Reflections collaboration wins oral history award
The Reflections project, a collaboration between Keene State, Franklin Pierce University, The Historical Society of Cheshire County (Alan Rumrill), Cheshire TV, The Keene Sentinel, and the Keene Public Library (executive producers Nancy Vincent and Sally Miller), is the winner of the Oral History Association’s 2010 Elizabeth B. Mason Small Project Award.
The project was an oral history project that began with “story circles” conducted by John Harris of FPU and videotaped by Cheshire TV. From those story circles, several oral history documentaries were planned that premiered at the Colonial Theater and were shown on Cheshire TV over a two-year period.
The five documentaries were: The Hurricane of 1938, Rail Travel in the Monadnock Region, Pisgah: A Place Apart, The Cheshire County Complex, and Textile Mills in the Monadnock Region. Cheshire TV’s Lee Perkins did the videotaping and editing, Jim Rousmaniere (Sentinel) and John Harris (FPU) wrote four of the scripts for which Rose Kundanis acted as script consultant. Kundanis also wrote the last script with help from Melinda Jette (FPU), conducted some of the interviews and supervised some shooting of video.
The award will be made at the OHA conference in Atlanta, Georgia, on Oct. 29. At that conference, FPU faculty and students will present a panel on the project.
