Proponents and doomsayers have lined up in the face of the breakthrough of these large language model and deep learning computing engines. How will these developments affect digital storytelling as a community of practices? 

My very first interviews were exciting, and people’s reactions were better than I expected: supportive and proud. But after reading those interviews, I realized that I was leaving out important parts of my journey—mainly, the challenges I had faced.

Through this workshop, we learned more about the connection people make between stories and maps, about the process of story mapping, and also about how to use new technology and create trust and a safe space through digital communication tools.

This community-centered documentation project and virtual tour in Madaba serves as a public education tool, supports the livelihoods of Madaba residents, and provides a digital inventory of the site until the project team can return and complete its work in the museum.

For thirty years, StoryCenter has supported people in sharing their own stories, in their own words. As our efforts have grown and evolved, storytelling technologies have gotten cheaper and increasingly accessible, and podcasts are everywhere. Now, we’re excited to announce what feels like a natural next step for our work: a full-fledged podcasting initiative. In this post, our Director of Podcasting Ryan Trauman describes what we’re doing.

Somehow, we forgot the last pandemic. The 1918 flu was conspicuously downplayed in medical records, did not fill the pages of the newspapers, and was omitted from personal journals. We cannot locate the cacophony of beleaguered voices; we will never know what they felt, what the flu did to them. There are theories as to why: it was upstaged by the horrors of WWI; it pulled the rug from under the belief in the advancement of medicine; it was too overwhelming to reiterate. Citizens, soldiers, doctors, they did not want to face it, or couldn’t. Why extend the dastardly thing’s lifespan by writing it down?

It is my story as a mother of an addict, one tiny part. Just as I am not interested in knowing all the details of his time spent making his bed out in the cold (to quote John Martyn’s May You Never), I don't expect him to be interested in knowing the agony of my waiting. Or the enormity of this expedition.

It turns out that humans live in houses—if they’re lucky. And our conversation about housing has turned to those humans. How much we value them. How much we need them in our community, and how much their voices matter. And that absolutely changes the conversation about housing.

No one has ever tried this all-online schooling thing with little kids before. There aren’t any experts. And now, the schools are trying to figure out the human interaction on an impossible timeline, with no room for training teachers on how to hold a class of nine year olds safe and engaged in an online space. The thing that amazes me about StoryCenter, over and over, is that you all have figured out how to make the tech essentially disappear, in service of deeply human work.

As if by magic, by day three of the workshop, I created a digital story about resilience. Then, at the end of the workshop, a screening of all the group members’ videos occurred. It was breathtaking. What an experience!  I immediately knew I wanted to do it again–someday.

Sometimes, when I think about the control that was stolen from my mother at such a young age, I want to hold her and mourn with her. But, that's not a place we can go. Sometimes, when I uncover a new scar or tenderness in my life based on what happened to me, I want to reach out to her. But, that's not a place we can go.

I was born in St. James Parish when Jim Crow still ruled. Racist laws made sure that many black Louisianans were unable to participate in democracy. It has been more than 50 years since the passage of the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act, but those of us in the 5th district were not informed when in 2014, the northern part of the district was re-zoned for industrial use. While white residents sold their properties and moved away, black residents did not receive buy-out offers. We were left inhaling the toxic air produced by the invading petrochemical plants.

Having such a comforting setting allowed us to be open when sharing our story ideas as a group and getting feedback. All the storytellers did an amazing job of capturing our community’s values and welcoming environment. They crafted stories about family, identity, the struggles of immigration, and many other topics.

It’s rare to have time with people in that way, where they open up and tell an important truth of their lives—where they are both strong and vulnerable at the same time. We don’t often slow down and take time to listen, and listen deeply. To speak and be listened to deeply. To actually be heard.

“Trauma. This is trauma, Katie,” I tell myself. And, just like that, I can breathe again. I feel the depth of my humanity, and of the driver’s, and it feels Incredible, to breathe it all in, and let the fear, the shame, go.

Our project wanted to create an awareness of social isolation in seniors and help move the discussion and action from isolation to social inclusion. Who better to tell people how to do this than seniors themselves?

The stories shared in the workshop break with dominant stereotypes that cast Muslims in a dark and dangerous light—showing instead the extraordinary successes, in spite of their struggles, of ordinary Muslim New Yorkers who shine in their respective professions.

The storytelling process is not one that I had explored before with this group of colleagues, and we moved through our stories together -- first by sharing them out loud, giving them our voices, and then by creating and crafting the digital stories. Our stories centered on the broad theme of social justice and yet, they were very personal, real, clear, relatable. These were smaller acts of justice given voice by a group of nurses.

When a last minute cancellation created an opening, I found my role transformed from organizer to participant, requiring me to become vulnerable, too. I discovered StoryCenter’s process of guiding storytellers to find their “ah-ha” moment, as an art form. Common threads bound each unique story, and the bonds between participants were deepened.

The project involved reviewing and selecting a corpus of digital stories to be included in Aquifer. The purpose of the assignment was to help students understand the practice of storytelling by applying their knowledge of the seven steps of digital storytelling outlined by Joe Lambert to the solicitation and selection of digital stories; gain experience applying knowledge of major themes in Web 2.0 storytelling to the presentation of digital stories online; and critically engage with scholarly debates surrounding vernacular creativity, digital story curation, and assessment of digital storytelling in educational practice.