Greenways for Nashville, a non-profit organization supporting Nashville's greenways initiative, celebrated 25 years as an organization in 2019. To commemorate the event, a digital story was produced to provide a glimpse into the life and history behind Nashville's greenways movement.

The goal of this project was to utilize participatory storytelling methods to craft a digital narrative documenting Nashville’s greenways movement. This story would be unveiled during an annual fundraising event. The project took place between September-October 2019 and was led by myself, Elisabeth McClain, in partnership with Greenways for Nashville and community members Ann Tidwell, Phil Ponder, and Sandra Duncan.

What is the story you want to tell about Nashville’s greenways movement? What do you think this story means?

Story Brainstorming: Using data from interviews with stakeholders, common themes were uncovered to guide our storytelling process.

Create a Storyboard: A storyboard was then created to help guide the narrative and inform our storytelling timeline.

Write the Script: We revisited data from our interviews to craft a script for the digital narrative. Stakeholders were provided the script for review and editing during group meetings. Each stakeholder was then assigned their own set of lines based upon their feedback provided during the interview process.

Choose the Images: Photographs were selected from physical and digital archives to support the digital narrative. We revisited the Storyboard during this time to arrange images with selections from the script.

Record & Edit Audio: Stakeholders were coached on how to present their narrative in an honest and compelling manner. During recording, the photos from their script selection were provided to them for context.

Mix & Finalize: Audio from stakeholders was then mixed, finalized, and arranged with selected images to craft a final digital and visual narrative.

The final visual production was positively received by stakeholders and premiered at Greenways for Nashville’s 14th annual fundraiser event, Dinner by the Bridge, to a crowd of 500+ individuals.