A Note on the "Get the Folk Through It" Pandemic Documentation Project
Thanks so much to all who have contributed to the “Get the Folk Through It” Pandemic Documentation Project over the past months! As we move towards spring, we’re diving into new projects, but we continue to be interested in your experience of this ongoing factor in our lives, and we look forward to sharing further community responses down the road. Meanwhile, you can always fill out the survey here or drop us a line at programs@tauny.org with stories about how you’re getting through this unusual and challenging time, your creative responses to it, how it’s affecting your traditions and day-to-day way of life, or anything else you’d like to share.
"Get the Folk Through It"
Pandemic Documentation Project
Inviting the North Country community to share their stories of and creative responses to the Coronavirus Pandemic.
At TAUNY, we are honored to document and showcase the folklife, living traditions, and everyday culture of our region. That includes long-standing ways of knowing, doing, and making. And it includes newer ones that come to light when our community is faced with changes and challenges to our everyday lives, shaped in countless ways by our unique and common experiences of the place we call home.
Just as we were interested in people’s response to the disruptions of the 1998 Ice Storm, we want to hear from you now about your experience over the past months and going forward, with the pandemic changing many of our daily ways, while also reinforcing our sense of what’s most familiar and important to us.
- Stories about new traditions you’ve created or seen others creating in response, or new ways you and your community have come up with to carry on existing traditions or routines
- Arts, hobbies, or activities you’ve taken up or spent more time with while staying at home (for instance knitting, baking, gardening, woodworking, journaling, etc.)
- Creative responses (for instance art or craft works, songs, poems, etc.) to the pandemic
- Things you see around you--in your home, on the street, in nature--that express something about what’s been happening since the spread of COVID-19 started to affect life in our region
- Other stories of how the pandemic has affected you, your loved ones, your community, your job/profession, or other major aspects of your life
- Anything else you think we should see or hear about!
As many have been noting, a time of physical distancing can also be a time of connecting in so many other ways. With all of this in mind, TAUNY invites you to share any or all of the above, and to respond to our ongoing prompts on social media with more specific questions. These responses and experiences are important parts of our lives at this time, and they create an invaluable record of community experience and response for the future.
- Email us at programs@tauny.org with the heading “Pandemic Documentation Project.”
- Please include your name, town, age, and anything else you’d like us to know about you.
- Email written stories, responses, etc.
- Email photos of art or craft projects, activities, things you observe you, etc., along with descriptions of what you’re sharing with us and why.
- Record yourself (audio or video) sharing a story, poem, song, or excerpt of an activity on your phone and email it.
- For longer videos or larger files, please send links to where they can be seen/heard.
- Fill out a survey here to give us an idea of your experience, and stay tuned for more subject-specific surveys.
We will compile these materials and find a meaningful way to share them with the community down the road. Best wishes to all for good health and peace.
TAUNY/St. Lawrence University “Health Activism” FYP Pandemic Documentation Project Partnership
Fall 2020
As part of the “Get the Folk Through It” Pandemic Documentation Project this fall, TAUNY has teamed up with Professor Rosa Williams’ St. Lawrence University First-Year Program class “Health Activism” to pair student teams with community members who have taken action in support of community health during the pandemic. The students have been working with TAUNY Director of Research and Programs Camilla Ammirati to learn about fieldwork research methods and the process of curating and sharing material from that research. They began by interviewing each other about their own experiences moving to the North Country and/or settling in to their first year of college in the midst of the pandemic, and they have since gone on to conduct Zoom interviews with community members TAUNY has connected them with.
Click here to read the full zine
The Social Media Project
As a culmination of their work on the project over the semester, the FYP student interview teams are each producing a curated highlight from their interview, assembling a photo shared by the interviewee along with a quote the students have selected that expresses something important from the conversation and a brief description of the interviewee’s work in support of community health. TAUNY will post these highlights over the coming weeks, both to share the students’ work and to celebrate the important actions our neighbors are taking--and the creative and thoughtful ways they are using their skills, perspectives, and resources--in support of community health.
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