Vermont Community Fellows Program Launches!
The Vermont Community Fellows Program (VCFP), a partnership between Vermont Folklife and Conversations from the Open Road, is a three-year initiative to build statewide capacity for community-based, action-oriented field research. This year the program accepted 15 applicants into its first cohort. Over the next 12-18 months, the Fellows will receive in-depth training to inform and guide their ongoing work with the people and places that matter to them most.
Fellows share their initial experiences interviewing members of their communities. Photo by Macaulay Lerman.
Members of the cohort include college and graduate students, one high school junior, and adults representing a range of careers and life stages. For their first workshop, fellows traveled to the Vermont History Center in Barre from all over the state—Thetford Center, Weybridge, Halifax, Milton, Burlington, Essex Junction, South Burlington, East Montpelier, Brattleboro, and Vergennes. They all have one thing in common: a desire to learn from and with their communities. Here are a few examples of the Fellows’ projects:
A UVM student working with her fellow hunters to make sense of how our changing climate affects the practice and of cultures hunting and trapping in Vermont.
A pair of community researchers from the Brattleboro area will explore potential grassroots solutions to housing insecurity.
A Tibetan American will record the life histories of other first-generation Tibetan Americans as a cultural resource for future generations.
Over the course of the next year, each individual Community Fellow will seek out and document diverse viewpoints, examine past and present efforts to address their topics of concern, and, with research partners in their respective communities, co-create a plan of action.
Vermont Folklife Education Director, Mary Wesley (second from the right), works with Fellows during their second workshop. Photo by Macaulay Lerman.
Workshops are just one component of the Fellowship experiences; they provide an opportunity for group learning and support that complements the individual research process. Each half-day workshop offers the cohort time to get to know each other and learn from each other’s experience, interest, and involvement in their respective communities. Workshops also provide an orientation to a wide range of skills that Fellows will draw on in their work such as:
Community-based research methods
Audio and video field recording techniques
Use and creation of archival collections
Ethics of community organizing and work
Organizing and facilitating informal and formal community discussions
Vermont Folklife Education Director Mary Wesley, Conversation From the Open Road Director Mary Simons, and Vermont Folklife Executive Director, Kate Haughey, listen to Fellows share out during a workshop. Photo by Macaulay Lerman.
In the second workshop, which took place in late February, Fellows took advantage of the sunny, late winter weather to engage in an exercise exploring and honing the skill of observation, or “observant participation.” Fanning out through downtown Burlington, each person chose a space to practice observing and describing everything they saw around them— whether they were on a busy street sidewalk, in a bookstore, the public library, or a downtown hotel. To learn more about the exercise or try it yourself, click here.
Fellows will gather three more times before the end of June, 2025. Going into the summer, Fellows will focus on their individual projects, share what they’ve learned through research and fieldwork with their community, hear feedback, co-create a plan to envision and enact change, and work together with their community to realize it. The cohort will stay in touch virtually and in addition to their individual projects, they will contribute to a final exhibit facilitated by VCFP staff that will share about the efforts of this pilot program. Stay tuned for more updates!
