Wyoming County Heart and Soul approached Coal Creative with a straightforward goal: creating a digestible and beautiful report of community values and aspirations.
But there was a steep hill to climb—a nest egg overflowing with community statistics, spoken stories, and resident aspirations that the organization had been collecting for three years. How could they turn this treasure trove of data and narratives into a short, actionable document?
Coal Creative was up to the challenge. Let’s dive into this project from start to finish and reveal the final product: An action report quite literally filled with the heart and soul of Wyoming County.
Meet Wyoming County Heart and Soul
Our collaborator, Wyoming County Heart and Soul, is a group of dedicated volunteers, local residents, and organization members from Wyoming County, Pennsylvania. Together, this vibrant team seeks to listen to the community and use local voices to guide future decisions.
But this isn’t your everyday community development organization.
National Roots, Local Impact
Wyoming County Heart and Soul is a chapter of Community Heart and Soul: a humanities-based approach to community and economic development. While most Community Heart and Soul initiatives focus on just one town, Wyoming County is unique. With around 26,000 residents, the county is roughly the same size as the individual towns that typically participate.
Including the whole county in the initiative helps to:
- Promote and protect a wider geographic area
- Hear from a larger variety of residents
- Establish a strong sense of pride county-wide
Wyoming County Heart and Soul is funded by both state and national groups, including:
- PA Humanities
- The National Endowment for the Humanities
- The PA Department of Community and Economic Development
- The PA Route 6 Alliance
- Community Heart and Soul
Despite its far-reaching support, Wyoming County Heart and Soul seeks to make an impact at the local level. By collecting “thin data” (like demographic information) and listening to in-depth resident stories, the organization sought to establish a clear vision for the community from locals themselves—a vision that could be used to inform future policies, programs, and development efforts in the county.
A Mighty Team
Throughout the project, Coal Creative had the opportunity to work with Wyoming County Heart and Soul’s vibrant team of:
- Grant partners – Representatives from each grant organization that funds the local chapter
- Team members – The Project Leader, Project Administrator, and Core Team members
- Team volunteers – Community representatives—both individuals and members of local businesses and organizations
- Story listening volunteers – Fellow locals who sat down with their neighbors to hear their stories, perspectives, and visions for the future
“There were so many people who helped make this booklet what it was,” says Coal Creative project lead Samantha Buchernatale.
The most important collaborator was the community itself: especially the “unheard voices” of Wyoming County. Wyoming County Heart and Soul worked tirelessly to identify groups that typically didn’t get a say in community planning and made connecting with these groups a priority—seasonal residents, veterans, ethnic minorities, and people facing immense struggle (the hungry, homeless, and addicted).
The Action Report: A Tapestry of Community Data and Stories
With a mountain of data, photos, and local insights, Wyoming County Heart and Soul needed a North Star document: a digestible, actionable record of community goals and aspirations.
Enter the Action Report.
Project Goals
The main deliverable for the project—the document Coal Creative would create—was an Action Report. Deborah Shurtleff, the Community Project Assistant at Wyoming County Heart and Soul, says that the goal for the Report was to develop “a professional, readable compilation report of project processes and outcomes.”
Deborah also succinctly summed up the project’s greatest challenge: “Compiling three years of data, photos, and verbiage into a readable document.”
The key word? Readable. Wyoming County Heart and Soul wanted to share information—their findings, plans, and goals—countywide with all residents. Not just people working in local government (who read data-dense documents for a living), but also everyday residents looking for answers.
Beyond the Booklet
In addition to sharing information with community members, Wyoming County Heart and Soul also wanted to be able to use their Action Report to:
- Communicate with prospective collaborators – The Action Report needed to become an asset the organization could use when approaching prospective collaborators in the future. The document needed to illustrate both the needs of Wyoming County and the goals of its Heart and Soul initiative.
- Inform policies and programs – It was also important that the Action Report provide a clear picture of the community’s needs, goals, and character that could be referenced when building future policies.
Ultimately, the Action Report needed to fill three distinct roles: community bulletin, information sheet for future partners, and policy playbook.
Building the Booklet
What did the creative process look like?
We turned to our Content Director Samantha Buchernatale for project insights.
Step 1: Listening
Like every Coal Creative project, we started by listening to our collaborator’s goals, needs, and concerns. Samantha says, “To kick off this process, I had a meeting with some of the members from Wyoming County Heart and Soul. I learned more about their mission and the reason behind creating the Action Report. It was really inspiring!”
In these initial meetings, our team:
- Explored the ample data collected by Wyoming County Heart and Soul
- Brainstormed about the Action Report’s design and content with team members
- Asked key questions about the team’s expectations and visions for the final product
“This project really embodied the word ‘collaboration,’” says Samantha.
Step 2: Drafting the Document
With Wyoming County Heart and Soul’s expectations, ideas, and data in hand, Samantha moved on to the design phase.
Based on the organization’s priorities, Samantha made a few key design decisions:
- Incorporating color – “The Wyoming County Heart and Soul team wanted a lot of color in the design, as their motto is ‘Kaleidoscope of Communities.’”
- Using community-sourced design elements – “My goal was to capture the ‘heart and soul’ of Wyoming County in this booklet. We were able to use a lot of artwork and photography from local residents, which was really special.”
- Prioritizing visual appeal – “While working on the booklet, I needed to select and edit the best content while also figuring out how to design and lay out the booklet in a visually appealing way. There was a lot to fit in!”
The project went through multiple draft phases. After submitting each draft, Samantha collected feedback from the entire organization.
Step 3: Refining the Design and Content
Throughout the drafting process, Samantha and the Wyoming County Heart and Soul team had a lot of decisions to make about which data to include and which to omit.
“Jill Robinson from the Wyoming County Heart and Soul team wrote a ton of amazing content and the whole team had been collecting years’ worth of data before our partnership even began.”
This conundrum didn’t begin and end with the first draft.
“There was a lot of material to boil down into a 20-page booklet—we could have made it twice that long. Deb [Shurtleff] and I had many calls where we would strategize this. Instead of just dropping the content from the collaborator into the design, I really had to think through what would best work for their goal and target audience while actively designing it at the same time.”
This process—designing the booklet and editing the content at the same time—was unique for a typical Coal Creative project. Samantha says, “Usually, we try to strategize the content before jumping into the design, but the timeline didn’t allow for this. Looking back, doing it this way helped me to become a more flexible designer.”
After multiple revisions and many conversations with the Wyoming County Heart and Soul team, the Action Report was finally finished. “Once the final version was approved, we worked with a local printer to make copies, and I worked with the team to get a digital version added to their website so anyone from the community could access it.”
A Window Into Wyoming County
How was the Action Report received? Did Wyoming County Heart and Soul get to reach all three of their audiences (residents, organizations, and policymakers)?
Let’s zoom into the impacts of this partnership.
The Action Report
The internal team at Wyoming County Heart and Soul loved the final Action Report. One core team member, William “Bill” Brennan, said, “The booklet was very well written and easy to understand! Great job all.”
Deborah Shurtleff appreciated both the quality of the final product and the process of making it. “Coal Creative was professional, organized, and collaborative throughout the process. We are grateful to them for supporting our community project!”
But the Action Report turned out to be more impactful (and have a wider reach) than our collaborator initially anticipated.
Far-Reaching Impact
Wyoming County Heart and Soul shared this document with locals, policymakers, and even the national Community Heart and Soul initiative. The responses exceeded expectations:
- The community adopted the Heart and Soul statements – After compiling data and meeting with locals, Wyoming County leaders representing every municipality adopted the statements developed during the project—in other words, they’ll use the information gathered as a compass while making future development decisions.
- The Action Report made the rounds county-wide – After seeing the Action Report, Wyoming County Heart and Soul made efforts to make it as accessible as possible to locals. They mailed postcards to all nine zip codes across Wyoming Valley that included a QR code linking to the digital report.
- The national Community Heart and Soul organization is using it – After the project was complete, Deborah Shurtleff reached out to share some exciting news: “Community Heart and Soul [the national organization] will be using Wyoming County’s Action Report as a training tool for other community-based organizations across the United States.”
Coal Creative even received feedback from two Community Heart and Soul stakeholders at the national level. Community Heart and Soul coach Alice Trowbridge told us, “This is an amazing document—both beautiful and full of great information. You’ve really captured the feeling of Wyoming County, both in photographs and text. This report reads so easily and provides very important information for guiding decisions about the future of Wyoming County.”
Program Associate Joan Wagner also weighed in: “You can be sure we will be celebrating this achievement alongside you and sharing your Action Report with others as a demonstration of what’s possible!”
Coal Creative and Wyoming County Heart and Soul: Beyond Collaboration
At Coal Creative, our collaborators’ reflections are a critical takeaway from every endeavor. But even more important are the personal connections we make with our fellow creatives—the relationships we build while working alongside our community’s best and brightest.
For Samantha, the personal connection forged during the Wyoming County Heart and Soul project is undeniable.
“I truly enjoyed working on this project. I loved working with Deb [Shurtleff], and we built up a great rapport. After the project was completed, I had the wonderful opportunity to meet Deb in person for the first time at a women’s event—we hugged like old friends!”
This is what we seek to create with every partnership at Coal: a high-impact creative product and a genuine connection with our collaborators.