Arkansas Tattoo Project Expanding: US Tattooed Kids Page
From US Tattooed Kids: Arkansas Project. Photo of Cheyenne Matthews' Arkansas Tattoo by Electric Heart Designs.
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The Arkansas Tattoo Documentation Project is expanding! In addition to the oral histories I’m compiling and upcoming article I’m working on, for a while now I’ve been thinking about how this project should be more community-driven and interactive.
And then the perfect opportunity presented itself. Last week while interviewing several people at Pizza D’s in Little Rock, I got to talk to Cheyenne Matthews, host of Shoog Radio on KABF 88.3 FM, a show which showcases Arkansas music. When I mentioned the possibility of a Tumblr site, she ever-so-kindly offered to set up a Facebook and Tumblr page and serve as a co-admin so that more and more people can get involved in submitting their photos and telling their stories. How cool is that? She also came up with the names on the page, “Us Tattooed Kids: Arkansas Project,” which sounds way better than my ever-so drab, “Arkansas Tattoo Documentation Project.” haha. I’m really thankful she’s a part of this project.
The first phase of research will be an article and an audio montage of oral histories. But I’d love to see this become a full-length book with portrait photography, quotes from interviews, and the like. If these pages take off I think this could be a real possibility. So if that’s something you’re into, you can help us out by getting involved in the project and uploading your photos and stories. It will be amazing to see the diversity of tattoos and reasons behind them.
In the beginning these pages will serve as part of the larger research project, but they’ll also have a life of their own and will provide people with an easy way of sharing tattoo images and stories. The great thing about such sites is they’re so organic. So we’ll see where it goes. While folks are sharing their photos and stories perhaps these sites will also serve as platform to discuss what Arkansas means to all of us, both individually and collectively.
The Tumblr site is still in the works, but the facebook page is up and running and a few people have already uploaded photos. And the response has been great. In less than 24 hours we’ve got 70 likes.
So, please visit the facebook site, “like” the project and submit your own photos and stories. Go here to check it out and please help us spread the word! And if you want to know more about the back story of this project, go here.
Once the tumblr site is up I’ll post that too.
Thanks for reading and thanks so very much to Cheyenne Matthews for her enthusiasm and help!
Sincerely,
Meredith Martin-Moats
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[...] Since we started the online Facebook version of the Us Tattooed Kids: Arkansas Project last week, thirty-six tattoo photos have been submitted and we have 236 likes! We also started a Twitter account for the project, which you can follow here. I’ve also been doing interviews with as many people as possible—either online or in person—and many of these stories will be featured in the upcoming article. In case your unfamiliar with the project, you can go here to read all about it. [...]
[...] we’ve been documenting the prevelance of Arkansas-themed tattoos and the stories behind them. The response has been amazing and generated many conversations about Arkansas as both a place and [...]