Tennessee Recreation & Parks 2013

Tennessee Recreation & Park Association Conference Keynote Focused on “Repositioning Parks & Recreation” 

Nov. 13, 2013 — Dr. John Crompton, distinguished professor of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences at Texas A&M University and well-known researcher and author, will be featured as the keynote speaker at the 62nd Tennessee Recreation and Park Association (TRPA) Annual Conference. This learning experience was made possible through the 2013-2014 State Association Speaker Scholarship program from Landscape Structures and its Tennessee playground consultant, Recreational Concepts.

Throughout the past 40 years, the park and recreation field has passed through six different eras: product orientation, emphasis on sales, focus on user benefits, a shift to community benefits, identifying community priorities with which to align, and activation of those priorities. Dr. Crompton will describe the key elements of each stage and ask the audience to consider where they are in their thinking and actions, and where their agency is in its thinking and actions. The case will be made that an agency’s long term viability will be dependent on how far along this evolutionary continuum it has progressed.