Woonsocket Call: "What’s your story? City library’s new storytelling project lets you share your Woonsocket life"

Michelle Heroux, a lifelong Woonsocket resident and owner of ‘With Heart and Soul’ clothing and jewelry shop in Cumberland, readies to be interviewed for her ‘story.’

By Joseph B. Nadeau, Staff Writer

Woonsocket, RI --- With the help of a funding grant and award of new technology, the city’s Harris Public Library is ready to film your story and add it to a treasury of city impressions and personal histories that it is building.

The library’s “My Woonsocket Life,” A Storytelling Project, is the result of the Studio Rhode competition hosted by the Rhode Island Office of Innovation and the state Office of Library and Information Services.

The Harris Public Library won a grant through the competition that provided it with 40 Apple IPad tablets, video production equipment, a Mac computer, a Macbook and an Apple television for display – a $50,000 technology award in all, according to Leslie Page, Harris director. The library has also received a $40,000 grant from the Carnegie Foundation to build a “creation lab” at the library for use in the video productions and other projects, Page said.

The library has already been out in the community filming resident stories at various events this summer and fall and also hosting special events like a filming night held in the upstairs medieval dinning room at the Tavern on Cherry Monday evening.

“I think it is a great project and the response to it has been great,” Page said between filming participants with Margaret McNulty, assistant director, and Ernest DiSpirito, a library trustee.

Page and McNaulty saw the Office of Innovation and Office of Library and Information challenge as a way to showcase the city’s past as a onetime manufacturing powerhouse with its unique ethnic and cultural diversity while also helping to define a new identity and path for the future.

“We are exploring what we are now as a community and what do we want to become,” Page said.

The end result of the project will be a collection of stories and thoughts that can help city planners look ahead to new goals for economic development and community direction while also preserving individual histories from city residents, according to Page.

McNaulty said the format for the short interviews is a simple one. The interview subject is asked just three questions. The first asks them to tell their  favorite memory of their life in the city, the second what they like about living in the city, and the third what they would do “today to change Woonsocket.”

The library will also be able to use some of the information collected to help with its own strategic planning for future programs, she said.

“So with this project we are looking for our residents to be heard and to tell their Woonsocket stories,” she said. The project is seeking a multi-generational and multi-cultural sample of about 200 Woonsocket residents and to date about 70 interviews with residents have already been completed, she noted. Some are already available on the library’s Facebook page and through YouTube, DiSpirito noted. The ultimate goal of the project will also to have the stories added to the Smithsonian Institution’s online site for its Main Street USA project.

At the Tavern Monday night, Robert Charpentier, 90, of Bernice Avenue, filmed an interview and offered a bit of praise for the city’s recent efforts to eliminate blighted buildings and to fix local roads. “I think we’re on the right track and I think that’s due to the city of Woonsocket,” Charpentier said.

Charpentier had worked for a time as a barber for his brother Lorenzo’s barbershop on Front Street, as had his brothers Emery, Rudy and Albert and other members of the family too.

“I think it might be a very good idea,” Charpentier said after his interview. “It’s `Let’s go forward,’ and that is very good idea,” he said.

Michelle Heroux, another lifelong city resident sitting down in front of the video camera, told how she fondly remembers growing up with her fellow classmates through school. “Everyone knew each other in my class and it was a great experience,” the 1980 graduate of Woonsocket High School said.

One of the city’s challenges is its tax rate, she said, and noted that “hopefully the value of homes will increase” despite the city’s higher taxes. As for potential improvements, Heroux pointed to the plans for a Woonsocket train connection at Depot Square as a major one. Her husband has taken the train to Boston for 30 years, and having a station closer to home would be “a great help to us and our city,” she noted.

Former City Councilman and School Committee member John Ward also did an interview for the library, but noted he didn’t pick politics as his story. “I just shared some of the challenges for the city and its struggle to find its identity and what it wants to be in the future,” Ward said. As for what he suggested as a possible improvement for the city, Ward said he talked about widening Cumberland Hill Road as it comes down into the city from Route 99 and turning it into a better entry route into the city.

“I would like to see it become a big boulevard that would bring you right into the heart of the city,” he said.

Residents who would like to join the filming project can contact the librarians at 401-769-9044 and schedule a taping in the library studio or get information on when the next public recording session will be held and where.

They can also visit the library’s YouTube postings to see interviews already completed that include WOON’s Dave Richards recollections of going to the library to get books in his youth and watching how the library has come to offer much more than that today. Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt can been seen offering her memories on shopping at the McCarthy’s Department store when she was younger or visiting its Talking Christmas Tree display during the holidays, as well as listing her goals for city.

And in another interview, Meka Hamilton, a city parent and Middle School Parent Advisory Council delegate, tells how she loves living in Woonsocket and believes it to be a great community. She notes the “bad reputation” the city school department often gets tagged with, but explains how she believes local school administrators are “working hard” to help local students and “how amazing that is.”



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