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Tammy Clemons

Tammy Clemons

Arts Education Artist
  • Media Arts
  • Media Arts
  • Artist Specialty : Media Arts

Bio

Tammy Clemons is a native Kentuckian, community scholar, media artist and teacher who is interested in multimedia and multimodal storytelling, researching what people document themselves, documenting on behalf of others and supporting communities and individuals in telling their own stories. She has a Bachelor of Arts from Berea College, a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, and a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Kentucky. She is a recipient of an Appalachian Sound Archives Fellowship (2009), a Kentucky Foundation for Women (KFW) Art Meets Activism Grant (2023), two KFW Artist Enrichment Grants (2009 and 18), an Alternate ROOTS Artistic Assistance Grant (2010), two Research Fellowships from the Kentucky Historical Society (2010 and 17), a Kentucky Oral History Commission (KOHC) Project Grant (2018) and a KOHC Transcription Grant (2019).  

 

Dr. Clemons has experience teaching various topics to different age groups and audiences including elementary school, high school and college-level classes. She has made more than 50 short videos, and she coproduces a multimedia documentary project about her partners’ grandparents, Frances and John Reedy, who were founding Bluegrass musicians and songwriters from Harlan, Ky. She has proficiency and experience with various audio and video editing software applications as well as online social networking and media distribution platforms. She has also completed six of eight micro credentials required for the PBS/KQED Media Literacy Educator Certification. She has also coproduced several film screenings and festivals and supported community theater productions in Madison, Rockcastle, Letcher and Owsley counties, including the 2016 Youth Theatre Lab hosted by Appalshop’s Roadside Theater and Appalachian Media Institute.  

 

As a media teacher, Dr. Clemons has mentored and assisted with the production of more than 100 digital storytelling projects by young people in the Appalachian region. She has taught media in formal and informal settings, including college-level courses, summer camps for high school girls, conference workshops and one-on-one mentoring/collaboration. She has worked as a teaching artist through Partners for Rural Impact (formerly Partners for Education at Berea College) for several eastern Kentucky residencies funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, including Our Creative Promise, Arts Connect Appalachian Youth, and as an artist mentor for the Appalachian Teaching Artist Fellowship. She helped consult with Kentucky Educational Television to update their “Media Arts Toolkit” of K-12 resources for teachers, and she received the 2022 Appalachian Arts & Entertainment (“Appy”) Award for Best Arts Educator. ​ ​

Potential Residency Project

Dr. Clemons has implemented several simple projects with young people that can be adapted to different settings and completed with whatever media resources are available. Some exercises adapted from friends/peer mentors require only paper and pencils for storyboarding.

  • “Favorite Place" exercise (narrative writing and storyboarding)
  • “Snapshot" exercise (trust-building, selecting/framing shots, storyboarding, interpretation)
  • “Visual Postcards" (composing/framing 30 seconds of stationary footage of ambient sound/visuals)
  • “Sensory Postcards" (featuring audio soundscapes with ambient data about a place and time)
  • “Where I'm From" exercise (George Ella Lyon's lesson plan as simple written exercise or more complex edited digital story incorporating multiple voices and images)
  • “Digital Check-ups" (guided steps for establishing a regular routine for checking privacy and security settings on personal devices, social media accounts, etc.)
  • “Seven Sentence Stories" (narrative writing)
  • “Graphic Novel Workshop" (layout, graphics, narrative writing, publishing)

     

    Cross-curricular connections include writing, language arts, social studies, visual and Appalachian culture. ​

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