History Remix:Place Yourself in History (USA 250)

An Interactive Media Experience for All Ages

History with You In It | Choose Your Moment | Step Into the Frame | Share Your Voice

We are sharing these reimagined history as TV and on our YouTube here.

Open to everyone—Wallingford residency is not required!
Don’t just learn about history—be there.
Using green screen (chroma key) technology, the Place Yourself In History project invites you to step into post-Revolutionary America as part of #USA250.
We believe Democracy is a Creative Practice. This project is a creative way to express your ideas about the building blocks of our community with images from popular culture, movements, war, technological advancement, or American culture of any type. We use media technology to bridge the gap between the past and the present in this community-centric “What If” experience.

📅 Workshops will be posted on our events page.

🛠️ How It Works

Choose Your Moment: Browse the curated public domain archives below to find a historic photo that moves you. Start with a time in history that interests you. Do some library or internet research. This will help you decide upon an image. Your reflection can be from any point of you. It is about how you interpret what you come to understand or question. When selecting a photo think about how you could be inserted. How you will need to pose?

Step Into the Frame: Visit us to use our professional greenscreen studio, drop by the Wallingford Public Library Collaboratory, or use a free mobile app at home. See DYI below.

Reflect & Share Your Voice: Write or record a short reflection (500 words or less) about why you chose the image and what it felt like to stand in that moment. Click here to download reflection quide.

Submit Your Remix: Email your finished image and reflection to us to be included in our public presentation! Submission is permission to use in a public presentation. Submit your remix image and short essay as an attachment to our Movie email.

Or Create with us:

DYI Greenscreen with a phone APP. There are several free Chromakey Apps for iPad and Android phones. You can set up any solid color you are not wearing as the backdrop for your picture. The illustration shows the basic concept of the process for your re-envision photograph.

FIND A HISTORIC IMAGE

There are numerous sources for photographs. The adventurous can try to do this project in a video. Always credit your image source. We have several of civil rights image collection links below. Send an email to us if you plan to make your remix image here.

Images curated by #TeenTigerTV (Google Drive Under development)
Pond5 Public Domain Civil Rights Collection A robust archive of Civil Rights era media.
C-Span An excellent starting point for mid-century American turning points.
The work of Charles Moore Powerful, stirring imagery from the front lines of history.
Public Domain Options include Library of Congress, Public Domain National Archives by themes search on Google Images. You can tailor it by decade.
John Kuroski curated 55 photos that cover this span of events: Harlem riots of 1964 to the Watts riots of 1965, from the March on Washington to the March Against Fear, and from Martin Luther King to Malcolm X, for folks to explore the multifaceted struggle and hope of the civil rights movement. These are in the public domain.
Roaring 20s fashion & popular culture

This is an education project. Participants are transforming images created by someone else. Because one of your images used in the project was created by someone else that image creator should be acknowledged. When you know the source, please cite the photographer or publisher of the original image.

Civil Rights History examples appear approximately 2 minutes into this video.