By Susan Reaves, NTEN Digital Inclusion Fellow
How do you create a successful project in Nashville, TN? Collaborate!
Nashville Public Library’s Digital Inclusion Fellow and Studio NPL partnered to create a teen-only Digital Inclusion PSA competition which encouraged adults to learn how to get online at Nashville Public Library. Since this was Nashville, adding a soundtrack could only make it better!
Studio NPL provides innovative teen programming at multiple library locations in Nashville/Davidson County, TN. Nashville Public Library’s Digital Inclusion Fellowship is a part of the Library’s Digital Inclusion Initiatives program, an outreach program which provides adults in our community with digital skills and technology needed to become digital citizens. This partnership created a great opportunity to help teen and adult patrons.
- The Digital Inclusion Fellowship supplied the prizes (laptops, tablets, and headphones).
- Contest information scrolled across the library’s homepage online.
- Studio NPL hosted workshops across the system for teens and mentored them on how to create PSAs.
- School libraries were contacted via the Limitless Libraries partnership between the Library and Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools.
One lucky winner was chosen, Leah Faulkner, a Hume-Fogg High School junior. Though this was her first video project, she successfully developed the concept for the video and filmed her entry with an actress family friend. In true Nashville style, volunteers from the band Lonestar wrote and produced the soundtrack behind the PSA.
A community came together across generations to build this project, as so many worked together to ensure its success. The PSA has been shown on Nashville’s Metro News Network and Nashville’s NECAT networks and has brought awareness to the Nashville community about the Library’s digital inclusion mission. The PSA was a result of a community collaboration and it has been exciting to witness the growth of awareness in our city and state for Digital Inclusion. And the soundtrack is great, too!