What counts as “history”? Over the past month, the Community Powered Project Coordinators have been learning about the histories of their community through research, conversations, and community programs.

Emily, the CPPC in Spooner, hosted a History Harvest event with the Spooner Memorial Library to help celebrate, preserve, and share local history. To participate, community members brought in objects that were meaningful to them. Emily took photos of their objects and interviewed them about their object. After the event, Emily created videos to share these object histories with the community. This event helped to reframe community stories as historically important. The histories were documented in a digital exhibit.

A playlist of each history harvest story on the Spooner Library’s YouTube account. Click to listen to the stories.

An important step in any History Harvest is to share the photos and stories from the Harvest with the community. Anthony, our CPPC in Racine, wanted to teach the Racine community how they could also share their stories with the community. On December 13th, Anthony hosted the first of three workshops on podcast production they are offering at the Racine Public Library. Through the workshops, Anthony hopes to equip community members with the skills to share their stories more broadly using library equipment.