Mountain Dance and Folk Festival Team Contract

Mission Statement:

Our shared goal for this project is to enhance the available history of the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival by creating an interesting and interactive  digital platform.  The Mountain Dance and Folk Festival was started in 1928 by the famous ballad catcher and folk music enthusiast Bascom Lamar Lunsford.  He started the festival to celebrate and carry on traditions of mountain folk music.  The festival will be celebrating their 90th year this coming August.  Our group has decided that the best way to give a good historical perspective of the MDFF in the time we are given is to narrow down our timeline to the 60’s and 70’s.  This was decided because there is a wealth of information for this period and the festival had a lot of changes during this time period, such as Bascom Lamar Lunsford passing away, and Shindig on the Green starting. We have three main areas of focus, but we will also be giving a brief history of the beginnings of the festival and a brief look at how the festival is now.   Our three focus points will be Bascom Lamar Lunsford, music and dance.  Dance and music will give people a deeper understanding of the festival and allow our audience to learn about these things in an exciting and educational way.  We will have sheet music, sound clips and an instructional game on how to square dance.  Our goal is to create something that emphasizes the importance of keeping folk traditions alive and respecting the work of those who have influenced the festival in its 90 years of activity.

Our target audience will be MDFF enthusiasts, local researchers/historians and scholars in primary and secondary education. In order to appeal to our audience we would like to maximize our accessibility and intuitive layout.

Basic Structure:

The basic structure of our site will consist of interactive photos and Timelines similar to the Storyboards and JS Knight Lab programs. An Honor Roll of people involved in the Festival would be a great way to identify some participants who have not received much recognition. We would also like to include a square dance tutorial and catalog of some music. Our Games Programming people will be creating a game that can teach square dancing.  They will also be creating an interactive stage where one can click on an item and listen to a sampling of music.  This may turn into more of a game as well.

1. B) Describe the basic structure of your site and intended features.

We would like to investigate certain aspects of the festival that may dictate separate areas of the site. We have a menu planned which will have five tabs for our site.  Music, Dance, Prior to the 60’s, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, and Post 70’s.  

Our research will be divided by topic among the three of us and that each person will gather all information available. These topics will be represented in a respectful manner with consideration to those involved.  The most work intensive tabs will be Music and Bascom Lamar Lunsford.  The least intensive will be our Dance tab, Prior to the 60’s tab, and the Post 70’s tab.  One person will take on Bascom Lamar Lunsford, another member will focus on music, and our final member will tackle the smaller three tabs.  We believe that this will be a roughly even division of labor and if one person gets overwhelmed, we can step in and help out.

Tools:

It is likely that we will use Thinglink with embedded data, clips and etc. Timeline JS will be a vital tool for almost every tab on the menu for our website. The Special Collections tools will be extremely valuable as we work to properly digitize the audio and VHS tapes that we have in our collections. Also the photo scanner and PhotoShop programs in Special Collections will be very useful to enhance and digitize images.

Schedule:

Mar. 6: Revised contracts due.

Mar. 11: Research completed and organized.

Mar. 22: Site skeleton done. Timelines done.  Honor roll done.  History prior to 60’s done.  

Mar. 24: Completed Research can be presented to Computer Science students through Google Doc Notes and Files.

Mar. 27: Interactive photo done. History after the 70’s done.

Mar. 29: Hopefully have at least Dance section of site done, and hopefully Music and Bascom Lamar Lunsford almost complete. As close as possible to final drafts due.

Mar. 31: Show Games teams our drafts. Start revising.

Apr. 5: Finish all parts of website and revising.  

Apr. 7: Game prototypes due. Finish revising.

Apr. 14: Any On-Site Text Needed by Computer Science Students Due. Integrate Computer Science Students work into final project.

Apr. 17: Finishing touches.

Apr. 19: Final drafts due.

Assignments:

At this time the assignments have only been briefly discussed and will change as we discover how much information exists on which topics.

Catherine – Music analysis and preparation, Interactive Photo (Partial), Honor Roll (Partial)

Ethan  – Bascom Lamar Lunsford analysis and history, Timeline (Partial), Interactive Photo (Partial)

Andrea – Festival history before and after the 60’s and 70’s, Dance analysis and preparation, Timeline (Partial), Honor Roll (Partial)