Connecting with Our Community Partner

A Visit to the Old Church Gallery

After everyone recovered from flu season and bad weather, we gathered at the Old Church Gallery for our weekly class.  For the Radford University students and some of the Floyd County teachers, this was our first time at the Gallery.  Some local Roots with Wings Project participants were pleased to point out displays of their own family’s crafts.  Alice Slusher’s father, R.O., for instance, created the Gallery’s dancing dolls.  

As we settled into a circle in the Gallery’s exhibit room (surrounded by beautiful, early Floyd County baskets), we discussed the goals, outcomes, and twelve-year history of the project.  Kathleen Ingoldsby, our top-notch digital archivist, emphasized the importance of saving stuff and preserving history, topics she’d presented in her Ted-X Floyd talk, which can be seen here: 

Catherine Pauley shared her own experiences with cultural anthropology and stressed the importance of conserving the cultures of Floyd County.  She reminded us that we’ll preserve an artifact (our interviews), and then analyze the meaning of the artifact in relation to the culture.  Catherine, who once intended to be an archaeologist herself, said, “I did not expect that what I studied–what I have documented–would be my own culture.”  

I wish to remind everyone of the Old Church Gallery’s motto:  We remember, we collect, we protect. 

And, by the time this blog entry is posted, we should have completed our first oral history interviews.   Thank you for visiting, and stay tuned for our reports!