We’re proud to announce the launch of Being Asheville: Unearthing the Spirit of Western Carolina. This collection of videos and audio slideshows is the fruit of the most recent installment of the Carolina Photojournalism Workshop. During CPJW, which was founded in 2004, we put together a big group of multimedia students and head off for a different part of our state to produce a documentary Web site in a week. This year, we hunkered down in a few cabins at the Blue Ridge Assembly in Black Mountain and began working on a series of stories that captured at least the essence of the Asheville.

Tucked away in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Asheville is a city of wonderful contradiction; it’s a place where wilderness gives way to urbanity and tradition and folkways give way to well… a healthy dose of the weird. In short, Asheville is just a unique and utterly awesome place.

This year we also had the privilege of producing a few day stories for the Charlotte Observer in conjunction with their multimedia package commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. A special thanks to Observer PJ John Simmons and DP Bert Fox for arranging this unique opportunity. See the stories.

As always a great thanks goes out to all the coaches and their respective newspapers for their help in producing these stories. And most importantly thanks to all the individuals and families who shared their lives with us for a week. We can’t wait to get back to the mountains.

Watch Being Asheville.