As the school year came to a close last month, I too cleaned out my metaphorical locker, winding down my time as Signal Cleveland’s K-12 education reporter. 

Now instead of reporting on the schools for Signal Cleveland, I’ll be working as the newsroom’s visual journalist.

That means I’ll be using photography and video to show the people and places that make up Cleveland’s character. The city might look a certain type of way from the outside, but to those who call it home, it’s completely different. I want to show the Cleveland that only locals know.

To do that, I need your help.

Can you take me for a walk around your neighborhood? 

I’d love to tell you exactly what I’m looking for here, but I want to leave this pretty open-ended. Journalists usually come in with a specific story in mind. For this project, I want you to tell me what the story is. Tell me what I don’t know. Show me the things that people often overlook.

Those things could be places like a community garden, a corner shop or an open lot that holds significance for you. Maybe it’s your neighbors: people with a lifetime of your block’s history in their memory or that one family who always cooks for everyone.

Even if you don’t have anything specific in mind, we can just walk around and take pictures of your neighborhood. 

I’m pretty flexible about how this could work, but here’s what I have in mind: 

• Fill out the form below. I’ll reach out to you to plan from there. 
• Pick a day and a place to meet up. For meeting places, it could be something like a rec center, a street corner or your home. 
• I’ll bring a camera to lend to you.
• We’ll walk around, visit any places or people you have in mind and take pictures of what we see. 
• I’ll send your pictures to you. Then, Signal Cleveland will publish our pictures together in a series of stories. 

I’m really curious to see what our pictures will look like when we put them next to each other. You’ll see your neighborhood differently than I will. Maybe the differences in what we choose to take pictures of — or the different ways we photograph the same things — will make us pause to think more about what it means to live in Cleveland. 

This is a new idea Signal Cleveland is trying out, so I don’t know exactly how it’s going to go. I’m going to do my best to get back to everyone who fills out the form, but depending on how many answers we get, I can’t promise I’ll respond to everyone. 

We’re also open to trying more stuff like this. If you have story ideas or suggestions for other ways we could use photography and video to tell Cleveland’s stories, let me know. You can email me at [email protected].

My new visual journalist role at Signal Cleveland is being supported by CatchLight and Report for America. CatchLight is a visual-first media organization that leverages the power of visual storytelling to inform, connect and transform communities. Report for America is a national service program that puts journalists into local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities.

And hey, if you know anyone who’d be interested in covering the schools for Signal Cleveland, send them my way. The job description is posted here.