Skip to main content
Ohio Energy Geographies home

College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences

Ohio Coal Communities Transitions Project

The Ohio Coal Communities Transitions Project

Mitchell Cooling

As the United States transitions away from coal energy, communities across the country are grappling with the retirement and legacy of coal energy facilities (e.g., power plants, surface and subsurface mines, rail infrastructure).  This trans-disciplinary project seeks to combine social science, engineering, history, theatre, and art to explore, understand and document specific and generalizable impacts of coal transitions on three Ohio case study communities facing recent, ongoing or imminent retirements. Drawing upon current research on community resilience in resource-dependent areas, we intend our findings, practitioner reports, and community tool-kits to inform policies and programs aimed at bolstering community resilience in our case-study communities and other similarly vulnerable locales. We intend to highlight and improve the understanding of these issues for students and practitioners in engineering and planning disciplines. We intend for our creative outputs to create linkages in these communities and inspire local residents and outsiders alike to consider and act upon the issues of energy systems and community resiliency.

Exhibition Details

Coal Barges on the Ohio River with Plants in the Foreground

Farewell Transmission: Community Resilience amid the End of Coal in Ohio

School of Environment and Natural Resources; Department of Geography; Department of Theatre, Film, and Media Arts; Glenn College of Public Affairs

Farewell Transmission: Community Resilience amid End of Coal in Ohio is a multidisciplinary art installation exploring how ethnographic field research conducted in rural coal communities can be transformed and animated through exhibition in a gallery space. The exhibition will include photographic prints, archival imagery and documents, audio recordings, and video. This project is a collaboration between the School of Environment and Natural Resources, the Department of Geography, the Department of Theatre, Film, and Media Arts, and the Glenn College of Public Affairs.  

Featured Artists:

Tom Dugdale: Theatre, Courtney Hunt: Fine Arts Library, Danny Marcus: Wexner Center for the Arts, Katie Finneran: School of Environment and Natural Resources, Kevin McClatchy: Theatre, Film, and Media Arts, Mandy Fox: Theatre, Film, and Media Arts.

 

Farewell Transmission 

Hopkins Hall Gallery – Ohio State University, Campus

August 22nd through September 16th, 2022  (reception and special events TBA). Free Admission. Open 11am to 4pm. 

 

Farewell Transmission –  Ohio State University Special Collections 

Thompson Library Special Collections Gallery – Oho State University Campus. Free Admission.

August 22nd through December 10th

Photos taken by William Sharp, Project Photographer