About this project

Where in the world is Ralston, Vermont?

Ralston, Vermont, is a fictional island city located in Lake Champlain just west of Burlington conceived by project designer Erik Esckilsen. Ralston is a platform for select Champlain College students engaged in the study of human communities, world-building, and digital storytelling.

RALSTON AND THE CO-CREATION MODEL

The stories and artifacts that Esckilsen—known to students involved in this project as Mr. E—creates become elements that define the fictional community of Ralston. He’s hardly alone in this effort, however. When students reach Ralston they become citizens, but they aren’t the first—merely the newest. Other student-citizens from previous classes with Mr. E have made their mark by the time the newest students arrive. Whatever students find inscribed in Ralston is to be treated as a fixed feature—what some people in creative industries might call canon (although that’s a pretty heavy word for this kind of work). Students then exercise their citizenship rights and responsibilities by making the community a better place through proposals for anything they can imagine: public art, buildings and infrastructure, local laws and ordinances, anything.

What are some examples of student-citizens’ influence on Ralston as one finds it today?

In 2016, a Champlain College student by the name of Joshua Evans (see credits) situated a lighthouse in Ralston. He invented an anecdote about local kids getting in mischief at that site. Up to that point, none of Mr. E’s or students’ work on Ralston had mentioned a lighthouse. That lighthouse, the Brand Point Lighthouse or, as locals refer to it, the North Point Lighthouse, is now part of Ralston’s historical narrative, which students will encounter in a document found in the Reading Ralston section of this site. Of course, the lighthouse now appears on current maps of Ralston.

Here’s another example, also from 2016. Champlain College student Ryan Place illustrated and designed a seal for the City of Ralston. Mr. E has adopted the seal, with Place’s permission, for use in a range of Ralston artifacts, including the city’s social media channels.

Here’s a list of all the students who have become Ralston citizens to date.

What do students learn through this project?

This page offers context on how this project engages students in a deep investigation of communities.