Dekalb Chamber Awarded Rural Video And Photography Grant For Tourism Outreach

DeKalb County will soon have a new promotional materials to showcase the county’s assets thanks to a Tennessee Department of Tourism Development Grant.

The Rural Video and Photography Grant provided funds and a promotional team to take photos and videos of the county’s attractions. Suzanne Williams is Executive Director of the Smithville/Dekalb County Chamber Of Commerce. She said she loves the results.

“The lake and the river and the state park and all these things that we have, it really shows better in the spring and the summer months,” Williams said. “And so we were just thrilled that the timing worked out the way it did.”

Williams said that she submitted an application for the grant previously, but did not receive it. Williams said she hopes the promotional material will help DeKalb County further its tourism market.

“It just makes such a huge positive impact on our whole county and we love having our visitors here,” Williams said. “So many people who visit here end up wanting to move here and, you know, we have to have visitors here to promote all of our small businesses and our events.”

Williams said that after being assigned the production crew by the state, they began coordinating on how to conduct the shoot. Williams said county representatives and the production crew drove around the county scouting out the locations they wanted to use. Williams said following this the team began three busy days of shooting photos and video of all locations, as well as constructing models.

“That’s our big focus,” Williams said. “Everything we do, all our grants we write, all our projects we do, has that back-feeling of ‘what can we do to draw more tourism here?’”

Williams said that the results from the grant can be seen on DeKalb County’s tourism website.