Workshop series
April-july 2018, saturdays 10 am-1 pm
Stories: YES: Houston workshops allowed students to develop hands-on (and on-location!) oral history, field recording, research, and editing skills. Each workshop was purposefully crafted by award-winning digital storytelling instructor, Erin Dorbin, to inspire students to explore local history topics that they were personally excited about. Armed with a variety of new media tools, the students ambitiously set out to collect archival images, stories, video, audio, and varied perspectives on their topics from residents of their communities. The workshop series activated partner institutions across Houston County and encouraged students to discover the many cultural assets available to them. The goal? To bring local history, from a young resident's perspective, alive for a public audience. Their final stories have been uploaded to the Smithsonian Institution’s Stories from Main Street website for the purpose of archiving stories of life in rural America.
Our students worked closely with volunteers at Houston County Historical Society to research topics for their stories. A number of visionary and talented professionals in the fields of history, multimedia journalism, economic development, planning and rural arts joined us—and helped shape—our intensive creative workshop series. Olivia Hoff, an undergraduate student in public history and policy at UW-La Crosse, served as our program assistant.
Our students worked closely with volunteers at Houston County Historical Society to research topics for their stories. A number of visionary and talented professionals in the fields of history, multimedia journalism, economic development, planning and rural arts joined us—and helped shape—our intensive creative workshop series. Olivia Hoff, an undergraduate student in public history and policy at UW-La Crosse, served as our program assistant.
(Workshop photographs provided by our program photographer Sean Kearney [Kollective], Melissa Wray, Erin Dorbin, & Ashley Hanson.)