Hey, docents, have you been enjoying our Walks Down Memory Lane, celebrating 50 years of the docent corps? We’ve buried you in nostalgia on The Bridge, in our video programs, and with our 50th Anniversary Book (if you haven’t yet picked up your copy, get it in the Docent Library…it’s terrific!). It’s been a blast remembering the origins of our fabulous docent organization, and you may be wondering—where do we go from here? Remember when your high school yearbook staff asked you to predict who was most likely to succeed? Who was destined to run for and win political office? Who would become principal of the school one day?
Since our celebration of the past is drawing to a close, we’d like to turn our collective attention to our future. When our 75th anniversary arrives, what will we be celebrating? Who will we celebrate? What will we have achieved? Where will CAC stand in the pantheon of Chicago cultural institutions? Will we still be giving walking tours? River tours? Neighborhood tours? What will our training program look like? Will the Center still be located on Wacker Drive? What will be new and different about Chicago? Let’s create a group prophecy and a time capsule to be opened at that milestone.
We need your help! Please put your inhibitions aside and get creative with the most interesting and far out predictions you can divine. Feel free to name names and share details, all in good humor and good fun, of course. Here are a couple of examples:
Tom Drebenstedt will still be giving tours of bungalows and Galewood.
Amelia Duda is beginning her new position as Manager of Volunteer Engagement, taking the reins from mom, Caroline Duda, who is retiring after serving in the position for over 30 years.
Please submit your prophecies to me at em********@ya***.com by September 6. That gives you one whole month to come up with fun ideas. We’ll select the best of the lot and print them in the Bridge. Don’t make me nag you…I know how creative you all can be, so have at it, and let your imagination run wild. I can’t wait to see what you think the future holds!
Emily Clott
Emily,
I may even wander over to Westwood!
The new river cruise will be by submarine, due to the astounding clarity of the water.
Churches By Bus will give its final tour after the latest closures by the Archdiocese leaves the docents with only a handful of buildings to share, and they’ve all been featured on recent tours.
Most CAC tours will be with virtual reality headsets, allowing our guests to see the city from anywhere in the world.
All training of new docents will be by distance learning. Certification will depend on the trainees’ ability to convince guests to buy real estate in Chicago so that our congressional delegation becomes 62 representatives.