podcast and the rented audio guides have largely gone away. And the museums finally realized that creating an audio guide was a sign of engagement and interest and actually a positive action for museum goers to be taking. Relinquishing total control was actually good for them.

I thought of that moment in cultural history when I heard about the instructions given to all sites in the National Parks Service to post signs encouraging visitors to share feedback when they see signage that they think describes America in a negative light, whatever that means. Of course I disagree with that policy and think it’s unwise for many reasons.

But don’t despair. The National Parks Service does not have a monopoly on what people can say about their sites. Anyone who wanted to could make their own guides to the parks and share whatever perspective on history that they want. They could be shared online through websites and social media could help spread the word about them. They could be audio guides, podcasts, videos, written material, anything. QR codes or could covertly be posted on stickers at the sites themselves so visitors could find them. Sure, they’ll get taken down when they’re spotted, but the chase is part of the protest.

So don’t let the people trying to control the flow of information about our culture get away with it. Let’s encourage a bit of guerrilla tactics to make sure free speech continues to flourish.

Tomorrow I’ll share another fun protest tactic: yarnbombing.