Paper Town, which started as a flurry of interviews with paper makers about to loose their jobs in a 200 year old paper mill in Lee, Massachusetts, has become more. We have moved the project to Housatonic Heritage, and there, we are working on a major exhibit about paper, with the Berkshire Museum. Ben Willis is working on a short documentary; we are going through transcripts and stories; helping Crane Museum of Paper Making to organize a small but important oral history project; and we are talking to paper artists.
See: www.theoralhistorycenter.org
Looking forward: A robust oral history or paper makers, inside a bigger project that celebrates the science and art of paper making.
Looking back, a few highlights so far:
Here is 2010 short piece we made for an exhibit at the Lichtenstein Arts Center in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Middle school students in Joshua Hall’s Lee Middle and High School history class selected some of the still photos for this site and the documentary.
Early on, the Paper Mills Documentary Project included students from the Lee Middle School in the process. Students learned the paper making heritage of their town as teachers found ways to incorporate local history and paper making into the curriculum.
These photos: Ricki Cowell held a day-long paper making workshop at her gallery in Tyringham, and Paper Town Projects sponsored the participation of a middle school student. Joshua Hall’s Lee Middle School students also selected still photos from the archives to use in this documentary, some of which are on this site.
To date, this project has been supported by Housatonic Heritage, Mass Humanities, High Meadow Foundation, and generous individuals.