Name: Seeing and Building Community Through Tradition
Start: 2026-04-14T18:00:00-05:00
End: 2026-04-14T19:00:00-05:00
Location: 304 W. Trish Knight, West Plains, MO, United States, Missouri 65775

Seeing and Building Community Through Tradition: Even in our fast-paced world, tried and true traditions still connect us to where we are. Ozarks Alive’s Kaitlyn McConnell sees this in her travels throughout the region: From quilting to music and food, in this talk she will share long-held examples of our regional culture that endure. As part of these observations, she will also share about the Ozarks Pie Project, an effort she began in 2024 to bake and share pies from vintage Ozarks cookbooks. The effort resulted in the publication of “The Ozarks Pie Project Diary,” a cookbook filled with recipes and stories from across the region. The event will be on Tuesday, April 14, 2026, at 6:00pm in the Ozarks Heritage Research Center.
This event is also sponsored by West Plains Council on the Arts.
Kaitlyn McConnell is the founder of Ozarks Alive, a cultural preservation project that documents people, places and history throughout the region. Since the project’s inception in 2015, she has published hundreds of articles reflecting the region’s present for its future.