Bio
Dr. Tammy Clemons is a native Kentuckian, community scholar, media artist, and teacher who is interested in multi-media and multi-modal storytelling, researching what people document themselves, documenting on behalf of others, and supporting communities and individuals in telling their own stories. She has a BA from Berea College, an MTS from Harvard Divinity School, and an MA and PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of Kentucky. She is a recipient of an Appalachian Sound Archives Fellowship (2009), two Kentucky Foundation for Women (KFW) Art Meets Activism Grants (2023 and 2024), two KFW Artist Enrichment Grants (2009 and 2018), an Alternate ROOTS Artistic Assistance Grant (2010), two Research Fellowships from the Kentucky Historical Society (2010 and 2017), 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 co-produces a multi-media documentary project about her partners' grandparents Frances and John Reedy, who were founding Bluegrass musicians and songwriters from Harlan, Kentucky. 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 6 of 8 micro credentials required for the PBS/KQED Media Literacy Educator Certification. She has also co-produced several film screenings and festivals and supported community theatre 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 a hundred 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 elementary through high school, 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 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 (elementary-middle: “mad-lib" mini-zine; high school & up: narrative writing and storyboarding)
- “Snapshot" exercise (middle school & up: trust-building, selecting/framing shots, storyboarding, interpretation)
- “Visual Postcards" (all ages: composing/framing 30 seconds of stationary footage of ambient sound/visuals)
- “Sensory Postcards" (all ages: featuring audio soundscapes with ambient data about a place and time)
- “Where I'm From" exercise (middle school & up: George Ella Lyon's lesson plan as simple written exercise or more complex edited digital story incorporating multiple voices and images)
- “Digital Check-ups" (middle school & up: guided steps for establishing a regular routine for checking privacy and security settings on personal devices, social media accounts, etc.)
- “Seven Sentence Stories" (elementary & up: mini-zines; middle-school & up: narrative writing)
- “Graphic Novel Workshop" (middle school & up: layout, graphics, narrative writing, publishing)
- “Community Podcasts (middle school & up: production planning, audio recording interviews/soundscapes)
Cross-curricular connections include writing, language arts, social studies, visual and Appalachian culture.