Professor and Students Create “Old Saint Jo”

Toby Lawrence, cinema faculty member, and his cinema students aired the first episode of “Old Saint Jo” this fall. “Old Saint Jo” is an applied learning project Lawrence developed last year. The group worked on Phase I of the project this past summer, which is an ongoing episodic documentary series about the history of St. Joseph.

Episode one, “The Fur Years – 1799-1843,” premiered on YouTube in September. It can be viewed at https://youtu.be/Aab8Z9cQ7jw.

Phase II of the project will consist of live-streaming multi-camera broadcasts to Facebook, which will then be archived on YouTube. The aim of this phase is to capture, on video, stories from the community about “Old Saint Jo.” They will broadcast from a studio in downtown St. Joseph.  Funding that Lawrence received in October from the Missouri Western Arts Society for live-streaming equipment will help launch Phase II.

“Ultimately, through the continued growth of this project, we hope to intersect further with the community and other departments on campus,” Lawrence said. “We are so excited to have the opportunity to engage the students with the community, and to share these stories.”

The group’s website is www.oldsaintjo.com, and contains links to its Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube pages.