Abstract

TransRural Lives is the first digital storytelling project that explores the lives of transgender older adults (ages 50+) from nonmetropolitan areas in the Pacific Northwest. This article explores the community-based educational events that have become crucial to disseminating TransRural Lives beyond the project’s website, specifically through rural “pop-up” storytelling events. The storytelling methods incorporated into these pop-ups serve as crucial informal learning opportunities that explore the needs of transgender individuals outside metropoles. They engage with diverse topics related to transgender aging in rural areas, intergenerational knowledge and resource sharing, the diversity of transgender older adults’ experiences, and the spaces that foster community and belonging for transgender older adults in rurality. In rural areas, where formal educational infrastructure for trans adults is lacking, these pop-ups function as a critical form of informal adult education. They also help develop intergenerational kinship networks that challenge dominant narratives about queer and trans rurality and resist the marginalization of rural lives. In doing so, they offer a model for how storytelling, when grounded in community and place, can reveal hidden histories and make visible the broad range of transgender experiences in rural areas, providing a rich area of study within broader community-facing adult education.

How to Cite:

Eliatamby-O’Brien, M. & Tester, G., (2025) “TransRural Storytelling Pop-Ups as Sites of Community Knowledge Exchange”, Journal of Research in Rural Education 41(6), 1–12. doi: https://doi.org/10.26209/JRRE4106-05

Rights: Copyright