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When Carlin Stiehl, MA ’21 (ABOVE), signed up for the Soul of Athens class this spring semester, he knew he was in for a challenging 14 weeks.

“The running joke is that Soul of Athens requires you to sacrifice your soul for Athens,” the graduate student studying photojournalism says with a laugh.

Since 2007, this annual project in the School of Visual Communication—a combined experience of VICO 3921, Synthesis Storytelling for Visual Communication, and VICO 4188, Interactive Capstone: Advanced Interactive Media—has served as a way for students with different skillsets to experiment with various forms of storytelling and learn how to problem solve on the fly. Throughout the semester, undergraduate and graduate students mesh these skills with intensive collaboration to showcase a facet of life or culture in Southeast Ohio.

“The analogy I frequently use is ‘We’re going to go for a ride on the bus, the problem is we have to build the bus as we’re going,’” says Stan Alost, MS ’02, professor in the School of Visual Communication and one of the instructors for Soul of Athens.

Extending the analogy, this year’s class not only had to build the bus, but also had to navigate a road upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. To limit the spread of the virus, OHIO moved all in-person classes online in mid-March—a crucial point in the semester for the projects.

“Those weeks after spring break are usually critical in getting the meat of the content and refining the stories, and that’s when we see a lot of the work done,” Alost says. This year, “I thought we would finish out the semester thinking about what might have been or what we might have done.”

Instead, the students adapted and forged ahead, relying on video calling platforms and creativity to complete their projects.

In Stiehl’s mind, there was never another option.

“You have a duty to give your soul to this project, your group, your university; and no matter what, you’re going to finish it,” he says.

Adaptive storytelling

The switch to remote work forced most of the students to scrap their pre-pandemic plans.

Jenna Hyman, BSVC ’21, was part of the group crafting a feature about spirituality in Athens. Originally, the plan was to divide the narrative into four parts: Islam, Buddhism, Unitarian Universalism and paganism, each depicting an individual practicing their faith.

Working with her group members, Hyman conducted interviews and took photos and video of the first three practices before spring break. They never got that fourth section.

“Finding out we couldn’t come back and do it anymore, we were worried,” she says. “Is our project even going to be worth looking at?”

At the same time, she was strangely relieved. “It weirdly made me less stressed out, having someone throw on the brakes and say ‘You can’t shoot anymore.’ You have to make what you already have work.”

In re-examining their work, pictures they’d previously dismissed were seen in a new light and discarded video footage pieced together in different ways. In doing so, they discovered they could feature four faiths after all: The featured member of Unitarian Universalism also practiced paganism.

This approach also worked for Stiehl’s group, whose story depicts young veterans returning from military service and navigating student life. In the beginning, they had envisioned videos of two student veterans describing their transition from the battlefield to the classroom, but come spring break, they only had enough material for one. Rather than scrap both videos, Stiehl had the idea to pair the second veteran’s audio interview with line drawings to create an animation (ABOVE).

It was a lesson in resourcefulness, says Megan Westervelt, MA ’14, MFA ’22, the graduate student facilitator for the class.

“They found the power of simplicity,” Westervelt says. “You kind of bring it back to those core main ideas and what material you have to work with, and you become way more resourceful.”

Tools for success

Along the way, students found success through a combination of physical and mental tools.

The most important thing, Stiehl says, was accepting that “the story you have isn’t the story you start out with.” That forced the students to articulate exactly what the message was they were trying to convey—in other words, the soul.

“The soul in the Soul of Athens was understanding that project you were trying to tell and tell that story,” he says. “Everything else was supplementary.”

To ensure they captured the soul of their piece from afar, Hyman and her group members immersed themselves in their material.

“We really went over the experiences we had visiting the other places and things about the people and their lives, just really rehashing and trying to figure out what made us want to tell this story,” she says.

Her group stayed in near constant contact over Zoom, calling each other an average of twice a day, five times a week. Not only did it lead to a more cohesive blending of their different skillsets, over time they learned better time management.

“Meetings at school were much more casual, but on a Zoom call you won’t want to be sitting there for forever,” Hyman says.

Stiehl says the Zoom calls enabled more than just clearer communication; seeing his group members’ faces also eased the loneliness of social distancing.

“Corona has also taught us the beauty of what Zoom and communication can be virtually,” he says, something he hopes to carry forward once the virus subsides.

At the end of the semester, the class gathered for one last giant Zoom call to view the final projects. It wasn’t the celebration she had envisioned at the beginning of the semester, Westervelt says, but she was glad to commemorate the students’ trials and triumphs in some small way.

The biggest lesson she took away from the experience was gratitude.

“I think I learned to accept and appreciate whatever is still possible given the situation, and that students are the most just adaptable people if you empower them to be so,” she says. “They will accept the challenges ahead of them and face them and provide you a lot of inspiration along the way.

Feature photograph by Yujia Wang. Featured video courtesy of , Alex Vella, , , , James Year

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