Leadership needed a vision for transforming Okefenokee Swamp Park’s mission.

Okefenokee Swamp Park (OSP) leadership sought to pivot from a swamp-themed education-entertainment attraction to a natural history and ecology interpretive center. They had successfully lobbied for State funding to catalyze the transformation. Haskell’s challenge was to help OSP and its partners understand how the park might physically evolve, focusing on an initial seed project and doing so in a short four-month period to satisfy the grant requirements. The resulting report was needed to help OSP with its ongoing appeal to public and private funding sources.

Haskell gathered wide-ranging input and created a visualization within the allotted time.

Following the breathing pattern, Haskell embarked on a two-month “in-breath,” including due diligence, workshops, exercises, interviews, and questionnaires, and a two-month “out-breath,” which was the creative synthesis of inputs from the “in-breath.”  By paying attention to the individual voices of the project’s many sponsors and stakeholders and maintaining a vision of the stories that needed to be told, Haskell delivered a consensus-based plan and visualization package within the allotted time.

Using Haskell’s work, OSP has begun successfully raising funds from the State of Georgia, NGOs and nonprofits.

The resulting plan for OSP embodies its educational/ecological drivers. Haskell provided sufficient programming, graphics, and a project budget for a linchpin Nature Center that would provide an engaging educational and overall visitor experience. The vision included consolidating facilities and reducing OSP’s footprint, returning currently paved or built areas to swamp, upland woods, or interpretive gardens. OSP has had early success using Haskell’s work to help raise funds from the State of Georgia and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and nonprofits.