Title is ‘Facing Middletown’ Middletown, USA 100 Years Muncie, Indiana in 2025
By Aimee West—
MUNCIE, IN—Muncie, Indiana, also known by researchers across the United States as Middletown, USA, has served as a national bellwether for American hometowns and small city life. In the spirit of embracing this identity and responsibility that comes with recording accurate and unvarnished histories representing everyday life in small cities across the United States, The Facing Project, Center for Middletown Studies, and community partners invite the people of Muncie, Indiana and those who wish to learn from them, to participate in the 100-year mile marker documentary and book:
‘FACING MIDDLETOWN’ TIMELINE
Facing Middletown’s community kickoff and documentary launch will be Friday, June 6th, 12:30pm, Madjax Makers Force, at Muncie Land Bank’s “First Friday” located at 514 E. Jackson St. Muncie, Indiana, where public participation, discussion, documentary production, and enlistment and selection process of writers and storytellers for the ‘Facing Middletown’ publication begins and will remain open through September 1st, 2025.
At the June 6th launch event, Facing Middletown’s facilitators J.R. Jamison, Aimee Robertson-West (The Facing Project), Dr. Jennifer Erickson, Dr. James Connolly (Center for Middletown Studies) and community partners Dr. John West, (Urban Planning Department, Ball State), Nate Howard (Muncie Land Bank), Ken Hudson (Whitely Community Council), Jacquie Hannoman (Ross Community Center), J.P. Hall (Center for Historic Preservation), and Dr. Patrick Collier (Everyday Life in Middletown) will begin engaging Muncie’s residents and invite their inclusion in the community compilation documentary and book which aims to find people in their places, show their lives across Muncie today, and archive that which will become history, tomorrow.
The Facing Project and Center for Middletown Studies will collaborate with an award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker, Rani Deighe Crowe, to produce a compilation documentary which will include Muncie residents’ personal home-video submissions and recorded interviews. Crowe says she “wants to hear Muncie speak and help facilitate the opportunity for the residents of Muncie to tell us and show us who they are and how they make a life.”
The engagement event is free to the public and a light lunch will be served. Attendees are asked sign up at Upcoming Events | Facing Middletown with the number of people attending and come prepared to see video cameras, be willing to actively participate in facilitated discussions, and explore, aloud, the following questions and concepts:
- When someone asks about life in Muncie, what do you tell them?
- What is a good life in your place?
- What allows you to live this life? What is standing in your way?
- What are the questions that will help researchers understand you and your community?
- What images would you use to represent life in Muncie?
- What do you want to see this project produce?
- What do you wish people knew about Muncie, but don’t?
- What do you think, hope, or worry about happening to Muncie, 100 years from now?
PARTICIPATION
There are three big ways to participate in the ‘Facing Middletown’ book and documentary:
Go on the record.
Show up to our community callout sessions throughout Muncie, participate in documentary interviews, ask and answer important unanswered questions about life in Muncie in 2025. You don’t have to attend a community session to participate. Go on the record in an interview.
Become a writer or storyteller in the ‘Facing Middletown’ book.
Do you have something to say about living in Muncie and do not know how to say it?
Tell Muncie’s story by understanding and sharing someone else’s.
Become a storyteller or writer using the Facing Project’s empathy-building model.
Become a Middletown Documenter
Uncover the stories hiding in plain sight: contribute your own video clips and photographs captured in 2025; ask questions and invite curiosity into your places and lives.
What is a Middletown Documenter?
‘Facing Middletown’ aims to make visible the daily lives and routines of people living across Muncie, Indiana. If you are interested in submitting photographs or footage captured in 2025 as a Middletown Documenter for the documentary, please review the Middletown Documenter specifications, at www.facingmiddletown.com
As the project takes shape, submitted images and footage will be featured on the Muncie People and Places gallery on social media.
KNOW BEFORE YOU GO
Attending the June 6th launch event at Madjax and participation in the “Facing Middletown” Documentary.
For community members planning to attend the June 6th “Facing Middletown” launch event at MadJax, please be awarefilmmaker Rani Deighe-Crowe will begin recording footage for the documentary at this event. Upon entry, attendees will be asked to complete a release form.
Middletown Documenters
The people of Muncie do unseen and extraordinary things to make it through their days in their homes and neighborhoods. ‘Facing Middletown’ aims to make visible the daily lives and routines of people living across Muncie, Indiana. If you are interested in submitting personal footage as a Middletown Documenter, or otherwise being included or interviewed in the documentary, Middletown Documenter specifications, personal or minor image release forms will go live June 6th which can be found at www.facingmiddletown.com
If you wish to participate and have accessibility barriers, we will find a way to include you, however we are able.
MUNCIE, INDIANA’S NATIONAL IDENTITY AS MIDDLETOWN, USA
Facing Middletown was born out of a shared desire to preserve multifaceted histories and honest storytelling in Muncie, Indiana. Because researchers and journalists have held up Muncie, Indiana as Middletown, USA, a representative American hometown, instead of approaching
as its own place, Facing Middletown is committed to providing a space to unearth and archive
some of the unique stories, trials, and tribulations of people living in Muncie, Indiana in 2025, whereby the people of Muncie have a say in their own story.
Going into American cities and laying groundwork for communities to explore an understanding of themselves, Peter Kageyama, Urbanist and Author of ‘Love Where you Live’, ‘For the Love of Cities, Revisited’ and “Emotional Infrastructure of Places’ sees ‘Facing Middletown’ as way for Muncie to reflect upon its identity as a place for all American places to understand themselves. “To know others is knowledge. To know yourself is wisdom. Facing Middletown is a rare and wonderful opportunity for a community to look in the mirror, and not just the mirror today, but the mirror of history; to learn about itself and share that wisdom with others around the world.”
‘Facing Middletown’ is made possible in part through support from the Community Foundation of Muncie & Delaware County.
About the Facing Project
Founded in Muncie, Indiana, The Facing Project is a national nonprofit that creates a more understanding and empathetic world through stories that inspire action. The organization brings people and communities together through acts of empathy that include listening, storytelling, and connecting across differences with the belief that stories are the most powerful tool for change. More at www.facingproject.com.
About the Center for Middletown Studies
Housed at Ball State University, the Center for Middletown Studies builds on the body of scholarship inaugurated by Robert S. and Helen Merrell Lynd in their landmark studies Middletown (1929) and Middletown in Transition (1937). These in-depth accounts of life in Muncie, Indiana, became classic sociological studies and established the community as a barometer of social trends in the United States. The sponsors of the original Middletown investigation framed it as a “small-city study,” and that concept provides a foundation for the Center’s work. In addition to building on the scholarship about Muncie conducted by the Lynds and their many successors, the Center supports research examining the history, present condition, and prospects of smaller cities and towns, particularly in the American Midwest.
More at https://www.bsu.edu/academics/centersandinstitutes/middletown.
Stay updated:
Stay connected:
Become a Middletown Documenter, share your photos, videos, stories, and questions.
Reach out at facingmiddletown@facingproject.com
Learn about Facing Middletown’s facilitators and community partners.
Read the full press release:
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Facebook: /Facing Middletown
Instagram: /Facing Middletown
