The Fort Vancouver Mobile Project team met earlier today in the overflowing “skybox” office  on WSUV’s campus. Brett Oppegaard led the meeting, and reviewed the projects ongoing and future projects.

The team featured people from Fort Vancouver’s staff , Videographers Forrest Burger and Troy Wayrynen, members from the Ke Kukui Fondation, content createor Brady Berkenmeier, graphic designer Marsha Matta, CMDC professors John Barber and Dene Grigar, History professor Steve Fountain, web developer Joe Oppegaard, and the Director of New and Social Media for the National Park Service John Tobiason, among others.

Having garnered $83,000 thus far in grants, the project has received support from the NEH, the Clark County Historical Promotion Grant, Washington State University Vancouver, and the Creative Media and Digital Culture programs. Forthcoming blogs will detail some more of what the project has in store for the coming year!

(Special thanks to Kerri Lingo for her copious notes from the proceedings!!!)

The Fort Vancouver Mobile Project recently received one of two national “Call to Action” designations. from the Fort Vancouver National Historic Sites (FVHS). This indicates the importance that the FVHS feels about its mobile accompaniment.

The project was described in part as follows:

“A partnership between FOVA and the Creative Media and Digital Culture (CMDC) Department at Washington State University Vancouver, is utilizing the talents of student and professor digital artists and storytellers to create a free smartphone app that helps connect visitors to the significance of this national park. Recognized as a nationally significant program through the recent awarding of a NEH Digital Start-up Grant, it is in its second year of 1) utilizing the talents of students and professors in digital humanities and 2) engaging the digital humanities and arts community to connect the public to park stories in new, creative new ways.”

“Fort Vancouver Mobile” (FVM) brings together a team of 18 scholars and storytellers from throughout the digital humanities field––including historians and archaeologists as well as experts in literature, rhetoric, and writing––to create digital content for mobile phones that can be accessed by visitors to the The Village at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, in Vancouver, WA.  Phase 1 developed “apps” for mobile phones that delivers nonfiction narrative content about the lives of Hawaiian workers of the Fort.  It has resulted in the “proof of concept” for the larger project.  Phase 2, the project chronicled in this site, focuses on women and domestic issues whose presence at the Fort until recently has not garnered much public attention.  At the end of our project we will have a series of digital stories, told through video, sound files, and other media, able to be delivered by smart phones to Fort Vancouver visitors.

I, along with my colleague Brett Oppegaard also from The Creative Media & Digital Culture Program at Washington State University Vancouver (WSUV), are heading up this phase of FVM. We received a Start Up grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as a 2011 Historical Promotion grant from Clark County, and a 2011 Research Mini-Grant from WSUV.  Phase 1 was seeded originally with a 2010 Historic Promotion Grant led by Oppegaard.

We are using this website to document our work as we produce the project. The main site for the Fort Vancouver Project is managed by Oppegaard.  Please visit it for more information about our work.

You can download the app for both Android and Apple.