The Why Here Why Now project collects and publishes multimedia interviews from community members in Yellow Springs, Ohio in an attempt to increase engagement and collaboration among the town’s increasingly polarized population.
The Why Here Why Now project is the work of Brooke Bryan, an ethnographer who became concerned with the growing polarization among members of her community in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
Like many other communities nationwide, Yellow Springs suffers from a lost employment base and faces both rising housing costs and population decline. As a result of these challenges and others, the community is divided among pro-business, pro-development interests, greenspace advocates, and affordable housing supporters. This project is based on the idea that the divided community members need to share their different perspectives and take the time to think about the community’s needs and constraints. A specific goal is to engage families especially, who are often unable to participate in traditional community events due to time constraints.
The project attempts to capture and communicate the experience of Yellow Springs by publishing a collection of interviews that combine photography, audio interviews and music. Each interview focuses generally around the question of "why do you live where you live and what does it matter?" Interviews use an abbreviated life history interview approach to collect individual experiences.
The resulting interviews are posted to the project website to allow community members, local leaders, and the general public to engage with the material in a grassroots visioning project.
The project website also provides a number of resources for other communities that wish to undertake similar initiatives. These include Digital Tools for Text and Spoken Word, Digital Tools for Photography and Ingo Graphics (coming soon), Art of the Interview, and Website Framework. These resources are available here: http://whyherewhynow.org/resources/
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