The Old Church Gallery is an educational, cultural arts, and history organization with a commitment to the community it serves, Floyd, Virginia. Founded in 1978, taking its name from the historic brick church on Main Street where it all began, the Old Church Gallery has continued its long-standing tradition of community service through programs that celebrate regional culture and the heritage of Floyd County.

For the Old Church Gallery, the MIRA application was a step up for the existing programs at the Gallery. Their goal was to coordinate cultural projects, centralize archival collected information, network with other agencies in the field, and have a means to share and present their work in cultural arts and history to the public.

With the MIRA grant the Old Church Gallery strengthened its organization so it better serve the community. The members used technology to create cultural and oral history archives for the area, initiated collection management policies, and implemented a resource database.

In order to create the cultural and oral history archives, the Gallery established a technology work center, purchasing video cameras, digital cameras, audio recorders, computer, color printer and related software which allows the ability to document past artifacts and oral histories as they make their way through the door of their changing exhibits. Volunteers were trained in the use of the equipment, documentation and conducting interviews.

At the Old Church Gallery, Radford University intern, Kiera McReynolds, sorts and classifies pottery shards according to imprint decoration and clay types.

The Old Church Gallery and the Anthropology Program at Radford University worked together on the oral history heritage project, called "Floyd County Traditions." The goal was to preserve the cultural heritage of Floyd County for the future and to use the information for educational purposes.

In order to initiate collection management policies, the Old Church Gallery held documentation days to document their holdings and items loaned for exhibit and recorded the related history.

As part of the implementation of a resource database, the Gallery is developing a website which will be online in the near future. This site will be accessible through the Floyd MIRA team's community website.

The Old Church Gallery's work with MIRA led to a stronger organizational focus, the establishment of new programs, an increase in new volunteer base, and a more professional structure for their organization.