Susan West and Barbara Garrity-Blake are normally patient women, but when it came to a project near and dear to their hearts, their patience wore thin.
Their goal was to produce a multi-media, online exhibit to bring audio and photography together to tell the story of life on the Outer Banks through oral histories.
?Coastal Voices? would build on an oral history project that Garrity-Blake had started a decade ago.
The two women were working with the National Park Service and its recently retired Outer Banks Group historian Doug Stover on funding for ?Coastal Voices.?
Year after year, the funding did not come through.
However, Park Service officials told them that they were hopeful that maybe in the 2014 budget, the funds would show up.
Garrity-Blake had already conducted several oral history workshops for folks interested in working on the project. They had folks ready to go.
So they started exploring other options to make ?Coastal Voices? a reality and found Kickstarter, a web site that helps creators fund projects and dreams.
They sat down and came up with a bare-bones budget — $8,400 ? and started a campaign to raise the money on Kickstarter by Monday, Nov. 25.
People go to the website and make a pledge. If the project does not reach its goal, it gets nothing and supporters are not charged.
Of course, if they raise more money, they can keep it.
West and Garrity-Blake are really, really close to making this terrific project a reality.
Those of us who love Hatteras and Ocracoke islands can push them over the top and then some.
These two women have spent their careers telling the story of the Outer Banks people in various ways.
West describes herself as a journalist, and Garrity-Blake, as a cultural anthropologist. They have written about the culture and heritage of coastal North Carolina, especially its fishing families. Their book about the struggle of watermen to make a living by the sea was documented in their 2003 book, ?Fish House Opera,? which they described as having the comic and tragic elements of a classic opera.
Both women have lived in the area for decades ? West in Buxton and Garrity-Blake in Down East Carteret County and both are married to commercial fishermen.
When they hit a brick wall after all of the year?s Congressional funding battles, they decided to persevere on their own.
?Are we going to let that stop us? Heck no!? West wrote in an e-mail to supporters. ?Too many people have stepped up to be part of this project. And there are so many compelling stories to share. So we are turning to YOU to help us raise the funds to have an exhibit on North Carolina maritime life online by late spring/early summer 2014.”
West sees this community oral history project as a ?small? project but, she said, ?It?s a start.?
She hopes it will help people understand how important it is to preserve the history of these special islands for all to enjoy ? those who enjoy history, academics, students, amateur genealogists.
On the Kickstarter website, West and Garrity-Blake pledge to do three things this winter:
- Enlist community members who have recently been trained to undertake digital oral history recordings to sit down with their neighbors and record stories.
- Enlist local photographers to take photos to accompany the recordings.
- With expertise from the North Carolina Arts Council and Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies, work with communities to design an online exhibit bringing audio and photography together to tell exactly the story coastal folks want to tell.
The goal is to have an exhibit online by late spring or early summer 2014.
As of late this afternoon, ?Coastal Voices? had pledges totaling $7,796. Let?s put them over the top and then some.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
To see a video of Susan West and Barbara Garrity-Blake explaining ?Coastal Voices,? view some oral histories, and make a pledge, go to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1014414250/coastal-voices-an-oral-history-of-the-outer-banks.
