The 1989 Storytelling Exchange: Telling Stories of the Communist Past, to Support Civic Engagement Today
Amy Hill
2019 marked the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of East Germany and other former Soviet-Bloc countries. These events, which contributed to the eventual collapse of the U.S.S.R., are viewed as having ushered in a new era in Central-Eastern Europe and Russia. Yet the emergence in recent years of autocratic leaders and governments in Europe and elsewhere around the world has prompted analysts to raise concerns about the increasing fragility of democracy … and has mobilized concerned citizens on behalf of its protection.
To commemorate the historic events of 1989, the “Telling Our Stories” Anniversary Exchange Program, funded by the U.S. Department of State and implemented by World Learning, brought teachers and students from 12 countries in the region together to learn about the history of communism, reflect on its impact on their own lives, and explore current approaches to civic engagement and action. As the group traveled to the Czech Republic, Romania, Hungary, and the United States, they also participated in a digital storytelling workshop process led by Silence Speaks and spread out across four total days, during the exchange. Offered from a popular education perspective (Freire, 1970), which understands that any effort to build the capacity of individual community members for civic engagement must support them in examining how their life circumstances and decisions are informed by and reactive to this context, the workshop supported participants in the classic StoryCenter activity of sharing and producing stories mined from their own lives.
In December 2020, the stories were premiered at a culminating event in Bulgaria. Moving forward, the storytellers and other educators and activists will share them in classrooms and community settings, to educate youth and adults about the legacy of the communist era and the need to protect and advocate for democracy and human rights in the present day. View the 1989 Storytelling Exchange videos now.