Hero's Row Heroes

Winds of Time

The Winds of Time Foundation is an active extension of a simple idea. Too many people do not understand well where we as a culture, nation and people came from, how we reached this point and what forces shaped us to date. Thus they cannot well understand where we need to go from here, how to get there and how many of those same forces of the past are still at play shaping our future. Our mission is to help facilitate such understanding in an active, immersive and engaging fashion. The Winds of Time Foundation is striving to accomplish these things.

In recent decades a movement towards what is often termed “living history” gave rise to many groups who exist to recreate immersive experiences from history to better understand how our for-bearers lived. Whether focused on the American Revolution, medieval Europe, ancient India, or any time and place between, a common serious obstacle these groups often encounter is finding event sites that allow, much less focus on promoting historical recreation. They must make do presenting an experience of the past in quite modern surroundings. This makes the immersive experience much less complete and far less engaging, greatly reducing its impact on those hoping to learn. Another obstacle people wanting to participate in these learning experiences face is a lack of costuming, tools and equipment available for lending to those just getting involved in this unique type of shared teaching and learning experience.

This is where The Winds of Time Foundation comes in. Our purpose is to build just such sites. Dedicated locations where people from all walks of life and the numerous living history groups may come and present events, conduct classes or sponsor programs which teach our communities about our for-bearers. Our goal is to build facilities with themed buildings, items and environments that reflect various aspects of our shared past and the interests of groups working to bring that past into the present. Be it the medieval castle, the Colonial town square, a nomad encampment of the Eurasian steppes or the wagon trains and native villages of the American West, each has myriad lessons for every person who comes to experience the ambiance.

Unlike museums, our facilities will house and display living exemplars of skill-sets that formed the backbone of pre-modern societies around the world for participants to see, touch, experience and learn by doing. Skills like blacksmithing, farming, carpentry or weaving. They will have working, touchable, often functioning examples of items and structures that supported daily life, transportation, warfare, or the rise of nations and often changed the future of entire civilizations. Each site will be a unique, engaging and sometimes startling slice of the past with a new and different perspective from which participants may view parts of our shared human history. We are planning our first site right here in beautiful East central Alabama where it will reflect the interests of several of the larger living history organizations.