Andrew McClain attended the University of Central Arkansas, where he majored in print journalism and worked as an editorial assistant at the Oxford American magazine. After graduating in 2013, he moved to Fayetteville, where he co-founded the Arkansas arts & culture magazine The Idle Class with publisher Kody Ford. McClain eventually moved back to Little Rock and pursued music production with Little Rock musicians Kari Faux and Princeaus while working as a delivery driver for a local startup, which provided a unique view of Little Rock and led to a deepening fascination with the city, its layout and its history.
During the 2017 legislative session, he worked as a proofreader for the Bureau of Legislative Research. After the session, he started working at the Arkansas State Archives, where he discovered a love for archival work and decided to pursue his master’s in Public History at UALR in Spring 2018.
McClain is an occasional contributor of entertainment features to the Arkansas Times and The Idle Class and continues work at the State Archives, where he has been busy processing map collections from the Arkansas Department of Labor and the Assessment Coordination Department.
He started work at CAHC in Fall 2018 (with fellow GA Acadia Roher) as part of an NEH grant on the Mapping Renewal project, which is focused on documenting urban renewal in Little Rock and how it changed the shape and social fabric of the city. McClain started by scanning photos from the Earl Saunders collection, and in Spring 2019 became a graduate assistant.
Since becoming a graduate assistant at the CAHC, McClain’s work has focused on processing a collection of valuation maps of the Cairo and Fulton Railroad from 1918, digitizing as well as the digitization of a number of architectural drawings for the Mapping Renewal project.
