Questions
I chose to write this story because it had a massive
influence on me. I didn’t feel connected at all with Conneaut Lake when I first
visited it. The only other time that I had been there was for a haunted house.
I had never even seen it in the day. When we arrived to Conneaut Lake I still
didn’t feel like it meant anything to me. But when I had the chance to walk
around and explore I started to form a whole new view on it. This was went by it was just a space. The stories
that existed there were not mine. They belonged to other people. But,
eventually made my own memories through making a video and meeting new friend.
These memories made this park a place for me.
A space becomes a place when a person takes and makes their own memories
there and adds a piece of him or herself to that area.
I’d like to think the
video I made is my little piece of Conneaut Lake. This story wasn’t told to me. It was my
story. I experienced it. I became part of the memories at Conneaut Lake. But
like I said, we learned about self and place in class. Places only become
places because we allow them too. We add part of ourselves to the space we
visit or move in to. Not everywhere we visit is a space and it doesn’t always
become a place. I was nervous that Conneaut Lake was going to stay a space to
me. That I wasn’t going to understand place and space and that I wouldn’t feel
part of what this class wanted me to be part of. But, in the end I ended making
it a place by creating my own memories. I understood why the people cared so much
about their little town now. It was a place even more so for them than it was
for our class.
My story suggests that Conneaut Lake is in fact a community. It thrives even though it is small, even though it is
struggling. It still has loads of people who love and care about it. It has
people who want to fight for it and keep it alive. Even people outside of the
town care what is happening to it. If they didn’t our FS wouldn’t exist. And we
took our time as a class to learn about the town and begin an initiative to help
fix the town and pick it up and put it back on it’s feet.
The multimodal
project that I did was a documentary. It was a compilation of all the photos
that we took at Conneaut Lake and the video that I made when we visited was
incorporated in to it as well. . We also incorporated interviews with other
students in the class of how this project changed their view on Conneaut Lake.
The documentary helped express how everyone interpreted what they learned about
place and space in to their adventures at Conneaut Lake. It also explained how
their views were changed and how what they experienced did that.
Abstract
Conneaut Lake became a place to me.
It wasn’t that way when I left Allegheny College to come visit it. It wasn’t
even that way when I first arrived. I had spent all of my morning fussing over
how I did not want to go to this area. I didn’t want to stand out in a rain and
I didn’t want to stand in the cold to try to understand and make sense of why
we had to go to this space. But that was exactly it. I had to make this space a
place. I did this by taking out my camera and making a video when arrived at
Conneaut Lake Park. It started out as just for fun and games. I was enjoying
myself, walk around taking shots of different parts of the park. Panning across
and trying to be artsy with the photos and videos I was shooting. But
eventually it transformed in to something completely different. I was adding
part of who I was to this park that was a complete stranger to my mind. I had
no substantial memories here and now I was creating them. In one of the article
we read in class we it was said that a typical way to make a space a place for
people is to add part of who we are to it. That’s exactly what I did. I was
added my own view of the park to a video. I took photos with friends. I made
videos of the buildings and old rides. I add my own spark and take on the park.
This is what made it a place for me.
Conneaut
Lake Park hadn’t been running for many years. Everyone only ever told me
stories about it. Everything we were doing for this FS was gathering stories.
But none of these stories were mine. None of them. They all belonged to other
people. To be honest this place was an enigma to me. It was only something that
existed in the minds of others and even when they told their stories this did
not make me connect with this town. Visiting it and shooting it was what allowed
me to open up to the town and become part of my life. It became a place.
Without the works we read in class like Defining Place by Tom Cresswell, I
wouldn’t have understood all of this visiting and talking with officials as
much if I didn’t read his piece.
Cresswell says that novels and films can evoke all a sense of place for
people. Now for my final project, my group made a documentary and we even
incorporated my video that I made at the park into this compilation of photos
and interviews. Hopefully this can evoke more meaning for Conneaut Lake in to
the eyes of others. I made this video to open the eyes of my classmates to see
just how beautiful and unique this park can be. I want through my videos and
photos I took to create and open up a sense of place for my fellow students, my
teachers, and even the people who will see it online someday.
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