Golden Valley Continues Award-Winning Home Recreation Videos Three Years After Stay-At-Home Orders
City of Golden Valley Parks and Recreation summer intern Asher Kahn will graduate from University of Minnesota in the fall. But not before he gets to spend the next few months helping to shape the city’s award-winning HomeRECed video series.
City of Golden Valley summer parks and recreation intern Asher Kahn appears in a video as part of the city’s award-winning HomeRECed series this summer.
“The outcome you should get from it is how you should approach it, which is to have fun and enjoy it,” said Kahn, who grew up in Golden Valley.
His main task is to conceive, write and help shoot videos in a series the city began in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020, when nearly everyone had to stay at home.
“It’s certainly challenged us all, and continues to challenge us,” said Golden Valley Parks and Recreation Supervisor John Stutzman.
Stutzman said he got the idea for the very first video from his mother.
“The very first video is an exercise her physical therapist told her to do to help the dexterity in her feet and I went, ‘This is a great idea!'” said Stutzman. “That’s one that’s always been near and dear to my heart.”
Since then, the city has posted well more than 200 videos in the series. For the first three months between March and June 2020, Stutzman and his staff posted one every day. Then it fell to three times a week, and gradually fell off once more of the world was once again open and people could return to some form of in-person fitness and other activities.
Also in 2020, the city was recognized by the Minnesota Recreation and Park Association with an award for excellence and received an award from the National Recreation and Park Association.
Since then, the city has focused on ways to keep doing the videos for anyone who is at home for any reason.
“We can serve families or people who are at home for holidays or non-school days or those random ‘hey, it’s pouring in July and there’s nothing to do’ or those snow days in January or February when school is closed at the last minute and we still provide something for families–or anybody– to do at home during those times,” said Stutzman.
As for Kahn, he has a few more ideas for this summer, including a lot of cooking segments.
“Not everyone has all this time to go out and pay a lot of money for an event or take a ton of time to leave home to do an activity, just giving them something to do, something to occupy the kids so they can have fun–we just want to help out in any way we can,” said Kahn.
