Project: Be Here: Main Street
Name: Heather Shelton @museumsago (Twitter)
Organization: MuseWeb Foundation
Be Here: Main Street is a multifacted crowdsourcing project that essentially involves gathering and publishing stories about small towns, local people, local life and experiences.
The goal of the project, which is being run in connection with the Smithsonian’s Museum on Main Street program, is to change the overall narrative about small-town America by letting people learn about what life is like there.
We’re just a small group, so to make the project work, we’ve trained people in towns (mainly in Minnesota at this stage) to collect stories in their communities.
They can use a free and easy app called Be Here Stories to do so. Once recorded the stories are mapped and people can hear them on location.
Challenges: Getting people to submit stories, working with free tools and platforms, working remotely with communities, dealing with privacy issues, audience apprehensions about using technology.
Talk? Yes! Tweet me.