Blacksburg Stories is now Blue Ridge Stories! Huh?!? What’s with the name change?
As many of our program alums and supporters know, Blacksburg Stories is a program I co-founded with Paul Harrill in 2007 to address the underserved need of youth media literacy and arts education in the New River Valley as well as to provide Virginia Tech Cinema Studies students with an opportunity to learn by teaching. Every year since, we have run this program as a labor of love in addition to our full-time teaching responsibilities at Virginia Tech. We are able to keep this camp going thanks to our VT student volunteers, in-kind support from Virginia Tech, and sponsorship from outside grants and organizations.
For the first time this year, the program is extending its reach to Roanoke and will be hosted as a pilot program under the new name of Blue Ridge Stories at the Taubman Museum of Art. Students from Blacksburg will join Roanoke participants by taking the Smartway Bus to and from the workshop each day. The 2011 video premiere will take place at the Taubman Museum of Art. In this way, we hope to expand the workshop’s reach to the Roanoke community, whose youth media literacy need is great, as well as to bridge the divide between the Roanoke and New River Valleys.
While the name has changed, Blacksburg Stories will certainly continue with the participation of youth and college students from Blacksburg in this year’s program, and the possibility of sister programs in both cities is certainly something we look to in the future. We invite you to read more about the program’s history on the About page and to get the details about this year’s camp and how to register in the 2011 registration brochure.
We would like to thank all of the families who have supported this program over the past five years as well as the Department of Communication and the Lyric Theatre who helped nurture this program in its infancy and the Department of Theatre and Cinema, InnovationSpace, and the Taubman Museum of Art, who are ushering the program into new growth.
–Ashley Maynor
Co-Founder and Program Director
