Instructors: Gregory L. Sharrow and Andy Kolovos.

Oral history is a powerful tool for engaging with collective memory, identifying shared values, and understanding how human beings draw on the past to inform action in the present.

Intended for students, community members, staff members of non-profit cultural, community and social-service agencies interested in ethnographic interviewing for oral history research.

This class provides insight into the role of oral history in cultural sustainability, the theories underpinning oral history research, and hands-on training in oral history interview techniques. The class begins with a demonstration interview followed by group discussion of the ethnographic interview process. Attendees will then work as teams to conduct interviews with invited guests using provided digital audio recording equipment. The day concludes with reflection on interviewing and a discussion of project ideas.

Instructor: Andy Kolovos.

Audio is a powerful medium for capturing human experience and human expression. In the context of cultural sustainability efforts, audio is an extremely useful tool for documenting local knowledge, exploring values and perceptions, and building resources for understanding and supporting cultural practices.

Intended for students, community members, staff members of non-profit cultural, community and social-service agencies, as well as professional researchers interested in learning more about audio recording options, this class will provide a basic introduction to the use of contemporary digital audio recording equipment in the context of ethnographic and oral history interviews.

Attendees will receive a thorough introduction to the fundamentals of digital audio, types of common field-recording microphones, and the use of flash-memory based audio recorders. The workshop includes hands-on exercises with equipment in an actual interview setting. We will use the Marantz PMD660 for these exercises, but the fundamental skills demonstrated will be applicable to most currently available digital audio recorders. In addition to the use of this equipment, we will also cover the selection and purchase of professional digital audio recording gear.

Instructor: Ned Castle, Photographer

Photography is a tool for both exploring the world and expressing something meaningful about that exploration. When approached from an ethnographic perspective, photography is a powerful resource for collaborative engagement with individuals and communities interested in presenting, documenting, and understanding their cultural practices.

Intended for students, community members, staff members of non-profit cultural, community and social-service agencies, as well as professional researchers interested in learning more about digital photography technique and its use in ethnography, this workshop will provide instruction in the technical aspects of photography and examine the role of the camera as a window though which the researcher views the world.

Instruction in basic to advanced photographic techniques will be merged with ethnographic field research concepts. Workshop attendees will learn how to engage their surroundings consciously, thoughtfully, and photographically—in that order. Hands-on experience will be provided as attendees conduct their own "photo-ethnographic" documentary projects. There will also be time for reflection and critique of student work.

Instructor: Erica Heilman, Radio Producer.

Audio stories have the capacity to open a window into another world, and they can be shared in a number of ways. They can be broadcast on the radio, streamed online, combined with images to create audio slide shows, or used to transform a standing exhibit. Recording audio is increasingly easy in the digital world, and digital audio editing tools make it easy for individuals and communities to create rich and provocative sound stories.

This two-day workshop offers participants an introduction to the techniques of digital audio editing. On the first day, participants will receive a quick course in recording technique and then hit the streets of Middlebury to conduct short interviews. Back in the classroom, these recordings will be used as raw material to edit together short audio pieces. By the end of two days, attendees will have the skills to begin working on their own sound stories at home.

This workshop is intended for students, community members, staff members of non-profit cultural, community, and social-service agencies, as well as professional researchers interested in learning more about digital audio editing. No editing experience is required, but participants should be confident computer users. The workshop is taught on Macintosh computers, using a digital editing program called Soundtrack Pro. The fundamental skills developed will be transferable to any audio editing platform.

Instructor: Scott Miller, Videographer.

This intensive two-day workshop gives participants the opportunity to create a short multi-media documentary project from start to finish. We begin with conceptualizing the piece, and end with publishing it digitally. We cover ethics, aesthetics, and technique before developing a project and producing it.

With historic Middlebury, Vermont as our location, we will use photography, video and audio recording to create a unique and artistic media piece that reflects the character of the place, the values of the local residents, and the aesthetics of the filmmakers.

Day One: The first morning the group will decide on a topic and then create a project structure, leading to a storyboard, to plan how various media pieces (still images, audio, and moving images) will blend to form the piece. In the afternoon we will go outside and work in teams recording around town; some shooting stills, others pursuing interviews, others recording ambient audio or shooting video.

Day Two: This day will be dedicated to editing our project using FInal Cut Pro. Familiarity with the software and Macintosh computers is recommended, but not required. We will work in groups of two to edit individual aspects of the project, as decided on our original storyboard. By the afternoon we will reconvene to put the components together and upload our finished piece onto Vimeo for the world to see.