2019 In Review: Celebrating Our Year in Storytelling!
Editor’s Note: This month we share items from our 2019 quarterly StoryCenter newsletters with hopes that you’ll be inspired to contact us about bringing storytelling to your community in 2020! In this season of giving, we’re especially grateful for your continued support of our work.
Stories of Home: Immigrant and Refugee Women and Women Artists Build Community by Sharing Stories and Making Art
Beginning in November 2018, StoryCenter embarked upon an ongoing collaboration with Bay Area immigrant and refugee organizations. The Stories of Home project aims to build solidarity across newcomer communities and foster communication and empathy with and by the larger public. In an initial two-day workshop, we led a small group of immigrant and refugee women through a process of sharing and recording intimate stories from their own lives.
We then paired them with local women artists for creative visualization activities to spur conversations about imagery appropriate for the stories. Following the workshop, the artists illustrated the stories, in some cases incorporating storytellers’ photographs. These powerfully beautiful videos are available online and in a book version; purchase your holiday gift copy now! Next stops for Stories of Home: a December 2019 workshop at our main office in Berkeley, California, and a May 2020 workshop in New Haven, Connecticut, in collaboration with Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS).
Ending Human Trafficking in India, One Story at a Time
In March 2019 our Silence Speaks initiative traveled to Kolkata, India, for the second time, to continue working with the U.S. State Department’s American Center. In collaboration with Theater Alliance’s Raymond Caldwell and the Delhi-based NGO Shakti Vahini, we helped design and lead an intensive, five-day workshop that supported a group of courageous women impacted by human trafficking in sharing personal stories from their lives, and, with the help of mentors in performative and digital storytelling, transforming these experiences into art.
The videos created show not only the harsh realities of trafficking in India but how people are taking action against it, and how women are rebuilding their lives in its aftermath. The stories are being circulated via social media and in local settings to educate communities, decisionmakers, and law enforcement officials about how best to support those affected by trafficking, and how to prevent it from happening in the first place. Read about innovations in performative digital storytelling on our blog. The One Story at a Time effort will continue in 2020 with a workshop in Ranchi, Jharkhand, scheduled for early February.
Oregon Infant Child Care Project: Caregivers Share Their Stories
The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) is committed to engaging Oregon residents in advocating for solutions to the health challenges that impact them the most. Finding quality, affordable infant child care is one such challenge, and last May 2019, StoryCenter worked with OHA’s Infant Child Care Project to enable a small group of women to produce stories. We guided six mothers through a three-day digital storytelling process exploring themes and prompts related to infant childcare. Some spoke solely from their perspectives as parents, and others narrated stories from their experiences as both parents and childcare providers.
This collection of videos reflects the tenderness of motherhood and the insanity of the current childcare environment, which often makes work unaffordable when wages earned are less than total child care costs. The stories are being shared strategically across the state of Oregon and beyond to raise awareness and mobilize action in support of affordable, high quality childcare for all who need it. In May 2020, we’ll be returning to Oregon to work with OHA’s STEPS program, supporting storytelling by college-going moms.
#justB Update: Stories of Hepatitis B
Our multi-year partnership with the Hepatitis B Foundation continued to grow in 2019. Back in May we completed our fifth #justB digital storytelling workshop, guiding eight new storytellers through the creation of stories.
The Foundation continues to make opportunities available to storytellers to screen their stories, and storytellers have participated in more than 30 events, educating over 1,000 people. Last July, eleven #justB storytellers participated in the Foundation’s annual Hep B United Summit and Advocacy Day in Washington, D.C. Several were panel speakers, and others had the opportunity to share their stories with their Members of Congress during advocacy meetings. To date, the #justB stories featured online have received 19 million views, more than 200 comments, and 800 shares, and the stories drove 17,000 people back to the Hepatitis B Foundation’s website. We’re looking forward to more in 2020 and beyond!