Power+Place and Elon’s Center for Design Thinking with Williams High School students have launched a new creative initiative this Spring, “Voices of Alamance County” Storywalks.
Alamance County has welcomed a new StoryWalk into their collection through a collaboration between Williams High School, the Power+Place Collaborative, and Elon’s Center for Design Thinking.
The Power+Place Collaborative is a partnership between Elon University, the African American Cultural Arts & History Museum, Burlington Parks & Recreation and Alamance Public Libraries. Since 2018, they have been collecting and preserving oral histories and cocreating digital stories with residents from diverse communities across Alamance County.
Starting May 1, 2024, the Collaborative launched a new creative initiative, Voices of Alamance County Public Story Walk, an outgrowth of their community-based oral history and digital storytelling work. This initiative celebrates the lives, achievements, and aspirations of community members in Storywalk format. A Storywalk consists of a series of panels placed along a path in a public area, displaying words and images to tell a story.
The first Power+Place storywalk was unveiled at Beth Schmidt Park in May. This Storywalk replaced a children’s story that had been introduced in 2019, but which had since faded.
At the May Carousel Festival, the Collaborative hosted an outreach booth debuting the Storywalk and greeting over 500 county residents. A number of additional sites are also hosting community stories this summer, including the Graham Middle School walking trail, the Mayco Bigelow community center, Graham and Mebane Public Libraries, the African American Cultural Arts & History Center, Williams High School, the Blend coffee shop and Smitty’s Ice Cream in downtown Burlington.
Each of the Storywalks features stories by community members originally interviewed by Elon students as part of the Power+Place Collaborative oral history project. Students from a civics literacy class at Walter Williams High School then watched the digital stories produced from this project, met with some of the community members featured in the stories, and chose stories to focus on for the Storywalk. The students then worked to reformat the stories for the Storywalk by selecting quotes and images to display on each panel and writing a narrative paragraph about what these local leaders have done for the community.
Storywalks were originally created in 2007 Anne Ferguson in Montpelier, Vermont who wanted a way for parents and their kids to be physically active with one another. Traditionally, a Storywalk displays pages from a picture book mounted on signs and set up along a path for children to follow. They are very common in public parks, close to libraries, and other areas of which children frequent. Storywalks have become a global sensation as many other countries have decided to open their minds to the concept.
In most cases, Storywalks display stories from well-known children’s books. In some areas, they feature stories written by local authors or children themselves. The Power+Place Collaborative Storywalk is unique in that it features the stories and voices of people from the local community with inspiring messages for the younger generations. Power+Place Storywalks showcase community leaders in order to bring their local community together to learn about those around them.
The first Storywalks were introduced into the Alamance County area in 2016, through an initiative sponsored by the United Way of Alamance County. The Storywalk was installed at the outdoor track of the Mayco Bigelow Center at North Park in Burlington.
These Storywalks allow children to get outside and enjoy the outdoors while also doing something educational and fun. It also promotes community building as it takes libraries to offer the books, volunteers to paste them along trails, and residents to use them.
Danielle Lake, the director of design thinking, and human service studies professor at Elon University played a crucial role in the collaboration for this project.
“There are a lot of untold stories in Alamance County,” Lake said.
She also explained that there have only been certain parts of history in Alamance that have been focused on, and that many of these unknown stories need to be told. Using the Storywalks, she said that the community can create change and a closer sense of togetherness. It’s also important that younger folks get involved so that they can make connections with the older generations.
In partnership with community centers across Alamance, The center for design thinking helps promote these projects, giving Elon students an opportunity to learn more about where they live and find ways to get involved.
“We do workshops for faculty, staff, students, and community partners, and we build the capacity of others to engage in problems they care about with more creativity,” Lake said.
Lake explained that Elon student mentors partnered with Williams High School to help them formulate these stories and put them up on the trail. For the college students, this project grants the opportunity to get off campus and engage with the local community.
You can learn more about the Collaborative here
You can also reserve your spot now to join this fall’s two big community events:
Alamance Reads! American Refuge Book Club Dialogue
Meet the author and enjoy a light lunch
Thursday, September 26, 12:30-2:00 pm
Elon Community Church
271 N Williamson Ave
Elon, NC
Register here
Stories of Alamance Public Screening: a screening of new community member stories, free dinner, and dialogue exploring the rich histories of Alamance County.
December 5, 2024
5 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Elon Community Church
271 N. Williamson Avenue
Elon, NC
Register here