Participation Type
Performance
Presentation #1 Title
After Coal: Welsh and Appalachian Mining Communities
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
After Coal: Welsh and Appalachian Mining Communities is a documentary film and community engagement project that explores the following questions: What happens when fossil fuels run out? How do local communities and cultures survive dramatic shifts in the global energy economy? How can we support a just economic transition for coalfield communities? After Coal explores the Welsh and Appalachian experience with coal, profiling inspiring individuals who are creating a new future in these hard hit communities. Viewers will meet ex-miners using theater to rebuild community infrastructure, women who started supporting striking miners and ended up creating their own future, and young people striving stay in their home communities. Music plays a major role in this documentary essay, linking the two regions and providing cultural continuity that sustains communities through devastating change. The documentary is 56 minutes in length; the remaining session time will be allocated to a question and answer session with the filmmaker.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Tom Hansell’s documentary work has been broadcast nationally on public television and has screened at international film festivals. Hansell teaches for the Center for Appalachian Studies at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina and After Coal is his first international project.
After Coal: Welsh and Appalachian Mining Communities
After Coal: Welsh and Appalachian Mining Communities is a documentary film and community engagement project that explores the following questions: What happens when fossil fuels run out? How do local communities and cultures survive dramatic shifts in the global energy economy? How can we support a just economic transition for coalfield communities? After Coal explores the Welsh and Appalachian experience with coal, profiling inspiring individuals who are creating a new future in these hard hit communities. Viewers will meet ex-miners using theater to rebuild community infrastructure, women who started supporting striking miners and ended up creating their own future, and young people striving stay in their home communities. Music plays a major role in this documentary essay, linking the two regions and providing cultural continuity that sustains communities through devastating change. The documentary is 56 minutes in length; the remaining session time will be allocated to a question and answer session with the filmmaker.
