This is a guest post by Jessica K. Wilson, Executive Director of Lowell Telecommunications Corporation—the American Textile History Museum‘s community partner in the Places of Invention (POI) Affiliates Project.
We were thrilled when our friends at the American Textile History Museum (ATHM) approached us to be a part of the Lemelson Center’s Places of Invention Affiliates Project. It seemed a natural fit. For nearly 20 years, the Lowell Telecommunications Corporation—or LTC, as our members lovingly call us—has been a place where the Lowell community has visually translated their stories and ideas into multimedia shared worldwide.
We’re what in the 1970s was called a public access television station and in the late 1990s and early 2000s a community media center. Now with the advent of a movement towards all things local, we like to think of ourselves as a farm where we grow local video by doing what we do best and most often: train people from throughout the city to produce digital film and video using professional media equipment.
Community-made introductory video to LTC
LTC’s goal is to help our citizens communicate with the largest possible audience—to say something about the space they live in, people they encounter, and things they value in our community. Once this was only possible over Lowell’s cable TV broadcast signal; now with tools like YouTube and iMovie, online broadcast channels are seemingly infinite.
We’re delighted that the Smithsonian’s POI Affiliates Project provides an opportunity to take Lowell’s unique story to an even broader audience. Working with ATHM, we’re developing videos that will become part of the interactive map in the POI exhibition and website. One of the things we’re particularly interested is the way historic technology continues to shape contemporary innovation in Lowell. Textile mills and other spaces are used and re-used for new purposes. The city’s physical advantages and constraints inspire—and require—new solutions. Our POI Affiliate team plans to develop video topics around these themes.
LTC is moving full-steam ahead. Firm believers that anyone can be a video producer with the right education, we have taken the same approach to becoming local historians. Our staff has donned our “historian” hats and are enlisting members of the Lowell community in our documentary efforts. Conversations with ATHM’s David Unger, Director of Interpretation, have made us think more deeply about the 19th-century textile industry and the way it affects city growth today—economically, demographically, and architecturally. We look forward to working with the Museum and sharing our findings with you.
LTC video tour of Lowell City Hall showing how it has been adapted over time to meet residents' changing needs
