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Community Movie Screenings at Old Sturbridge Village to End after May 30 |
| Movie-goer decline indicates decreased demand |
| (STURBRIDGE, MA) – May 15, 2009: After several years of showing weekly current-run movies as a community service for just $5 per person, Old Sturbridge Village CEO Jim Donahue announced that the Village will end the program after the May 30 screening due to a decline in movie-goers. OSV began showing movies in its 300-seat theater in 2002 as a community service because Sturbridge does not have a commercial movie theater.
On some movie nights there have been as few as seven people in the audience and the majority of the screenings attract fewer than 50 people, making it difficult to justify the overhead costs and hundreds of hours in OSV staff time required to run the program, Donahue noted. He added that the Village will reevaluate the movie program in the fall and consider showing films periodically in the future during special events and school vacation weeks. Old Sturbridge Village will continue its support of the local community through its long-standing policy of extending free admission to all Sturbridge residents. "If a corporate sponsor steps forward to underwrite the movie program, OSV would be happy to provide continued use of its theater for weekly films,” Donahue said. “However, movies are not part of the museum’s core mission, and with so few movie-goers, we simply cannot justify funding the program without outside sponsorship." The Village continues to experience increased attendance to the museum, and is adding new exhibits that enhance its central role as a learning resource for the exploration of history. On May 23, the museum will open its newest permanent exhibit, Farms, Families and Change: New England Farming and Rural Life. With new displays in four locations in the Village, the exhibit answers questions that resonate today: -- "where does our food come from?" and "why does the New England landscape look the way it does?" The new exhibits were funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Robert W. Booth fund of the Greater Worcester Community Foundation, and the George F. and Sybil H. Fuller Foundation. Old Sturbridge Village celebrates New England life in the 1830s and is open daily 9:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. seven days a week. For information: www.osv.org or call 1-800-733-1830. # # # |
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