Julia Taylor's Field Reports

they play the banjo in my office

Julia Taylor — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 08:08:52 -0600

Time goes by so quickly here in the mountains, but maybe that's because I've spent a good portion of the past month away from Whitesburg. I was in Oakland, CA, for a week for the Critical Resistance 10th Anniversary Conference. It was a great week of meeting people, and learning about other organizations and resources. And I got to lead a workshop. First I had volunteers from the workshop session read the Thousand Kites Play aloud. In this informal staged reading, a diverse group of voices were heard and a variety of experiences with the criminal justice system were expressed. Act 2 of the play is the audience's chance to tell their story. We heard from a man who was formerly incarcerated, a woman who's boyfriend is currently incarcerated, among others. It was a great conversation and I think that people walked away with some actions steps. Next time I do the presentation there are things I would like to do differently, but for a first go around, I think it went alright.

I also went to a session that was a planning group for a national coalition for prison arts work. I joined the technology team (so as to use all my new ctc skills!) and have created the blog for the group.This isn't technically part of my job, but my organization is part of the coalition, and it's something that's important to me, so I'm excited about it.

Last week I went to the Third Coast International Audio Festival in Chicago and learned so much about radio! As I am a weekly radio producer, it seemed like a good festival for me to go to. Many big NPR personalities were there, and I learned a lot about radio documentary, and also about using social media to promote the work. It was a cool conference, indeed.

In the past month we also finished up the facilitation guide (attached) and have revamped the website. So now I'm finally able to really start in on our StoryLine project, which will use a digital google map as the key element. Right now I'm working on getting audio files into the website, and doing outreach to get more people to share their stories.

And next week I'm starting a creative writing workshop in the nearby women's prison. I'm hoping that eventually I'll be able to turn it into a digital storytelling workshop and since they have computers there it might be possible. That's not work related. It's just fun.

So needless to say, I'm busy down here. But the weather is still good, and I'm still getting some good hiking in!

And yes, I hear the banjo almost daily in my office. What would a good appalachian office be without a banjo?

the second...

Julia Taylor — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:40:27 -0600

The second month is going swimmingly. The work has really picked up and I'm feeling good in my job. Right now I'm very busy working on re-vamping the website. My supervisor and I spent the last few weeks creating a facilitation guide for people to use and now I'm working on getting that content onto the website, making the website more efficient and pretty, and using direct language so people will feel comfortable using our resources. Honestly, I'm not sure how the project (thousand kites) has survived as long as it has without some of these resources.

I also created an image that folks can insert into their blogs or websites or whatnot to "advertise" the project. So I'll insert it here!:

click on it! it takes you to the project!!

What's coming next for us in the mountains? We'll be attending the Critical Resistance conference out in Oakland next week, and I'll be presenting a workshop (my first with the org), so that'll be exciting. And then I move on to a big project that I mentioned last post--the digital storytelling map. I'm going to refrain from talking too much about it yet, because I want to wait til I actually get into it. But look for that next time!

art, technology and social justice in the south

Julia Taylor — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 16:51:23 -0600

Moving to rural Kentucky sure was an experience. But as the days pass I'm settling in more and getting more accustomed to living in such a small town. I'm really enjoying my work at Appalshop. I'm working specifically on the Thousand Kites Project, which is a relatively new initiative within Appalshop to promote dialogue around the criminal justice system. We do that through various forms of media: film, theatre, radio, and the internet. One of my big projects is to help develop the the web-based portion of the program. I'm working on creating a United States map through google maps that people can navigate to post their own stories, hear stories, see films clips, photos, etc. Through this site we'll be able to connect people on a national (for now) level to engage in conversation. We're also looking at other social networking sites such as Flikr and Facebook to be tools for access.

I'm also learning our content management system, which is exciting. I feel like I've become much more technologically savy working here!

I just got back from a fantastic five days at the Annual Meeting for Alternate ROOTS. ROOTS is a gathering of social justice artists from the south. It was incredible few days and I did a lot of great networking with people in this region. Technology is on the table and many in leadership there are looking to the younger people in ROOTS to guide the way in becoming a technologically efficient organization. We at Appalshop will be part of that process.

Now I'm looking forward to using what I've learned so far and really moving forward in a full and ready way.