Tag: How did they make that (Page 1 of 2)

For my how did I make that project presentation, I picked the “We Are Saint Louis” story. The Community Storytellers Initiative is part of the We Are Saint Louis project, which overall aims to document and share the diverse narratives that shape the city’s identity. The broader project really dives deep and focuses on collecting oral histories, personal experiences and community insights to help bring about a more inclusive and understanding of Saint Louis social and cultural landscape. The idea of place and space are crucial when identifying and tracing history of what happened in the past and why. But also think about the current moment in time and how that could affect the future. I believe this project has a good start, especially with having a story map of where you can see how people. Seeing Saint Louis, how they chose to represent space and place. The We Are Saint Louis is an important initiative that can significantly benefit underrepresented communities and minorities. By really looking into the untold stories and bringing out local voices, it adds representation while preserving cultural stories. This community driven approach ensures that these stories are told with the people. The usability from this website could benefit clear navigation with the contributors and links with contacts for easier community engagement.

My project was reviewing “Connecting the Dots: A birds-eye view of St. Louis’s LGBTQ history, 1945 – 1992″ which was a StoryMap. The project was funded by numerous organizations, appearing to have started in 2016 and was published in January of 2021, and is currently being maintained by the Washington University Library. The project focused on finding and compiling resources surrounding the topic of LGBTQ culture and history in the St. Louis and Metro East areas, specifically to explore the ways in which gender, sex, race, class and geography influenced queer culture of the time. The reasons stated by the project for the importance of this work was that LGBTQ culture was inherently secretive, due to the danger that being out could mean for individual safety, which meant that many of the physical locations for the culture were obfuscated. This project specifically aims to make it clear that even if LGBTQ people weren’t publicly advertising their inclusive hangout spots, that they still existed, and were important to many movements of the eras presented. The project used primary source information for places and events that they could confirm had physical addresses, as well as recollections from elders in the queer community who lived in the region. 

The project included two separate areas of history, the first leg focusing on general LGBTQ history, and those locations important that community in the St. Louis and Metro East region. The second leg, which was in my opinion much more fleshed out and had a ton of information, was the “The Impact of Segregation: Race in LGBTQ St. Louis, 1945 –1992″ StoryMap that was listed in the “More” section of the first project. This project contained a wealth of information about how the region’s history as a border state for slavery, and as a “gateway to the west” formed its cultures in minority communities, in this case in African American and LGBTQ communities. The project details how white flight from the metropolitan St. Louis area affected city, rural, and suburban life for the LGBTQ communities in every area, and the ways in which racial tensions formed the cultural boundaries of those same communities.  

I think that both parts of the project were great, but I definitely gained a lot more from the second project on segregation and will be recommending this to people to read. As a non-local who grew up in a very homogeneous area, I try really hard to learn about this region, so as to better understand its culture. I was more aware of the processes of racial injustice in terms of segregation, redlining, and other predatory practices of the post Jim Crow Midwest before this project, but now I can provide more context around how that informed microcosms of different LGBTQ history. 

The English Department of St. Louis University started this project. While they began the project, it is intended to be collaborative with residents of the city and other academics, local and nationwide, welcome to add historical documents or research projects.     

The goal of this project is to educate on the topic of St. Louis’s experience with systemic racism from its beginning. It accomplishes this goal three different ways, a research page where projects related to the topic are posted, a page dedicated to highlighting St. Louis artists through time, and a page dedicated to the neighborhoods of St. Louis with historical background. An example of a research project is “Effects of Marijuana legalization on the St. Louis Community”. I was surprised to learn Miles Davis is a St. Louis native as I am a big fan of his music. The neighborhood page covers The Ville and Mill Creek Valley and their respective landmarks.     

One of the technologies utilized by this project is a timeline. The website takes all the historical documents posted and formatted in a timeline in ninety-nine-year chunks starting from 1600 spanning to 2023. When a visitor selects a specific decade, the website displays notable individuals born, significant events, and neighborhood histories through that century. For example, if 1900-1999 is selected, visitors will be able to learn The World’s Fair and the Harlem Renaissance as well as eugenics and The East St. Louis Massacre.    

In my opinion, this project is very successful in teaching the insidious and unfortunate ways systemic racism has treated the African American community that built the city. It is particularly successful in educating on the small pieces of history that may seem insignificant to foreigners from the city, but especially significant to current residents. The project welcoming residents who remember their history to add makes the project feel all the more personal about one of the most important cities in our country. 

From Dredd Scott to Ferguson: St. Louis History in Black and White is a digital oral project produced by St. Louis Public Radio and hosted by Don Marsh. This oral project features stories, interviews, and historical contexts. The primary goal of this project is to present an oral history of racial relations, the black experience, and civil rights in St. Louis from 1847 to 2016. The project highlights significant events, everyday experiences, and civil rights struggles that have influenced the city of St. Louis. The project’s intended audience may include residents of St. Louis, educators, students, and even the general public. This platform is easily accessible and can be used in the community, classrooms, discussions, etc. 

Racial relations in St. Louis have had a long and complex history that continues to exist in today’s society. Researchers discovered that racism has persisted across generations, often hidden in plain view. Through this timeline, this project brings attention to major events as well as hidden histories.  The St. Louis History in Black & White project uses a combination of oral history interviews, audio clips from the radio show “St. Louis on the Air” program, and an interactive timeline to document the city’s racial history. This project utilizes digital platforms to present these materials, making them accessible to the public through a mobile-friendly website. This allows users to navigate and explore personal narratives, historical events, and content related to civil rights and race relations in St. Louis easily. Although the website didn’t mention how long the project took to complete, it does mention the St. Louis History in Black & White project was originally launched in 2011. The project was relaunched in 2016 with added historical content, technical improvements, a timeline, and a need to promote awareness and empathy. 

The project’s strengths include its accessibility in digital formatting, its educational value, and its ability to capture live experiences, and history over time, While I wouldn’t say this project had any weaknesses, others may want more interactive features or youth voices included. Before now, I knew very little to nothing about the Dredd Scott case. I’ve always heard things about the St. Louis area from my parents to teachers, to the news, and other sources. But on the other hand, The St. Louis History in Black & White project offers a deeper look into the racial dynamics that have long shaped the St. Louis region. What stands out the most to me is how it connects together personal stories, historical milestones, and local geography to show the fight over civil rights, equity, and justice. This project gives contexts to more recent events, such as the 2014 killing of Michael Brown Jr, in Ferguson., as well as previously known information. While that tragedy is well known, it is part of a larger history of systemic segregation, inequality, and resistance that is still going on to this day in the St. Louis area. 

I chose for this assignment to cover the St Louis Story Stitchers Podcast. The website claims the Story Stitchers collective was founded by eight artists in Old North St Louis. The goal of the podcast is to gain a greater understanding of the needs and desires of the youth as well as giving them an amplified voice to to create and inspire change, as well as reduce crime in youth in the St Louis area.

The project relies entirely on the use of technology to both record and share the podcast. The website states they use state-of-the-art equipment to help record the podcast. The images on the website show them using, laptops, microphones, xlr cables, and live mixers to help bring their production together. They show on the website that their show is available to be streamed from nearly anywhere, but specifically showing episodes on YouTube, Vimeo, and Podbean. The website doesn’t clarify when the podcast was founded and first started, but they continue to upload currently and plan on doing so for a long time to continue discussions and give the youth they talk to a voice to share their stories.

The subject matter discussed and the foundation of this podcast are its clear strength, these are stories that need to be told and have a serious purpose. Everyone thinks they can have a podcast, but end up having nothing to talk about or important to say regardless of if they have a true platform or not. However with the Story Stitchers Podcast they are using the platform to better the area and community, specifically focusing on giving the black youth from the St Louis area a way to amplify their voices and be heard. They also have a wide variety of platforms they have released the episodes on, keeping the show easy to find. I feel there isn’t a major weakness for the project, other than some people just don’t listen to podcasts, so you may not have as wide spread of an audience as you may want. However, that may be contradicted by the use of YouTube in addition to just audio-based podcast apps like PodBean.

This project as a whole has a goal of giving the listeners a new experience to hear about. Giving you an entirely different perspective on the St Louis area that you may not have thought about before. The support for communicating with youth as well as giving them a voice is extremely important.

This specific tour was made by Lara Kelland, a professor in museum studies and community history. Though each individual site has its own page and creator who were students in her class. The goals of the project are literally listed to “connect people to the variety of sites throughout the city.” Although, it seems it’s also trying to give these institutions of the black community an identity by giving a deeper look and understanding of the influence they had on African Americans. The projects intended audiences seem to be, African Americans, anyone interested in history, tourists, and people that want a new level of understanding of their city. There’s no real overarching conclusion to this work; this is a mass of information about different places that meant something to the black community. There may be some narrative to draw about black people having to have their own institutions to live normally, instead of using the same ones everyone else uses. But in general, there is no real “theme” per say. This project uses two instances of google maps, and a text to speech for any bodies of text. The two google maps give an arial and on the ground view of the site you are looking at. All the different site pages have different start and end dates, but looking as this as one cohesive work, the earliest date is February 2020, and the latest and March 2020. This project’s strengths come from each of the 13 different sites having different pages and people writing about them. You get a heap of information about each specific thing. A weakness this project has is accessibility. If someone can’t walk long distances, or have a car, they’d have to do the tour digitally. Which is possible, but you lose a lot of significance of seeing the place in person and going inside to look around.

I pretty much didn’t know any of the information on this tour, so reading through it gave me a lot of knowledge I didn’t have before. Maybe my lack of knowledge is from not literally living in the city, but I only knew about Harris-Stowe, the rest was new. Even in that case, I learned new facts about the school that I couldn’t have learned without some serious research. I like knowing that my people had a few places to go to and be themselves, or not be ridiculed. Having multiple spots in such a big city with cultural significance to my skin tone gives the city itself a new light in my eyes.

The Archive of St. Louis Punk was created by Greg Kessler and active participant in the STL Punk scene since the 1980s. The niche that the project is trying to fill is showing how the punk scene exists outside the east and west coast. As much of American punk is colored by the DIY California punk or the NYC more goth punk scene. This collection is for researchers and fellow fans alike to relive the glory days or see how St. Louis a historically musical city has changed its tune. St. Louis has base in Blues music which later led to the birth of rock, which led to punk, and then punk split off a bunch of directions being the grandfather of alternative music. The definition of punk is so varied by the scene and person, so instead of narrowing what kind of donations were excepted Kessler allowed the collectors decide what is punk to them. 

Collecting pieces that may be important relics for a person is difficult which is why the online preservation works. Some pieces of the collection are being housed together but Kessler states that he is aware of the connection collectors have to their items and he is just as happy to scan items and return them to owners. Though the spirit of punk is being accessible to all people despite their socioeconomic situation as it centers on DIY, cheap shows, and leftist ideals the site can be seen as inaccessible. It is online so you would have to have a device to access, either of your own or from a punk rock resource like a public library.

The collections on the site are named after the people who collected them which may be nice for people to recognize the names from their scene but makes it hard to determine what it will include; the archive collects promotional material like posters for gigs, recordings, pictures, band merch like buttons and shirts, and clippings from publications inside and outside the scene. If one were to go through the items they have tags to help find other pieces from that category. This website also links to another project which focuses on making high quality scans of gig flyers from the St. Louis music scene focusing on rock, punk, and goth. The Saint Louis Flyer Project can be a helpful addition to research that can be done with this collection and see the bands of the scene.

In the new age of subculture many subcultures run online which can kill a scene quick. The older I get the more I see St. Louis skipped over by bands maybe it’s because our scene is dying, now if I want to see a larger artist I have to travel to Chicago or KC. Is it the danger of the city warding off both music enjoyers and bands or is punk dead? Is holding on to pieces of a community that was never into being brought to the surface going to preserve the scene? The thing I hear from elder punks is that the scene was supposed to leave no trace and that the archiving can be antithetical to the scene’s purpose. Is the death of the scene just as important as it’s life? I will leave you with a Fall Out Boy title “Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying (Do Your Part to Save the Scene and Stop Going to Shows).”

Micheal Parker ” St. Louis Corridor

Michael Parker’s The St. Louis Corridor: A Case Study of Dialect Islands is a comprehensive linguistic study investigating how speech patterns in the St. Louis region have developed into distinct dialect islands. Conducted by Parker, who possesses experience in emergency response and public service, the research employs ArcGIS Story Maps to present findings interactively and engagingly. The primary objective was to analyze and document the unique characteristics of St. Louis’s speech compared to surrounding areas, particularly the Midland and Inland North dialect regions. The intended audience includes linguists, educators, historians, and residents interested in the cultural and linguistic evolution of the area. One of the significant conclusions from the study is that St. Louis speech previously exhibited features of the Inland North dialect—such as the Northern Cities Vowel Shift—and retained distinctions like the cot–caught vowel merger. However, younger generations are increasingly reverting to Midland speech patterns, indicating continuous linguistic evolution. The project used historical audio samples, geographic data, maps, and linguistic analysis to trace these changes, leveraging modern GIS technology to visualize dialect transformations over time. Although the exact duration of the project is not specified, the research’s depth and detail imply that it spanned several years. A notable strength of the project is its ability to render complex linguistic data accessible through a user-friendly digital platform. Nevertheless, this reliance on digital tools may marginalize individuals without reliable internet access. For those familiar with the St. Louis region, the project provides insightful context into local speech patterns, enriching understanding with information that may be previously unrecognized. It aligns with local knowledge while adding depth and nuance to regional identity, highlighting how language is influenced by history, migration, and community over time.

For my project, I chose to explore the Mill Creek Valley and African American life in early 20^th-century St. Louis walking tour. This tour was created by Lara Kelland, a Historian who is a professor of Museum Studies and Community History at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. The tour focuses on the history of the Mill Creek Valley neighborhood, more specifically, the black history of the neighborhood and influential figures. With this information in mind, I think it is safe to assume that the intended audience for this walking tour is people from the St. Louis area or visitors who are looking to gain more insight into the history of St. Louis and its neighborhoods.

The project can be used as a walking or driving tour and is set up very similarly to a story map. It has a lot of different features integrated into it that aren’t always an option with a story map. This project features a text-to-speech function, photos, map coordinates, and even a street view of where a point is located. There is also a background information section that expands on the basic text of a slide and provides context to a specific location.

The project is a culmination of months of work. Although it was published in May of 2020, it appears that the earliest they began creating this project was sometime in February. The project has a lot of information, which I would say is a strength and a weakness because a lot is going on and even just looking at it can be slightly overwhelming. On the flip side because there is so much information you can learn a lot from just this one source. Another strength I find in this project is its accessibility. It is meant to be a walking tour, but the utilization of different maps, photos, street views, and the text-to-audio feature makes it so that a wide range of audiences can enjoy it and get a part of the experience, even if they cannot go out and do the walking or driving tour.

I enjoyed this project because I believe it enhanced my understanding of the St. Louis region. It provided a lot of information that I did not know and dived into the historical places and figures of the region, which can be used to make cultural connections to the area. I think it meshed well with my understanding of the region because St. Louis has a lot of prominent African American history, and it isn’t always talked about, but it plays a crucial role in the making of the city we know today.