Program areas at Appalshop
Roadside theater-create, produce and tour plays "based on the history and lives of appalachian people", collaborate with other theater companies nationally to create plays addressing issues of place, race, and class, and also work with communities across the country to help them explore and dramatize their cultures, stories, and community concerns. Roadside staff have documented their methodologies in a series of curriculum guides on story circles, community theater projects, and mountain culture.
The Appalshop archive was first founded in 2003. Project staff, including two archivists, have evaluated the Appalshop archives of film, video, and audio recordings, both finished products and "raw tape." They describe their work as "stabilizing and organizing the collection" so it can be made available to the public and community. This has included building a new vault, preservation of work in a variety of formats, cataloguing the materials, and improving access to collection. The archive project is working with other Appalshop staff to make archival materials available to the public in new formats and to evaluate paper holdings.
Wmmt-fm, Appalshop's public community radio station, broadcasting around the clock, primarily with volunteer disc jockeys, wmmt produces radio series that are distributed nationally and produces local programming including "mountain talk" that addresses local and regional issues. The community correspondents corps project is training people inside and outside of Appalshop as local radio producers.