Dear River

Love is complicated, and so is our relationship to the Mississippi River. Dear River is a multimedia storytelling project organized by Works Progress Studio. Through an interactive website, short documentary videos and place-based events and exhibitions we will gather and amplify the river stories and sentiments of people across the watershed. These stories will illustrate the range of experiences and emotions that comprise life on the Mississippi today, encouraging a sense of belonging and a deeper understanding of the relationship between place and environment.

As Dear River stories accumulate, our hope is that this project can inspire thoughtful and frank conversations about the future of our rivers and the places we live and work, celebrating the complex, profound and ordinary ways water moves and sustains us. Love, fear, anger, joy, sadness, and hope—how will you write the river?

This project was conceived in 2013, with graphic design and website production from mono, a minneapolis-based creative agency. Dear River will launch as an interactive website and series of short videos in summer of 2014, with live events occurring in 2014-15 in partnership with nonprofit and government groups. Dear River is supported in part by the Bush Foundation through their Bush Fellowship Program.