A Learning Guide for Community Research

Welcome to Discovering Our Delta: A Learning Guide for Community Research. Originally developed for students and teachers in the Mississippi Delta, these materials were distributed to schools in that region. But we think you will find them equally useful in your area.

The 26-minute video (posted at right) features five middle-school students who discovered their own local culture through interviewing relatives or community members including a quilter, a catfish farmer, and a blues musician. We hope that this video will inspire other students to try this method of gathering information themselves.

Two guides are offered here as downloadable PDFs. One is oriented to teachers, and the other to students. Used separately or together, they perfectly accompany the video to jump-start your class’s oral history and folklore project.

If you find these materials useful, or if you have any difficulty downloading or viewing them, please contact us.

See our complete resource list for more materials.

Discovering Our Delta is produced by the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage with the support of the Phil Hardin Foundation, the Mississippi Arts Commission, and the Smithsonian Educational Outreach Fund. This project is a direct result of fieldwork conducted for the Mississippi Delta program of the 1997 Smithsonian Folklife Festival.