To go directly to the Winston-Salem Monthly magazine, click the June cover immediately below.

» Local Hero
Susan Morris
Submitted June 3, 2011
By Sara Wilson
Susan Morris, Community Advocate
The year before Susan Morris co-founded the Scene in Winston-Salem Scavenger Hunt, she gave up driving to work for Lent. Every day she walked the 1.3 miles to work on Chestnut Street from her home in West End. “I just started noticing more,” she says. “I spent more time researching the city…so the scavenger hunt was a really great way to share that knowledge.”
The Scene in Winston-Salem Scavenger Hunt incorporates the arts, architecture, history, and the existing downtown community. “The purpose is to get people to learn about things downtown that they didn’t already know.” This past April marked the fourth year and saw more than 190 participants. “[It’s] just something we do for fun, and for the city, and all the money that we raise goes to the Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership.”
While the hunt is fun, it’s only one day a year. So Morris co-created a mobile app, Treks in the City. A walking tour of downtown, the free app allows you to create your own trek, giving you information about Winston-Salem as you go along.
“Anyone that wants to use it, it’s a gift,” she says. Morris’ love of downtown was also a “gift” from her mother. “She worked for the Arts Council, Piedmont Craftsmen… and so we would spend a lot of time downtown, even when there wasn’t a lot to do downtown.”
As a resident of West End, Morris lives, works, and plays in the downtown community. She loves that the city is “like America’s best-kept secret.”
What a great article - congrats to Susan, and thank you to her for all she does. Oh, and an aside? I love the picture on the cover of WS Monthly!
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