The Mill Town Institute (MTI) became a new partner of the CDC earlier this year, having just officially launched themselves as an organization in April. As a group of academics, MTI wants to use its resources and skillsets to better understand and serve the mill towns throughout Beaver County. So…what exactly does that look like?
This summer, they hosted two small-group book discussions as a first entry into the type of events they want to pursue. One group read The Making of a Democratic Economy while the second read Playing Through the Whistle. MTI chose these two books specifically because of how each explores culture, attentive to how people live, work, eat, and play in the place they live. Understanding the culture of mill towns is crucial for MTI and for all who live in Beaver County. Why? Because the legacy of the steel mills and the local culture they helped shape have been such key aspects of our Beaver County history. But not just past history. Nate Nyeholt, Director of MTI, notes that “this region is gonna be part of national politics for the foreseeable future…So how do we think about that well?” Exploring our mill town culture raises the question of not just where we’ve come from but also - where do we want to go?
Another summer activity for MTI was asking four individuals in Beaver County to write papers on mill towns, related to specific areas they’ve studied and are working in: “town-gown” relationships, community development, community narrative and how it develops, and the value of artist co-ops. In the future, MTI plans to create their own publication to gather more research on mill towns, including papers such as these.
Generating these book discussions and papers served as a way for MTI to begin inviting people into conversations around mill towns, their culture, and how we as a community can move forward with a sense of identity, purpose, and vision. Anyone can engage these topics, but MTI believes it has the capacity to generate a “shared vocabulary” for the conversation, a bridge between the academy and lived experience. MTI wants to bring the analytic framework of academia to the everyday lives of real people. And they hope that those who have experienced life in these mill towns will be willing to bring their stories into a more analytic framework.
So what’s next? MTI has applied to a PA Humanities grant for humanities-based organizations, which they will hear back from in early November. They would use the grant money for capacity-building and to take more small steps toward finding their role as an organization. The ideas abound: hosting events, speakers, workshops, book discussions, and collecting stories from those in our area who worked in the steel mills. This team is eager to see the details unfold and find creative ways to connect the world of academia to the world of daily living in mill towns.