For this project, I chose to make my topic Kamloops Downtown Businesses. Currently, my idea is quite broad covering both stores, restaurants and general business. However, down the line, as I get more information on my topic, I might want to narrow that down to just stores. In this project, I want to cover general life and culture for the businesses but also to discuss more specific stories like the pandemic and how they’ve managed to overcome it.
The general scope of my topic will contain knowledge about what Kamloops has to offer, to the thoughts and opinions of store owners plus employees, and potentially to get the opinions of general civilians. I won’t go into too much detail about events run by the City of Kamloops to attract more people, but I will ask stores how these situations have affected the downtown atmosphere and sales.
This topic is important because downtown is a crucial part of what makes our beautiful Kamloops the city that it is today. A place for residents to find new businesses would help drive money into that area and allow for the stores to continue to grow. This site would also be a place for the stores to share news and to get their opinions out. Kamloops has so much to share, and the general public doesn’t have a fantastic place to find all of the information downtown has to offer. There are so many amazing people that frequent this area with many compelling stories to tell, and I would love to be a part of bringing that to life. I believe my audience would care because what happens downtown affects thousands of Kamloops residents that frequently rely on this area. This page will bring stories to them that might have been missed without it. I think any story that brings a community closer together is a story worth telling.
Questions my project might explore:
- What is it like owning/managing a business in this area?
- How has this store managed to keep its business thriving?
- How has the City of Kamloops made downtown life easier/harder?
- How has this business and its customers impacted you? (owner/employee)
General story ideas that might be explored:
- The Covid-19 pandemic and its effect on business.
- Customers, online business, masks, social distancing; is there anything you would change?
- Spreading positivity- Things that have happened downtown that left a positive impact on the stores and those that frequent them.
- A random act of kindness, they got to witness something amazing, a customer that really brightened their day, etc.
Outlines for my future posts:
- Informative text story w/ photos: Discuss with a couple of stores (Wild Cave Gift Shop in particular) about what shopping local means to them. How has the shift in online shopping affected them? How much of an impact local shoppers have on their business?
- I think this suits this media and format because it keeps all the important information together allowing the reader to easily get the answer or story that they clicked on the link to get. While it’s informative, the picture addition will help add that personal touch, allowing the reader to still connect to the shops that need their business.
- Audio Interviews: Positive impact that has happened. Downtown. downtown often gets a negative perception, I want to tell a story that brings light and positivity to downtown. I will ask different employees or people downtown about something that happened downtown that really brought a smile to their face – a random act of kindness or a lovely chat with a regular customer. With everything negative happening in the world, the happy stuff often gets missed and I would like to remind people of it.
- I think this is best suited for the media of audio because it allows people to tell the stories themselves. You get to hear it directly from the person that experienced it, which I think makes it infinitely more personal.
- Editorial Slideshow: For the editorial slideshow, I wanted to do an opinion piece on the best things this area has to offer. I will start with the highest-rated businesses, try them out for myself and then interview the employees on what item they sell has the highest demand and what drives people to their store.
- I think this is best suited to this type of media because it allows the combination of video storytelling while maintaining the details photos can capture. I can capture individual shots of multiple stores and products while maintaining a consistent flow of the story.
- Investigative Video: For this media, I want to investigate the effect the pandemic has had on stores in regard to staying open, mask/social distance mandates, the switch to online business, how has it permanently changed the way they do business, what has the City of Kamloops done to make it easier, has being downtown been a positive or negative impact on them during this.
- I think this is an important media to tell this story in because you will be able to directly see the changes it has had by witnessing the masks, hand sanitizer, and directional arrows first hand. You will also be able to see the people working through it all and gain a connection as you can put a face to the story.
