The Troutbeck Symposium was born out of a collaborative 2020 project between Salisbury School history teacher Rhonan Mokriski and documentary film maker, Ben Willis. Working within the limitations of Covid-19 lockdown, the teachers guided students to create a series of short documentaries that explored little-known African American history in our area. For the next school year, the project expanded by partnering with Troutbeck, inviting more schools to participate, a total of nine, culminating in a multi-day meeting at Troutbeck showcasing the students’ work for the first Troutbeck Symposium. In 2023, fourteen schools participated.

The philosophy employs a decentralized approach, created and led by educators and students. This means that multiple schools support, contribute, and collaborate with each other across disciplines with the goal of generating meaningful and authentic projects that endeavor to educate the community.

These projects are about acknowledging the idea that history is "messy," encouraging students to be detectives, pull threads and rethink stories and accepted statements through a critical lens.