• Around Here: the Places Project is a digital community place-making project that collects, saves and shares stories of places that matter to the people who live and work on and around "the mountain," south central... [ view full abstract ]
• Around Here: the Places Project is a digital community place-making project that collects, saves and shares stories of places that matter to the people who live and work on and around "the mountain," south central Tennessee's South Cumberland Plateau. Its aim is to create a very local crowd-sources collection that shares knowledge and experience and reminds us why place matters, making local history a visible and shared expression of history and memory. In a region defined by isolated micro-cultures and shaped by discourses about its identity constructed by outsiders, the project brings voice to local people on their own terms and encourages a shared understanding of place that does not deny or minimize the importance of hyper-local identities and the forces that have shaped them.
• Tennessee's South Cumberland Plateau, located in the south-central region of the state between Chattanooga and Nashville, is a set of interconnected small rural communities whose population ranges from 60 to 5000 inhabitants. With a history of strip-mining and timber extraction, the idea of "place" on the mountain has long been a negotiated one. The Places Project contributes to numerous ongoing community initiatives on the plateau. It will serve as a tool for grant-writing, tourism, marketing, environmental stewardship and conversations about cultural and historic similarities and differences among the communities and individuals who share this mountain and together will build its future. It takes one important step toward discovering how our shared attachments to this place, along with diverse knowledge and experiences, can make the mountain flourish.
• Crowd-sourcing is central to the Places Project. People share their stories of place directly through a web form or on a Facebook page, call the project hotline or via email. At county fairs and festivals throughout the area between July-October, 2016, people contribute their places directly, as well as at library events, Rotary meetings and historical society gatherings. The stories will be geotagged and curated using ArcGIS Storymapping software and will be part of a traveling exhibit featuring aerial photography and story excerpts.
• Data points: 650 to date
