The National Vegetarian Museum opened February, 2017, the current project of Go Veggie!, a 501(c)(3) operating since 2003. The Museum currently consists of 12 3 x 5-foot panels that we have installed bi-monthly at over 15 Illinois locations. We also provide programming related to our mission with film screenings/discussions, children’s book readings, and guest talks. Collaborations to-date have primarily been with the Chicago and suburban public library systems. We will start to be hosted by colleges/universities in 2019. Today the Museum “travels” within Illinois, but in the next 3-5 years we want to establish a permanent exhibit in Chicago and expand the panels’ installations to a wider geographic radius.

We will utilize an online story map software platform to create an interactive map that we can incorporate into our website and integrate into our physical display. Digital story mapping is an exciting and relatively new interactive media centered on a map-based narrative. Individuals can engage with historical and current information, clicking (or using a touch screen) on map areas to access content such as photos, text, website links, videos. We anticipate our project taking six months: approximately two months each for research, compiling/organizing information, and preparing/editing the map. This project will illuminate, visually, little-known and marginalized aspects of Illinois history while tapping into the humanistic tradition of story-telling.