With funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Brattleboro Words project is showcasing the cultural and literary heritage of Brattleboro, Vermont. The project is integrating local histories into school curricula, providing opportunities for public dialogue through a monthly roundtable discussion, and mapping the literary history of the county through self-guided audio tours. It is fostering collaboration among local organizations like Marlboro College, the Brattleboro Literary Festival, the Brattleboro Historical Society, the Brooks Memorial Library, and Write Action while helping raise an additional $150,000 to support humanities in the region.
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Brattleboro prides itself on being a book town—it was frequented by H.P. Lovecraft and played home to Robert Frost while he taught at Marlboro College. And Brattleboro has been home to a number of printing plants over the years, which have printed everything from Noah Webster’s American Spelling Book in the eighteenth century to the first American edition of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in the twentieth. The Brattleboro Words Trail, the center of the project, will showcase the region’s literary and cultural history through a downloadable, GPS-based app that will provide an audio tour of significant sites. And the trail is providing a real-world application for writing instruction in the local school system. Students are developing both literacy and technological skills by researching Brattleboro’s history and creating short podcasts. These are made available to the public by the Brattleboro Historical Society.
The project is a collaborative, community effort, bringing together groups and individuals who had not worked together in the past. The Brattleboro Museum & Arts Center held an exhibition in 2020 which paired the Brattleboro Words Trail audio tour with clay murals and wall maps created by local artist Cynthia Parker-Houghton. Write Action is producing a book. And in monthly roundtable discussions, people interested in the trail are invited to swap notes on local historic sites, ensuring that all stakeholders and the public have the chance to include their perspectives on local history in the project.