Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much ~ Helen Keller. This is the lesson learned and exemplified through Lorna Keathley’s life journey, whose deep appreciation for international cultural heritage developed after living abroad and across various regions in the United States.
Lorna moved to Maryville, Tennessee, near her Kentucky Appalachian roots, after studying at the University of Maryland in Italy. Since her move, she continued her studies at the University of Westminster in London through Johns Hopkins, and she worked and attended classes at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK).
Her work as a college student earned recognition and awards, impelling her to continue research and focus on communication and heritage.
Lorna won the 2006 Dille Award for Best Undergraduate Design, a 2006 Italian Scholarship for exceptional work, and placed in the top three graduate student papers at the 2012 National Communication Association in the Applied Communication Division. The research for that paper led to her communication master’s thesis, which has been downloaded over 18,000 times worldwide.
Because of her dedication to communication studies, she was hired as a communication lecturer at UTK and retired early after 25 years of service.
Currently, Lorna works part-time for the Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center and teaches an online course in museum and heritage studies for Johns Hopkins University.
Lorna has developed an avid professional interest in ‘edutainment,’ a term coined from combining education and entertainment, in association with heritage and museum settings – both in person and online. By combining her arts and science degrees, Lorna conducts relevant field research with the intent of publishing in open-source venues. She is interested in helping small heritage sites and cultural institutions, such as museums and galleries, with her studies and wants her research to be freely available to the public.
360-degree virtual tour Lorna designed for the Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center
Currently, Lorna is conducting a Ph.D. research project with the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. The research project, inspired by her personal experience, examines the access to heritage sites for people with disabilities through an equitable 360-degree multimedia tour of the Cades Cove Historic District (on the National Register of Historic Places) in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a World Heritage Site. Lorna explains, “In the last two years of my mother’s life, when we traveled, she needed a wheelchair due to lung cancer. This directly affected our ability to visit heritage sites because of accessibility issues. It has also come to my attention that some of these heritage spaces that I used to go to may become inaccessible due to my own limitations, as I do not walk up a flight of stairs very well.”
She is working on those insights through the voices of people with disabilities. “I want their words to say what they need to make an equitable option in heritage spaces.”
Experience an excellent example of Lorna’s work in action on the Great Smoky Mountains Heritage website:
- Click on the Plan Your Visit
- Click on Historic Village
- Virtual Tour Button
- Explore the Heritage Center or go to the Walker Sisters’ Portion of the Park (look for the NPS sign to the left.)
This project did not come to fruition without challenges, but also viable solutions. Despite being unable to relocate abroad for her studies, Lorna is fully leveraging online courses to expand her knowledge and connect with global experts, making a difference on an international and national level.
Those international goals are linked to United Nations Sustainability Goals # 4 – Quality Education, and #10 -Reduced Inequalities.
“I will continue researching, publishing in open source, collaborating, and making a difference to help complete the process. I aim to write grants and help heritage sites to have these opportunities they normally would not have.”
Lorna is seeking participants for her projects. People with disabilities can assist with accessibility knowledge, and descendants of Cades Cove families can support by retelling their oral histories.
Those interested in participating may contact Lorna: lornak@utk.edu.
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