COMMUNITY

Community Advisory Group

A community advisory board made up made up of tribal leaders, church workers, business owners, social service providers, and government officials collaborated with project staff to design and implement the project over the course of eight months. The group recruited and selected a diverse collection of storytellers-from community garden and river doctors to planning commissioners-who ranged in age, ethnicity, occupation, and length of residence in the county. They also promoted the project throughout the county, helped coordinate a community celebration of the project, and provided guidance throughout the project.

Arvada Fisher
Briana Creekmore
Bob Dean
Ernie LaCarra-Babor
Pat McGreevy
Venita Meyers
Holly Mines
Vicki Snead
Rick Torgerson
Steve Wilensky
Alan Willard

Youth Advisory Group

A youth advisory group made up of youth development workers, tribal leaders and teachers worked with project staff to recruit and select ten area youth to form a community media team that documented the community revitalization efforts of the selected storytellers. The team represented the diversity of young people living in the area and each member received a scholarship to participate in the project. The youth advisory group provided on-going feedback to project staff and personal attention and encouragement to the youth involved in the project.

Karan Bowsher
Briana Creekmore
Mark Dyken
Mike Kriletich
Catherine Lambie
Linda Toren
David Sackman

Youth Media Team

Nine rural youth ages 12 – 20 formed a community media team that met weekly for project planning meetings and multimedia production workshops. As a team they produced community photographs, a project blog, and nine digital stories that documented community revitalization efforts from main street to the Mokulmne river, from the Native American roundhouse to the halls of county government.

Aviel Bowsher
Chris Burley
Danielle Creekmore
Joey Creekmore
Ayriel Frye
Grant Norman
Tina Miller
Angie Owensby
Catie Watkins

Community Storytellers

Ten community leaders collaborated with the youth media team to produce digital stories profiling their community revitalization efforts–from creating local jobs to producing community theatre to establishing parks and trails to sustaining Native American life-ways.

John Peletti
Maryann Gravitt
Ernie LaCarra-Babor
Pat McGreevy
Holly Mines
Steve Wilensky
Cyndee Pryor
Carol Oz
Fred Velasquez
Joyce Rummerfield

Community Documentary Team

The community advisory board decided to produce a short, 8-minute introductory video to the youth-produced digital stories describing the Blue Mountain area, highlighting the history of the economic downturn, its consequences, and a community visioning process that launched the area’s revitalization efforts in the late 1990s. This team partnered with media artist jesikah maria ross, Assistant Professor Julie Wyman and graduate students (see below) to produce the video.

Rick Torgerson
Alan Willard
Katherine Evatt

SCHOLARS

Ryan Galt is an Assistant Professor in Human and Community Development. His research interests include people-environment geography, cultural and political ecology, agricultural and environmental governance, political economy of sustainable agriculture, cartographic design. This is his second year working with ARC. Learn more…
Julie Sze is an Associate Professor of American Studies at UC Davis as well as the founding director of the Environmental Justice Project for UC Davis’ John Muir Institute for the Environment. Sze’s research investigates environmental justice and environmental inequality; culture and environment; race, gender and power; and community health and activism. Learn more…
Julie Wyman is an Assistant Professor in Technocultural Studies. She is an award-winning filmmaker whose experimental documentaries investigate gender and the body, seeking to complicate our notions of power, physicality, and gender categories. Learn more…
Mike Ziser is Assistant Professor of English. His scholarly fields are American literature before the Civil War; American nature writing through the present day; ecocritical theory; and Anglophone settlement literature. This is his second year working with ARC. Learn more…

STUDENTS

UCD Student Documentary Team

Six graduate students participating in a seminar on documentary video production engaged in the project by collaborating with a community video team

Teresa Eggers
Denise Nicole Green
Vendana Nagaraj
Amy Spinetta
Rebekah Wilson
Adrian Yen