Parables to Policy

Rural Southerners are noted for being storytellers. Whether one is Black, Latino, White, or Native American, people are connected to place through the power of stories. Through stories, families are connected across generations. The power of narrative shapes our identity and memory.

SRDI’s Parables to Policy project was initially supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The Foundation’s MIRA program – Managing Information in Rural America” helped rural communities and organizations test new ways to fully integrate information technology and, more importantly, information management to the benefit of rural people.

The parables to policy project is a stage for rural people to speak in their own voice about the hopes and challenges they confront in their communities. Past parables featured communities in Eastern Kentucky and Coastal South Carolina.

Transitions in Southern Louisiana

This featured parable highlights people and communities of the Bayou country in and around Iberia Parrish, Louisiana . Residents, black and white, from different walks of life share their hopes and challenges for their families and communities. Our local partner for the project, The Southern Mutual Help Association was terrific at coordinating interviews and helping us shape the finished shows. The parable is a connected series of macromedia flash shows.

Coming Soon!

Our next parable is in production and will focus on the opportunities and challenges to making manufactured housing – a common form of housing across the rural South – into the mainstream housing market. Look for it in the fall of 2004.

Other Useful Sites

If you are interested in issues of the media and rural America , or in how digital storytelling can be a community building exercise visit these websites:

Center on Rural Strategies - Our friends and colleagues at CRS are hoeing a new field of activism centered on how the national media portrays and reports on rural America.

Appalshop - Based in Whitesburg, Kentucky, Appalshop is the nation's oldest and most prestigeous center for the use of arts and media to build community.