Rising Rock students Hannah Godel, Clara Paulson, Sydney Banks, Malcolm Key, Delaney Holman, CJ Copeland and Corbin Winters attended the CHATT Foundation gala with Professor Billy Weeks. Photo by Everett Christensen.
Storytelling provides a platform to give voice to the voiceless and to educate audiences about issues.
At the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Department of Communication, Associate Lecturer Billy Weeks teaches his students to find stories and communicate them through writing, photography, audio and video.
In January, Weeks worked with CHATT Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to resolve homelessness by providing basic needs and ultimately a path to self-sufficiency.
He explained that his work with the foundation reflects a theme in his photography.
“If you look back at the work I’ve done throughout my years,” Weeks said, “I think you’ll see that there’s a common theme that runs through all of it—one of respect and help. Anytime I get an opportunity to help the people who are less fortunate, I’ll do it.”
Weeks has spent time in Guatemala, Kenya and Uganda, capturing moments amid some of life’s harshest conditions.
He was asked by Holly Reeve, chief development officer of CHATT Foundation, to help take portraits, create audio and video stories for the organization’s Journey of Hope Charity Gala, which took place on April 23.
Weeks recruited two of his students, junior Clara Paulson and senior Malcolm Key, to assist him in the process, along with local photographer Mark Gilliland.
Paulson and Key take Weeks’ Rising Rock course, which focuses on local storytelling.
“I just called them,” Weeks said. “And that’s kind of how it worked with me, too. They just reached out and said, ‘We got this thing coming up. We need some photos.’ I’m the one who took it further than that because I never give them what they ask—always give them more.”
A photo from the gala of the day Malcolm Key, Clara Paulson, Mark Gilliland and Billy Weeks worked to collect the stories. Photo by Everett Christensen.
Paulson assisted with the lighting for the portraits.
“I was helping with lighting on one of the sides and would move it; however, he was saying,” Paulson said. “Mark would do it on the other side. Billy was taking the photos. After that, I would run one of the second video cameras.”
Key collected the audio.
“After they had their portraits taken and they told their story, I was in another room with the director of communications, Holly Reeve,” he said. “She was conducting longer form interviews where they really got to sit down and start from essentially wherever they wanted to, whether it was square one or just last year. She got them to tell their stories.
“My role was helping her set up the audio, getting everybody mic’d up, listening to the levels, making sure it sounds good and telling people to be quiet outside of the hallway, which was a really common occurrence.”
Paulson and Key recalled that it was an emotional day listening to participants’ stories.
“This really happened to somebody,” Key said. “They went through this and it was just as traumatic as it sounds, even more so because they were the ones experiencing it. It was like, man, how fast things can go wrong and just how fast things can change.”
Paulson explained that while the work may be difficult to hear, it will help shed light on a difficult subject.
“The power of storytelling is so interesting because you can go a long time without thinking about someone’s story,” Paulson said. “Then you hear all these people’s stories, and once you leave, you’re like, ‘Man, they’re out there in the cold and you’re thinking about all these people more.’ It was great that we got to highlight them.
“There’s a lot of stigma around homeless people. People will be like, ‘Don’t go down that street, watch out.’ Being able to be in the room with them and hear their stories—they’re just people.”
Both students appreciated the opportunity to learn from Weeks and to tell an important story.
“I’m super grateful to have somebody around like him and learn from somebody like him who is the embodiment of somebody who’s good at their job and somebody who lives for their job,” Key said.
Paulson credits Weeks’ courses for changing the way she views photography.
“I didn’t expect to be in Billy’s classes until the end of college,” she said. “But it’s been such a good experience. I did enjoy photography before college, but I never really focused on the story of photography. I was just getting pictures of things I thought were pretty.
“Then I came to college, and now I can’t drive down the street and see a protest without going, ‘Oh, I got to go get photos.’ But now there’s a lot more emphasis on the moments within the photos.”
With their audio stories, portraits and video collected, they delivered an important message to the audience at the gala.
“Telling these people’s stories at the end of the day is really important and so overlooked,” Weeks said.
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