OUR MISSION

Our mission is to invite people to connect with Windsor’s evolving history by preserving, interpreting, and sharing our community’s artifacts and stories.

OUR VALUES

Throughout 2020, the Society’s Inclusion Team, made up of Board, staff, and community volunteers, developed an Inclusion Action Plan, which begins with the following statement:

Windsor’s residents—past, present, and future—are the holders and tellers of their experiences, their truths, their values, and their town.

Through our intentional and deliberate self-reflection as an organization and as holders of privilege, we seek to acknowledge the exclusion of black and brown narratives and stories, and to ensure the inclusion of racially and ethnically diverse individuals across board, organizational, and programmatic levels going forward.

Ongoing education around diversity, equity, and inclusion, professional development, and interpersonal growth are at the forefront for all of us at the Windsor Historical Society as we begin our second century.

Windsor Historical Society, in partnership with the Windsor community, will learn its full and complete story, both as an organization and as a resource. We are also dedicated to unearthing the stories of all Windsor’s people, especially people of color, and sharing these stories in ways that are mindful of the needs of our community.

We will lead initiatives to curate artifacts of historical, cultural, and ancestral value and we will love with a deference for difference of identity in the many ways it presents itself.

Stepping Into the Next Century Together

A Vision for our Second Century

Windsor Historical Society, established in 1921 to serve as the premiere historical organization for Connecticut’s oldest town, invites people to connect with Windsor’s evolving history by preserving, interpreting, and sharing our community’s artifacts and stories.

As we begin our second century, and after thoughtful examination of our own history and place in the Windsor community, we aspire to:

Be first in our region to center our history and culture on the lives of racially and ethnically diverse members of our community. We will do this by ensuring that our work is rooted in the history, stories and voices of all community members and that we build our core competence in diversity, equity and inclusion, aligning processes, systems, and structures with its vision.

Our strategic goals for 2021-2024 include:

Strategic Position – Be first in our region to center our history and culture on the lives of racially and ethnically diverse members of our community.

Implement our Inclusion Action Plan.
Create a board/staff/volunteer Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion task force to guide strategic and Inclusion Action Plan goals and action steps.
Actively engage the community in determining how to center history and culture on the lives of diverse residents.

Community – Our work is rooted in the history, stories, and voices of all community members.

Collaborate and partner with Windsor’s diverse communities to facilitate the gathering, presenting, and sharing of their histories.
Ensure that current and new programs, activities, and events “walk the talk”, and are focused on the needs and interests of Windsor’s communities of color.
Bring programs and events into neighborhoods and community locations.

Organizational – We will build our core competence in diversity, equity, and inclusion, aligning processes, systems, and structures with its vision.

Increase use of technology to digitize/create digital collections, stories, and events of interest to diverse communities.
Meet diversity recruitment goals specified in the Inclusion Action Plan for board, staff, and volunteers.
Address other potential barriers to inclusion.

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