Simple BE Here. Image/text

Be Here.#bHereMainSt

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jstephenconn/5340093717 Be Here: Main Streetis a pilot project developed through a partnership between theMuseWeb Foundationand the Smithsonian InstitutionsMuseum on Main Streetprogram. It is powered byizi.TRAVEL, a global and mobile storytelling platform.

Mention:Minnesota Humanities CenterAlabama humanities foundation1

Be Here: Main StreetAuthentic stories about local cultural and natural resources Told by the people who know them bestShared for free On open and location-based platforms To diversify and amplify community voicesAnd connect communities, people, and common causesAt home and around the world.

The Be Here project is, at its core, a cultural storytelling project that asks interested parties to put their creativity and passion to use in crafting immersive, factual stories about Baltimore its history, art, culture, people, architecture, etc.

----is a storytelling project that connects communities, people, businesses, and cultural institutions through new location-based technologies. Smart phones and social media are essential tools that residents and visitors use for information about their surroundings. Be Here capitalizes on mobile technology and offers explorers new ways to discover the surprising culture, history, and stories in a community.Using free and open platforms like social media and the izi.TRAVEL app its now possible for people to share great stories about locations they know, whether its a local landmark, a popular park, a small museum, a rich cultural site, or a beloved natural resource. The best part is it only takes a smartphone to connect people, places, history, and culture. This, together with the fact that a towns economic success is often tied to a thriving cultural sector and vice versa, means that Be Here: Main Street strives to forge new connections between government, local businesses and cultural institutions. Such partnerships create guided pathways between points of interest in a community that stimulate culture, tourism, and economic activity. As well as connecting them to a national digital network of cultural stories.

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432What are the goals of Be Here: Main Street?1Create a sustainable eco-system for sharing local culture through new connected technologies.

Capacity building for community members in using digital and mobile technologies and the power of storytelling.Make cultural content anengine that drives community transformation through new and renewed partnerships.Foster cultural exchange through sharing and learning what makes each community unique and important.

The core goals of the Be Here: Main Street initiative are:Make cultural content the engine for driving community transformation through partnerships;Capacity building training with communities for using new (mobile) technologies and the power of cultural storytelling;Recording and ensure the open availability of stories both in situ and off site through mobile and digital media as well as other means of publicity;Foster cultural exchange through sharing and learning about what makes each community unique and important;Create lasting legacy for sharing of location specific content through free and open mobile technologies within communities.

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Connecting Communities

At the core of the program, is the goal to connect communities to each other, but also to others. Using the power of storytelling development/partnerships development.

Storytelling has the possibility to do this because you are no longer talking about culture, but about the community and everyone has some kind of interest in it- because they are part of it.

- business development/partnerships development.

As Seph Rodney wrote in the introduction to the Storytelling Handbook: We have always told stories. In inventing stories, we invented ourselves, through telling them to each other, we make a community. [now more than ever] We need the light and the warmth of stories authentically told and shared. We need them especially from community members who are not typically heardthe citizen storytellers, corner oral historians who have a wealth of lived experience not found in official records or broadcast reports. Our technological tools now allow us to give local voices a new platform; we can pin content to geolocated areas that are triggered through smart phone apps. This initiative is a new and unique form of storytelling, yet it is also part of a deep tradition of making a world for ourselves in which we dont just survive, but we thrive.

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State Project Manager & State Storytelling Ambassador Local Project Coordinator in EufaulaLocal Project Coordinator in DecaturLocal Project Coordinator in Alexander City`Local businesses, other museums, Schools, Local Council, the community down the road, etc.

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Teachers, bartenders, waiters, inn keepers, the kid down the block, etc.

Local Project Coordinator in Spanish FortLocal Project Coordinator in JasperLocal Project Coordinator in Selma

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Local Involvement

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What is cultural storytelling?

To put it simply, cultural storytelling are factual events/content told in creative and immersive ways. Voices lending to a bigger picture of a place. Their voices shouldnt be the only one talking about a certain location but about the feel of a place, what it is to be there- what the culture is, what makes the place unique. Like this picture of a homemade pesto burger Its about how it tastes how it looks, how it smells 7

audiovideotextimagesElements of Storytelling

immersion

location

How can you tell these stories? A digital story can be made up of audio text, video and images, and immersion. The first are logical, the last one is a bit more abstract.- its about being in a place at a certain time- witnessing a story, not just in person, but becoming part of it. I will explain this in the next few slides.

LOCATION IS THE ELEMENT THAT MAKES THE EXPERIENCE IMMERSIVE

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Non immersive stories

I think we can all agree, that cultural stories we share make up a huge part of our cultural legacy. what we leave behind, about the places we were from. and I would like to present the following story to you, originally recorded for The Museum on Main Street Stories for Main Street App.

nice, right? Wouldnt you want to know what the place looks like, and what this flag day celebration may look like that she is talking about? do you agree that would add to the story? Getting a visual clue?

What if she would have been asked where shes from. Then we can guess its about a American territory, but we cant place this story much further than that.. There is a need to locate this type of stories on a map. We want to geolocate it.

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Geolocation is the identification of the real-world geographic location of a point of interest or, more broadly, of its stories

What happens when you geolocate these stories? A lot of people ask us what geolocation is. Geolocation has been around for a while. Just think about GoogleMaps. Its able to find a specific location and direct you towards that location because each location has coordinates attached to it. Because of popularity of mobile phones, the uses of geolocation are starting to expand.

Geolocation is the new frontier for the tech industry. and in fact, the story you just listened to, can be located to a specific location- you could SEE the area that the person was talking about-now, and 10 years from now, because that story has a place somewhere on earth.

I first was going to have you all listen to the same story again, with a visual clue as to the location, but I thought that might get a little boring! 10

Immersive stories through geolocation

Therefore, this story is about Becky and Don, and was originally recorded for the Minnesota Humanities Center in conjunction with Water/Ways Exhibition of Museum on Main Street. Please listen & look at the pictures

Though we cannot go to the physical location that this story is about, I have added some pictures that I was able to find online about the river and location they are talking about.- because this story was geo-located to a specific location, and I was able to easily trace where it was of relevance.

Which of the two stories we listened to was more interesting? and did the visual clues help you to relate to the story better?

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YouTubeSoundCloudOther free/openplatforms

Digital Platforms

Izi.TRAVEL

Tumblr.

SmithsonianInstitutionStories from Main St

Story sharing is as old as the road to Rome! and many councils and communities have been doing story collection in the past. But with the changes of the last number of years things like the internet, social media, and smartphones sharing of stories has become easier then ever!

Some of the well-known platforms for this are YouTube, Soundcloud, and Wikimedia Commons. And of course facebook! However, innovation in the tech sector continues, and we at the MuseWeb Foundation have started working with IZI.travel. No, its not a travel platform, but an open storytelling platform much like Youtube, but geolocating stories and even building entire tours out of your individual stories on this platform! - much like guided city tours.

The big difference is- Anyone can do it!

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Your tours could live here.Imagine a whole new audience.

Your tours could live here.Imagine more people listening to stories.

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A blanket of stories

Powered by:

The platform we like to use with this is the earlier mentioned izi.TRAVEL an free and open platform to share stories and place them around the world- geolocating them in places that are relevant to the story.

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Be Here: Baltimore

Currently over 400 locations with stories

& growing!

Powered by:

We piloted the Be Here: program in Baltimore. and in only a summer, over 300 stories were recorded and are currently publicly available for anyone to listen to! This could be your community! I am aware that many places around the country are not the size of Baltimore16

story?... Grouping Stories

The whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Stories grouped around a theme create a greater narrative, a cause a movement.

So Grouping of stories- What happens to individual stories if you group them together with a theme? you build an overarching . Theme, a cause you could almost listen to them like a novel that is being red to you. 17

A tour is a group of 10-15 stories that are connected by a common theme.

A typical stop on a tour is between 1-3 minutes.

TYPICALLY not necessarily.As we can see- a tour, or collection of stories for example in Minnesota - there is a collection of over 100 stories recorded.

We are probably all familiar with the typical museum or city tours. A grouping of 10 to 15 stories, connected together through a predefined route. Most stops are typically soundbites of 1 3 minutes.

It is probably not hard to imagine that this is possible to do with a smartphone

But what if we think beyond the typical- imagine a city, a community, or even a country to be covered with soundbites of 1 2 minutes, and instead of the content creator to be leading the way- the end user decides the route, and whatever story is near you, and relevant to the location you are in, simply starts playing. and you can create if it were a soundtrack of the city.

THAT is what technology nowadays allows us to do, and the best yet- it is openly available for anyone to use.18

Share your passion...

This is something you can do no-matter what & when. Even if you are not involved with the moms project until 2019!

about sharing passion about elements of the broad national themes from MoMS exhibitions. Ask the meeting participants to think about how local stories will connect to the MoMS exhibit.

Think about how your local stories can help your communites connect with the national

When we talk about being a project for cultural storytelling, we mean that we want you to inspire others with your passion to an aspect of your specific history and culture. We dont want to hear dry facts. We want to hear the context of behind facts. Is there music that will bring the story to life, or can you tell us about the personalities of the people you are talking about dont just talk about what Thurgood Marshall did, talk about who he was as a person. Help us imagine the times and the people in our heads what is the story behind that architectural style, how did that artwork get here, what is the story behind it?

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Resources and ToolsYour own communityState Project ManagerWebinarsStorytelling toolkitChances are someone in your own community knows the basics of storytelling, interviewing or digital skills and can help out!Over the next 18 months, MuseWeb and MoMS will offer free webinars on specific topics for the two pilot states. They will be made available at http://MuseWeb.us and the MoMS website.MoMS and MuseWeb have developed a handbook that covers storytelling basics Free to download from the MoMS website and http://www.museweb.us/be-here-main-street/ After looking within your own community, the state project manager is a wealth of information and will have connections to alternative resources.

You may be worried that you dont have the skills to complete all or some of the storytelling audio recording and editing, video recording and editing, storytelling any of it.

But there are a variety of resources out there- many unpaid- to do basic sound editing, recording and sharing of content.- But the hardest part is knowing the stories, and finding the people that have stories to tell!20

Selwyn Ramp (SR) - is it live on MoMS website yet? if so, where can it be downloaded?

432Whats in it for YOU?1Community-wide capacity building in 21st century skills.

Develop powerful new relationships within communities though digital media..Localize the MoMS Exhibition and put your states, communities and stories on the map (literally).

Creating a lasting legacy beyond the MoMS traveling exhibition.

Whats In it for you: what you you, your communities get out of it:Capacity building using 21st century skils.Opportunities for surprising new relationships within communities.Puts your states and communities on the map. (literaly)Reaching new audiences though digital media.Creating a lasting legacy beyond the MoMS travelling exhibition visit.Opportunity to count the Smithsonian partnership beyond just the exhibition. You are a partner on this nation wide pilot project.

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Questions?

And thats all she wrote! Does anyone have any questions?22

#bHereMainSt @MuseWeb

Nancy ProctorExecutive DirectorSelwyn RampProject DirectorNancy@MuseWeb.us@NancyProctorSlideShare.net/NancyProctor

Heather SheltonDigital CuratorSelwyn@MuseWeb.us@SelwynRampHeather@MuseWeb.us@MuseumsAgoContact Details

www.MuseWeb.us/be-here-main-streetwww.MuseumsandtheWeb.com

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