Roots with Wings, a Floyd County Place-Based Education Project:: Intergenerational Connections

Floyd Story Center

Since 1998, a community oral history collection partnership of the Old Church Gallery, Ltd., Radford University’s Center for Social and Cultural Research, Honors Program, Scholar-Citizen Initiative, Appalachian Regional and Rural Studies Center, and Floyd County High School. Our archives now hold over 100 interviews.

In our Roots with Wings project, college mentors, high school staff, and community volunteers meet weekly during the school year to teach the discipline of oral history collection.


Students learn ethical, methodologically sound interview techniques, practice and complete several interviews, transcribe the audiotapes, create searchable content logs, archive interviewee resources and period photographs, learn the technology of audio and video recording, research historical backgrounds, acquire proficiency in iMovie and storytelling, and finally extract a theme from an hour long interview to create a seven minute movie production.

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Interview Day with Floyd County High School Students

 Exploring Floyd County Downtown


The time has flown, and our Roots with Wings project is in full force.  Thursday, March 29, students from Floyd County High School and mentors from Radford University traveled to Hotel Floyd to conduct four interviews.  We are excited to finally share our experiences. 

To prepare for the day, RU mentors created checklists to make sure everything ran smoothly. We set up our equipment, arranged our rooms accordingly, and went on with each interview. 

The high school students put their interview skills to the test with our guests who shared stories about living in intentional communities. Though they come from different parts of the country, they found something special in Floyd. With differing backgrounds, these residents of Floyd County all shared a love of place.

Once the interviews were completed, RU student mentors guided the FCHS students to the Old Church Gallery, where volunteers gave us a full tour and a map to learn about downtown Floyd. 

Roots with Wings at Floyd Country Store for lunch! 
We took the students on an adventure to learn more about their community. Special thanks to the Floyd Country Store, who took us in for lunch. The food and company was everything we needed to complete the special day. Now that we have all the materials we need, we'll begin transcribing and creating short videos. We'll keep you posted to see how the students do!


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