Communiqué
WOUB Receives Our America: Documentary in Dialogue Grant
< < Back toFour local high schools will participate in community engagement activities
ATHENS, OH – WOUB Public Media will be working with four high schools in the region this fall on a grant project which combines independent documentary film, Appalachian cultural pride and multimedia storytelling. WOUB was selected to receive an “Our America: 
Documentary in Dialogue” grant from American Documentary | POV, with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The grant supports community engagement activities around a documentary called Portraits and Dreams which will include virtual screening events with the local high school students and their teachers and allow students to create their own short films. The films will be judged locally, and the winning film will be featured nationally on the POV website.
Portraits and Dreams revisits photographs created by Kentucky schoolchildren in the 1970s and the place where the photos were made. The film is about the students, their work as visionary photographers and the lives they have led since then, as well as the linkage of personal memory to the passage of time. The film is directed by Wendy Ewald and Elizabeth Barret and will air on WOUB HD Monday, September 7 at 10 p.m.
“At its core, the Portraits and Dreams film is about Appalachia culture and the people who are a part of it,” said WOUB Community Engagement Manager Cheri Russo. “We loved how the documentary showed the children telling the story of their roots and culture in a positive way through photography, and we thought it would be a great documentary to show to local high school students to inspire cultural pride and give them the ability to tell their own Appalachian stories.”
WOUB will be working with students in English, journalism and multimedia classes at Logan High School, South Gallia High School, Zane Trace High School and Meigs High School. After the students screen the documentary, they will have the opportunity to participate in a virtual panel discussion with the film’s producers and local community leaders to talk about the documentary and discuss what kinds of stories they might tell about their own community. Once they have some thoughts together about how they would create their own film, WOUB Producer/Director Evan Shaw will conduct a virtual storytelling workshop with the students to help them get started.
“I am excited about this grant project because too often Appalachia is depicted in a negative light,” said Shaw. “Allowing local students and teachers to see a documentary which tells the story of Appalachian cultural in a truthful but positive way will inspire them to be proud to tell their own story in that same fashion.”
WOUB’s Learning Lab will have camera equipment available for participating teachers to check out, so students can use it in creating their films. The Learning Lab will also hold a virtual teacher professional development storytelling workshop with Shaw featuring the Portraits and Dreams documentary that will be open to all teachers in the region and across the state.
“Media is such a part of all of our lives these days. We encounter video storytelling everywhere,” said WOUB Learning Lab Educational Services Manager Deborah Brewer. “Helping teachers learn about not only how to use the tools to create video, but the elements that are needed for strong storytelling will help them to educate their students on how to create the stories they want to tell and the power well-constructed multimedia stories can have.”
ABOUT THE OUR AMERICA CAMPAIGN:
In times of political division, we believe in the power of independent documentaries and their ability to help bridge divides. In light of the aftermath of the 2016 election, and current cultural wars, we seek to partner with PBS stations to use POV films as a platform for dialogue, and utilize the resources we create to help start conversations, give voice to the disenfranchised and mobilize individuals, communities, organizations, and for policy makers to take action based on informed decisions. We also desire to empower stations with creative approaches to audience building and attract a cross section of citizens. We propose to activate our extensive network of community partners for a high-impact screening series called OUR AMERICA: DOCUMENTARY IN DIALOGUE, designed to inspire dialogue and understanding around divisive issues in nonpartisan spaces in the regions of the Midwest, West, the South, and rural areas.