OAK HILL W.Va. (WVDN) — Monuments Across Appalachian Places (MAAP) in partnership with West Virginia State University Extension Service seeks individuals and groups from West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky to participate in a free Commemorate Workshops in Oak Hill on April 11, 2026. The workshop is designed to help community members refine and develop ideas for new public memory projects that honor histories more than 50 years old while amplifying stories often overlooked or undertold in public memorials.
The April 11 Commemorate Workshop will be held at the Southern Appalachian Labor School in the historic Oak Hill High School, 140 School Street, and will be the first in a series of workshops across Central Appalachia and online between April and September 2026. The goal of the workshop is to build the capacity of Appalachian leaders and organizers to use participatory arts and commemoration as a tool for storytelling. Participants will receive training and guidance in developing community-based and trauma-informed approaches to commemoration, preparing project budgets, reimagining physical installations, evaluating project feasibility, and planning for digital archive work and oral history collection.
“These workshops are about giving communities the tools to tell their own stories,” said MAAP Co-Director Dr. Emily Satterwhite. “Appalachia holds powerful histories of organizing, migration, environmental stewardship, and cultural creativity. By supporting community-led monument projects, we’re helping ensure those histories are shared in ways that center the experiences of the people who lived them.”
MAAP is excited to partner with the West Virginia Extension Service to host this event in Oak Hill, looking to their long history of community engagement to amplify their mission.“Since re-establishing our land-grant in 2000, WVSU Extension Service has sought to maintain an important presence in Fayette County, which is home to the first African American 4-H Camp in the country. Camp Washington Carver, constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps at Clifftop in Fayette County, provided youth from around the state a place to enrich their lives. We believe in the importance of honoring our past as we chart our future,” said Adam Hodges, Program Leader for Community Vitality and Economic Development with the WVSU Extension Service.
Space is limited to 30 participants, and prospective attendees should submit an application to attend. To apply, please visit https://www.moremountainstories.org/commemorate-workshops#how-to-apply.
