A short video about local history can change the way someone sees a place. That was the response beginning to emerge around Spokane Storytime as its videos reached millions of views: people were telling the creator that stories about their own region had given them a different perspective on it.
The storytelling grew out of waterfall adventures across the Inland Northwest. Traveling between falls brought Miles Bergsma into small towns and overlooked corners of the region, where his interest expanded beyond the landscape to the people, histories, and communities around it. Sharing those stories became a way to connect an audience with places they might otherwise pass by.
Those travels also informed longer-term aspirations for documentary films, books, and eventually public-trail projects. The common interest was creating more opportunities to understand the region and spend time in it, with mental well-being and a continued connection to place among the hoped-for benefits. These were broader directions for Miles’s work, not a predetermined list of projects for Connected to Place.
But reaching people and interpreting their history are different responsibilities. Miles is a content creator, not a trained historian. His role in the emerging idea was to connect people and audiences, helping the knowledge others hold reach more people. Turning that interest into an educational program would require historians, interpreters, educators, Tribal knowledge holders, land managers, and community members to help shape what was shared.
Meanwhile, teachers were using the videos in class and asking about classroom visits and school field trips. Miles was also hearing that younger viewers were tuning in to the short vertical format. Those observations were anecdotal, but together they suggested an opportunity: use a familiar way of telling stories to invite students into a deeper relationship with the places around them.
There was no single moment when all of this became a finished program. Connected to Place emerged through the overlap between that audience response, educators’ requests, and conversations with people working in conservation and community education. The ambition was to connect the people who know a place with the people who might come to care about it, through an experience that could serve successive generations of students.
Finding the right home for the idea
Miles had been connecting with nonprofit organizations across the region, looking for a way to put Spokane Storytime’s storytelling and audience to work beyond individual posts. In Upper Columbia Resource Conservation and Development Council, he found a strong fit for the education requests he was receiving.
UCRCD’s work connects natural resources, community development, and education across six Eastern Washington counties. Spokane Conservation District brought a complementary strength: conservation work on the ground, educational experience, and the Quarry campus where an idea could be tested. Spokane Storytime could contribute audience relationships, storytelling, creative development, and digital tools. Together, those strengths offered a way to turn public interest into an educational experience grounded in the knowledge of the people and organizations involved.
By April 2026, Miles was already describing the need to move from individual classroom requests toward educational field trips at the Quarry. Partnership discussions on June 15 led to a working session there on June 22. Miles brought the initial concept to a discussion with Vicki Carter, Cori Turntine, Seth and Lisette Walser, and outdoor educator Hazen Audel. The working session explored how their different experience could shape a program combining stories, hands-on activities, guided visits, and self-guided learning.
The partners also made an important structural choice. Rather than treating Spokane Storytime as a project simply housed under UCRCD’s fiscal sponsorship, they chose to develop the program together. Their Program Development Agreement, completed in July, established a shared design phase for UCRCD, Spokane Conservation District, and Spokane Storytime, supported by InteGrant’s project-management and grant-development work.
The agreement made room to test the educational experience, develop funding, and decide together how the program should grow.
The inspiration: build something people can keep using
Miles’s thinking was influenced by regional examples of community work with a life beyond a single appearance or event.
The Spokane Symphony’s education programs offered one such example. Symphony Day connects fourth- and fifth-grade students with interactive concerts and classroom learning materials; Link Up connects classroom preparation with participation in a performance. For Miles, that kind of repeatable educational structure suggested a different ambition from making occasional guest visits: create something successive classes can experience. Spokane Symphony education programs
He also points to Bobby Whittaker’s community work as an inspiration: the restoration of Spokane’s Kehoe Building with Sandra Bilbrey, his work supporting the Ferry County Rail Trail, and his involvement alongside Tribal and community leaders in advancing the proposed Inchelium skatepark. These are different kinds of projects, but they share a commitment to giving a place something lasting. For Miles, the lesson was that community energy can become something people continue to use: a restored building, a protected trail corridor, or a place for young people to gather. Kehoe preservation record, Ferry County Rail Trail interview
Why QR codes and vertical video belong at the center
The QR code is not an extra feature attached to the educational idea. It is part of how the idea works. In the planning conversations, the story video became the sign’s main invitation, not a small code sending people to a generic homepage.
An interpretive sign can contain a valuable story and still fail to draw someone in. Connected to Place proposes a familiar invitation: scan a code and launch a short vertical video about the place directly in front of you.
That format is intentional. Younger audiences already encounter stories through vertical video. The concept uses that familiarity as an invitation to engage with interpretive signage, rather than asking students to abandon a format they recognize before they can begin learning. At the June workshop, he described teachers already playing his videos in class and proposed short, QR-enabled story stops for visitors exploring without a guide.
The purpose is not to keep someone looking at a phone. A short video can introduce a person, explain a feature, or pose a question that makes the visitor look back at the landscape differently. A story about forest health could lead into observing the trees nearby. A geology segment could draw attention to the quarry walls. A food-system story could give context to the plants growing along the route.
That is the hoped-for impact: familiarity opening the door to attention, and attention leading to observation and participation. Whether the experience achieves that needs to be tested with students and educators, not assumed from video views.
The videos would complement readable signage, conversation, and hands-on activities. A student should not need a personal phone to participate in a school visit, and the experience should remain useful when a device or internet connection is unavailable.
Starting at the Quarry and learning from the site
The Quarry gives the program a place where conservation is visible rather than abstract. Spokane Conservation District purchased the former industrial property in 2017 and has been developing it into a campus for conservation and community use. Its history, geology, habitat, and ongoing restoration create opportunities to connect stories with things students can actually see. The Quarry’s story
The early concept paired themed stations with short activities and stories. Reusable scripts would help staff, interns, and volunteers lead a consistent experience. The videos were envisioned as a way for subject-matter experts to share their knowledge, with storytelling and production helping that expertise reach visitors. Reusable content would also keep the experience from depending on one presenter’s availability.
In August, the team narrowed an ambitious starting scope: instead of developing multiple age groups and districts at once, they would begin with one grade-level pathway and a complete Ice Age Floods prototype station. That first station could establish how the sign, video, activity, and student field guide fit together and reveal the real cost before a larger build. The six-station vision remained, but the sequence became more deliberate: prove the experience, learn from it, and then expand.
September education discussions pointed toward fourth grade, where local history and Earth-science learning offered a strong connection. The developing station format was concrete: observe the place, watch a short story, try an activity, and record an observation in a field guide. The video would start the learning, not stand in for it.
Planning also changed as the team looked more closely at the property. By September, a shorter lower-campus route had emerged as a better fit for school groups than a full-property loop. It could keep students closer to facilities, shade, staff, and bus access while still connecting forest health, conservation work, restoration, geology, and food systems.
That adjustment matters. Connected to Place is not simply a collection of videos looking for somewhere to be displayed. The place, the audience, and the practical needs of educators have to shape the experience together. Curriculum alignment, accessibility, transportation, group size, and teacher support are part of the educational design. July working notes also called for feedback from teachers, children, and teenagers, not simply an adult team deciding what younger visitors should find interesting.
From individual signs to a shared digital foundation
As the Quarry concept developed, conversations about other places revealed a larger problem. Interpretation, maps, wayfinding, and online information are often built separately. A sign can remain in place long after its linked video disappears or its information becomes outdated.
Connected to Place’s broader ambition is a digital platform connecting interpretive signs to a maintained, authoritative source of information, a shared “source of truth” behind the physical experience.
In that proposed model, a sign’s QR code would point to a stable destination rather than depend permanently on one video file or social-media post. Each interpretive stop could have a consistent identifier, location, approved content, and a clearly assigned person or organization responsible for updates. A video could change without making the printed sign obsolete.
This thinking drew on Miles’s professional experience organizing large product-information systems, where many pages and documents need to draw from reliable underlying records. In September discussions, he applied that principle to signs, trails, and the people responsible for them.
A visitor reporting a downed tree, for example, should not have to guess which of several organizations manages that stretch of river or trail. A properly designed system could connect the report to the correct location and manager, then record when the issue was resolved. Scott Noble’s river-signage conversations helped expose that ownership problem: information can circulate widely without reaching someone clearly responsible for acting on it.
The September project overview identified stable QR redirects, reusable content structures, mapping standards, analytics, and maintenance ownership as foundations worth considering at the Quarry. It also distinguished Connected to Place as the potential broader program from a Storytime Trail: one format within it, using a sequence of stories and stops.
The regional platform remains a development goal. Its value would depend as much on stewardship and reliable updates as on the technology itself.
Learning from use and supporting safer visits
A shared platform could also help answer questions that static signs cannot easily answer. Which stops are visitors using? Do people start a video and finish it? Which topics generate interest, and where do teachers say more explanation is needed?
Aggregate usage statistics could help the partners improve content and demonstrate how resources are being used. They would not, on their own, prove that a student learned something or that an entire trail had been visited. Educator feedback and observations from actual visits would remain essential. Any analytics would also need to be designed with privacy in mind, particularly where children are involved.
There is potential for safety benefits, too. Consistent location identifiers, accurate maps, land-manager-approved access information, and clear safety guidance could make it easier for visitors to understand where they are and communicate that location when seeking help. Exploring those possibilities with land managers and search-and-rescue professionals could extend the platform’s usefulness beyond interpretation.
Any emergency-support features would need to be developed with responders. A QR code would not replace emergency services or reliable offline information.
A regional idea that has to be built locally
Expansion would require more than copying signs from one property to another. Landowners and managers need a voice in access, maintenance, and safety. Teachers and subject-matter experts need to help shape the learning. Communities need to help determine which stories are told and how.
Tribal history and cultural knowledge require consultation and express consent, with knowledge holders retaining authority over their contributions. A reusable platform should make that responsibility easier to uphold, not treat every story as content available to reproduce.
Keeping the program available also requires a sustainable financial model. By September, the partners were working from a practical principle: determine the full cost of an experience before deciding how much to raise. The aim is to seek grants and sponsorships that reduce financial barriers for schools while supporting the less-visible work: training volunteers, coordinating visits, maintaining signs, and keeping digital content accurate. Evergreen does not mean maintenance-free.
The Quarry is the starting point for testing those relationships alongside the physical and digital experience. The development agreement sets out a spring 2027 implementation goal and a subsequent decision about moving forward, dependent on the work, funding, and readiness of the partners.
The long-term ambition returns to the question that started it. Could the people who know these places and the people who know how to reach new audiences build a resource teachers, families, and communities can keep using?
The purpose reaches beyond learning the facts on a sign. It is to support curiosity, belonging, and well-being, and to help make the Inland Northwest a better place to live. Giving successive generations of students opportunities to understand and care for their region is the lasting contribution Connected to Place hopes to make toward a better future.
