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Fairs & Expos Magazine |
North Carolina State Fair Starts Two Programs To Educate and Promote Agriculture to Youth
By: Heather Overton An old adage is that “youth are the leaders of tomorrow.” In the fair industry, that saying should be that youth are the fair advocates of tomorrow, since attracting this demographic is necessary for growth and continued survival of the industry. A current marketing theory is that attracting youth to your fair now helps retain them as fairgoers when they get older. Based on this assumption, young people and families are two of the major audiences the fair tries to attract through advertising and promotions. In 2004, the North Carolina State Fair initiated two programs to promote the fair and its deeply rooted agricultural heritage to youth. Both programs used an educational focus to help spread the message of the historical and agricultural significance of fairs. Working with the Pines of Carolina Girl Scouts, fair staff created the Homegrown in North Carolina activity patch. The activity patch program encourages participation in many agricultural activities, including: visiting a roadside fruit and vegetable stand, finding N.C.-grown or produced products at the grocery store, visiting a farm or agricultural research station, and visiting one of the state’s 47 agricultural fairs.
To earn the patch, Girl Scouts had to complete a number of activities at the chosen locations, including interviewing an employee, drawing a map of the facility, and writing a summary of the visit. Participants can choose their activities, and fair attendance is not required to earn the patch. Although agriculture is still North Carolina’s number one industry, generating more than $60 billion dollars annually, fewer people are directly involved in the business. “Agriculture in the state has a wide reach, and we aim to educate our youth, and in turn their parents, about just how important agriculture is to them,” said Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler. “Targeting groups like the Girl Scouts and teaching them about agriculture in a fun, educational way will help us spread the news that agriculture in our state is a growing industry.” In developing the patch program, the N.C. State Fair helps educate children who have little knowledge of agriculture as their state’s number one industry. The program costs little to organize. The Pines of Carolina Girl Scout Council provides scout leaders the documents on-line. Scout leaders can order the patches on-line at the council’s web site for $2 each. Similar programs with other youth organizations, including Boy Scouts and YMCA, are being explored. The 2005 fair season will be the first in which the Homegrown in North Carolina activity patch will be available statewide. A copy of the Homegrown in North Carolina activity patch program is available at the Pines of Carolina web site, www.pinesofcarolina.org.
Also in 2004, the N.C. State Fair worked with the Raleigh News and Observer’s Newspaper in Education Program to put together an educational supplement on the fair. A number of newspapers in the nation have NIE programs in which newspapers are used in classrooms as part of the learning curriculum. NIE supplements focus on a variety of topics and are generally sponsored by businesses or other groups. The state fair has strong interest by school groups to provide educational materials to help facilitate field trips. This supplement served as a resource that helps make it easier for teachers to plan activities around the fair. The 12-page supplement ran in the News and Observer one week before the start of the fair. Class sets were available to order, and a copy of the supplement went in all 172,000 daily papers. About 680 teachers ordered class sets, and many more accessed the information from the state fair web site, www.ncstatefair.org. Articles in the supplement included: Harvest Time, Healthy Eating and the Fair, Heritage and Cultural Activities, History of Dorton Arena, The Science Behind the Rides, and The Changing Face of N.C. Agriculture. The supplement also included a color map of the fair, a word search, and a scavenger hunt. The NIE office required that the supplement be strictly educational, not promotional. The fair could not run its concert schedule, admission prices, or hours. “With the exception of the scavenger hunt, all materials in the supplement were fair-independent,” said Fair Manager Wesley Wyatt. “Although we hoped the supplement fostered school field trips and attendance at the fair, students could do most of the activities in the supplement without having to attend.”
Students who did attend the fair could complete a scavenger hunt that took them through the fair’s Heritage Circle, midway rides and food, livestock competitions, and exhibits. Students completing the scavenger hunt were awarded green fair adventurer ribbons. Total cost for the supplement was $8,000. Fair staff provided the photos and articles, and the newspaper provided layout, printing, and distribution. Fair staff hopes the supplement increased awareness of the fair among youth and provided them with a little history on their state’s largest annual event. This year, instead of a 12-page supplement, the fair is working with NIE to do an essay competition in conjunction with the 2005 N.C. State Fair. The fair is providing the prize money for the competition, and NIE is advertising and judging the competition. Also, winners will be printed in the paper and available on-line at the fair’s web site. The fair is also working with NIE to run an updated scavenger hunt in the paper the week before the 2005 state fair. “Our commitment and dedication to youth has been beneficial to the fair in two ways,” Wyatt said. “First, it helps us attract a very desirable demographic to the fair, and secondly, it shows that the fair is community-minded and cares about education and youth.” Programs like the NIE supplement and Girl Scout patch program have generated favorable press for the fair and led to positive relationships with community groups and organizations. “The relationships we have developed with community groups and organizations through these programs have been outstanding, and we look forward to continuing to build on them in the future,” Wyatt said.
Heather Overton is a public information officer with the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. She works with promoting the N.C. State Fair and organizing large exhibits and is the state’s county fair coordinator.
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