WKU’s Mountain Workshop hosting 50 year anniversary celebration

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – The Photojournalism program at Western Kentucky University is getting ready to celebrate a major milestone.

Since 1976, the third week in October has meant one thing for the program: the Mountain Workshop. For the last 50 years, visual storytellers from around the world have made their way to Kentucky to tell the story of one town each year.

Now, 50 years later, they’re celebrating the huge milestone “Through the Lens of Time.”

“It started as a class project in the, at the time, photojournalism program, and it was really meant first and foremost as an educational opportunity for our students to get outside of the classroom and get hands-on experience. It’s grown from a very small group of a class at Western to… I think we had over 80 participants last year in Maysville,” Coordinator of Visual Journalism and Photography James Kenney says.

In those 50 years, staff have noticed it’s not just teaching students about the tricks of the trade, they also get to preserve history each and every year as they make a book, website and gallery that showcases each county and area they visit.

“It becomes a service not only to our students, the participants from all over the country, but it also is really a service to the community,” said Kenney.

His favorite types of photos are showcasing the people of these communities, because it shows how different everyone truly is.

“People say every year ‘Isn’t it kind of the same?’ and I’m like ‘No,’ because the people aren’t the same. We may be doing stories, similar kinds of stories on veterinarians or the sheriff or… whoever it might be, but each person is different in their environment,” said Kenney.

As the 50 year celebration concludes with this gallery, Kenney reflects on just how much has changed in that time.

“I don’t think the education part has changed. That has had a profound effect on our students for the 50 years. Since I have been here, which is I’ll be going into my 33rd year and 21st year as the director, we’ve seen incredible technological change. Whether it’s five or whether it’s 80, the goal is to educate and to inspire a new generation of photojournalists to go out there and tell stories about their communities by starting with telling stories about the communities in Kentucky,” he says.

The celebration takes place on Friday, March 27th at the Jody Richards Hall auditorium, starting at 6:30 with a roundtable discussion featuring different workshops discussing how they are different.

This year’s Mountain Workshop will take place October 20th through 24th in Winchester and Clark County.