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Interviewees
Parent, Joey
Accessibility Note
Content is digitally accessible 2024.
Interviewer
Bowden, Eric
Description
Joey Parent was born and raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. He started exploring rivers and trails on an old BMX bike that his father pulled out of a dumpster and a hand-me down canoe that his mother gave him. Since then, the gear has gotten nicer and the trips have gotten longer, but a yearning to explore has remained the same. A graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University's Photography and Film Department (2005), Joey currently directs the Outdoor Adventure Program at VCU where he hopes to inspire others to live their own adventures.
In this interview, Parent speaks about growing up in Central Virginia whitewater kayaking, his work as Senior Assistant Director for Outdoor Leadership, teaching for VCU’s Center for Environmental Studies, his first time paddling on the James River, seasonal changes on the river, spreading out the utilization of the parks, perceptions and realities of a city park system, who does and does not feel welcomed in the parks, how painful history can impact park use, preservation versus conservation, whose vision of the park is being preserved, how park exposure creates environmentalists, the challenges of the park, undoing historical discrimination in the outdoors, and balancing use of the park with preservation.
Corporate Name Subject
Virginia Commonwealth University. Center for Environmental Studies
Topical Subject
James River (Va.); Outdoor recreation; Outdoor recreation for children; Outdoor recreation--Environmental aspects; Trails; Environmentalism; Parks; Parks--Maintenance; Education parks; Conservation; Discrimination in municipal services
City/Location
Richmond (Va.)
Genre
oral histories (literary genre)
Local Genre
oral history; sound recording; text
Type
Sound; Text
Digital Format
audio/mp3
Language
eng
Rights Statement URL
Rights
This material is protected by copyright, and copyright is held by Joey Parent. You are permitted to use this material in any way that is permitted by copyright. In addition, this material is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Acknowledgment of Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries as a source is required.
Collection
James River Park System Oral History Project
Contributors
James River Park System
Source
Joey Parent interview (2024-04-16), James River Park System Oral Histories, M 569, Special Collections and Archives, James Branch Cabell Library, Virginia Commonwealth University.
File Name
jrpsoh_parentjoey_interview.mp3
Disciplines
Environmental Education | Public History | Social History | United States History