A growing network
A diversity of sources for a diversity of stories.
PARO works with a diversity of groups, networks, and organizations that support rural people and communities to document, preserve, and share their stories. Below are some other initiatives and sources relevant to rural stories in Canada and elsewhere.
Rural Ontario Institute
The Rural Ontario Institute was created through the amalgamation of The Centre for Rural Leadership and The Ontario Rural Council. ROI delivers programs that develop strong leaders who are critical voices around opportunities and key issues facing rural and northern Ontario. Learn more about the ROI here!
The People's Archive of
Rural India (PARI)
PARI is both a living journal and an archive. It generates and hosts reporting on the countryside that is current and contemporary, while also creating a database of already published stories, reports, videos, and audio from a variety of rural sources. Learn more about PARI here!
The People's Archive of
Rural Nova Scotia (PARNS)
The People’s Archive of Rural Nova Scotia (PARNS) is a living multimedia platform for citizen storytellers to share stories of everyday life and everyday people, and to discover the extraordinary in the ordinary. We want your stories to capture past, present, and future life in rural Nova Scotia – stories of people and culture, art and music, land and sea, local and global actions, past times and pursuits – in your own voice and words, using your creativity. Hear more about what a “people’s archive” is here, and learn more about PARNS here!
Ontario Barn Preservation
The Ontario Barn Preservation is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to preserving, documenting, and promoting Ontario barns. Check out more of their work here!
The Rural Diary Archive
The Rural Diary Archive showcases over 200 Ontario diarists from 1800 to 1960. Discover and Meet the Diarists are good places to get acquainted with these people from the past. Learn how to unlock the riches within their daily entries and escape into the past. You can read and Search through typed nineteenth-century diaries. Check out their work here!
Encyclopedia of Local Knowledge
The Encyclopedia of Local Knowledge is a collaborative art-and-knowledge project originated by Pam Hall and engaging hundreds of collaborators in communities across the island of Newfoundland in Canada. It explores art as a form of making and moving knowledge and reveals many ways of knowing that are local, living, and still fruitfully in use. The Encyclopedia project recruits art, community collaboration, and place-based research as a way of co-creating knowledge that is often never documented in ways that can be shared. To learn more about this collaborative work, visit their website here!
The Re•Vision Centre for Art and Social Justice
The Re•Vision Centre for Art and Social Justice is an arts methodology research hub at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada that investigates the power of the arts, and especially story, to open up conversations about systemic (rather than individualized) injustices in health care, education, and the arts sectors. Their driving purpose is to support and equip academics, artists, activists and storytellers from justice-seeking communities seeking to shift misrepresentations with cutting edge technological tools and methodologies. Check out their work here!