Mountain Workshops captures everyday life in Clark County

College stu­dents and pro­fes­sion­als from around the world gath­ered in Clark County last week to col­lect sto­ries from local res­i­dents, turn­ing the Hannah McClure Cardinal Community Center into a busy hub for the project.

Mountain Workshops, a half-cen­tu­ry-old sto­ry­telling project, cre­ates an online archive of writ­ten and video sto­ries from com­mu­ni­ties across Kentucky. This year’s archive fea­tures some 70 peo­ple in our com­mu­ni­ty, and a print­ed book will fol­low next year.

The project had hum­ble begin­nings. James Kenney, a pro­fes­sor at Western Kentucky University, is the project direc­tor. He said it all began a half-cen­tu­ry ago as a class project at W.K.U.

Kenney said that a fac­ul­ty mem­ber took a group of stu­dents to Eastern Kentucky in 1976 to pho­to­graph dis­ap­pear­ing one-room schoolhouses.

“The next year, they did down­town Bowling Green,” he said, “and we even­tu­al­ly start­ed going to dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties and then start­ed invit­ing pro­fes­sion­als from all over the coun­try to come in to teach. So, we went from a class project to what it is now, which is 100 to 150 peo­ple strong.”

Not lim­it­ed to W.K.U. stu­dents, the annu­al project now includes stu­dents from all over Kentucky and the United States — and even a few from oth­er countries.

“We have some­body this year that came from India,” Kenney said. “We have anoth­er per­son that flew in from New Zealand. But most of the folks are from the United States. They come from all over the coun­try; we have a mix­ture of pro­fes­sion­als that come in look­ing for maybe a new skill to learn.”

One busy week of sto­ry­telling can take as much as a year to plan. Before par­tic­i­pants arrive, the team must choose a loca­tion, gath­er par­tic­i­pants and work through the logis­ti­cal issues involved.

Jonathan Adams, a Winchester native and W.K.U. fac­ul­ty mem­ber involved in Mountain Workshops, helped line up local peo­ple to be fea­tured in the project. We spoke with him dur­ing the Pioneer Festival while he was doing that work.

The team pro­duced 70 sto­ries for the Clark County project. Readers can explore all of them at https://mountainworkshops.org/.

By doc­u­ment­ing ordi­nary peo­ple and places, the project aims to cre­ate an authen­tic cross-sec­tion of life in Clark County in 2026. Its focus is not pri­mar­i­ly on the high-pro­file sto­ries that news media might empha­size, but on every­day life in the community. 

There is a video fea­ture about GRC quar­ter­back Carter Muzic. Another fea­tures iden­ti­cal twins Alyson and Caitlyn, who have been clog­ging for 30 years. From Patrick’s Barber Shop to Mona Baxter, a con­firmed “cat lady,” the range of sto­ries is remarkable.

“People are dif­fer­ent, every com­mu­ni­ty is dif­fer­ent,” Kenney said. “And that just makes [the project] new every year. When you think about it, doc­u­ment­ing a com­mu­ni­ty is real­ly what we’re doing. 

“We’ve had some seri­ous sto­ries that were very pow­er­ful, and we’ve had some very light fun sto­ries. But in all of that, we’re look­ing to tell real sto­ries of the com­mu­ni­ty, while also pre­serv­ing the dig­ni­ty of that community.”