Project News: California Listens - Digital Storytelling for the 21st Century Library
By Joe Lambert, Founder/Executive Director, StoryCenter
Cover Image: From “Momma Ishibashi,” by Naomi Hamachi, created at the Palos Verdes Library District digital storytelling workshop, August 2016
“Libraries are more than just books. They play a vital role in bringing the community together. People go to a library to find a new book, to use a computer to write a resume, to study, to attend a movie, cooking, or music program, and often simply to just hang out with friends. Digital storytelling– sharing, creating, and the viewing of the stories, storytelling in general, brings people together in a very different way. Personal digital storytelling exchange—the story circle, the writing/recording, and helping participants make their short films—allows people to interact with each other as authors and as listeners, making new connections that are uniquely powerful. Libraries have much to gain from the kind of storytelling work we experienced as part of California Listens.”
Once in awhile, I get a project that re-invents my commitment to the role of the arts and storytelling, in building communities. When you have been at something for 35 years, you need those booster shots.
Last year in the spring, StoryCenter received a request from Greg Lucas, the California State Librarian, to create a program for the constituents of the California State Library System. We proposed California Listens, a project to explore the stories of what it means to be Californian.
By summer’s end, we had travelled to 12 communities from one end of the state to the other, collecting over 100 short films through our digital storytelling workshop process. I was privileged to participate in nine of the workshops, and closely reviewed all of the films, and I have to say, it was an amazing experience.
California is viewed as a tolerant place. And while most of us living here are equally aware of the weaknesses and challenges we still face, a project like this really does affirm the joyous commitment to diversity that we aspire to as a culture out on the West Coast.
When you can sit in a circle that includes a retired Latino policeman, a young transgender activist, a Korean adoptee poet, a lifelong United Farm Worker organizer, a visual artist working in fabric arts, a former city manager, an activist working on building bridges between immigrant communities, and a dear, older white dude (who really wasn't afraid to express his pretty clearly conservative perspectives), sharing the most extraordinary story built around a 1963 recording of a family Thanksgiving—it is breathtaking. And the love and support in the room was tangible: it was a thing hanging in the middle of the table that all of us felt.
That was just one of the California Listens workshops, with our colleagues at the Fresno Public Library.
“We made a point of reaching out to everyone within our local communities; we wanted to make sure that our storytellers represented a rough cross-section of our population. In the end, we truly did collect a “tapestry of stories,” but—in some ways even more exciting than these final products—we also saw some spontaneous and surprising connections develop between our storytellers. Something about the process of sharing stories, disparate as these experiences might be, brought everyone together in a spirit of mutual respect. When we had a community screening of the California Listens videos, family members and friends from so many different parts of Fresno came to the screening, and we were blown away once again, by not only the stories, but the reactions these stories inspired. They were so different, but so human, and everyone could appreciate the experiences shared through these short videos. It was a great way to celebrate what being from Fresno really means, and an object lesson in the power of community storytelling.”
California Listens digital storytelling workshop at Sonoma County Library, September, 2016
This sense of diversity and trust happened again and again, throughout the state, with people coming together around the campfire of story. And as often occurs in our workshop process, the real transformations came as people discovered new layers of depth within the story they had come to tell. As Monique Sugimoto, Adult Services Librarian with the Palos Verdes Library District put it, "To see people's stories start out one way and transform into something else through the process was quite extraordinary. I realized how rehearsed my own personal stories are, though they may have changed over time. The workshop process emphasized letting those go and 'telling the story behind the story'—combining voice, visuals, and sound, and using the strength of each to bring the story along."
While the focus of California Listens was on our traditional digital storytelling workshop model, the program included several additional components. Over the summer, staff at the participating libraries also took part in a series of webinars exploring novel approaches to StoryWork for communities engaged with the libraries. These included presentations on organizing story slam events, and creating low-tech, one-day Snapshot Story workshops to produce videos that can be shared via Cowbird.com or library websites. However, the largest innovation was the introduction of the Listening Station, a new iPad-based recording rig and app that StoryCenter developed specifically for California Listens. Each library received the station and instructions for operating the recording tool, with the hope that in 2017, libraries would begin using it for a range of oral history, conversation, and media capture projects.
We’re so pleased that the project is continuing in 2017, with a series of Listening Station workshops and an additional ten digital storytelling workshops with a new set of libraries around the state.
California Listens is about imagining a very different role for libraries in the 21st Century, one in which the idea of “checking in” your own story to become part of a library’s archive is as important as checking out someone else's story. For the emerging generation of library patrons and professionals, this only makes sense.
As Nicole Schulert, the Reference Librarian at Whittier Public Library who helped host a regional workshop explained it,
“I am right on the borderline between Gen X and Millennials and so have watched with interest how these two generations interact online with library services. We have a responsibility, as librarians, to support innovative ideas that connect these and future generations with the latest digital technologies. I love that our physical library is becoming a place where people gather to talk and listen to each other. It only makes sense that our online presence reflects this community space as it becomes a repository for stories like the ones we were able to capture at our Whittier California Listens workshop. Ideally, through the advent of tools such WeVideo, Facebook Live, and technologies still on the horizon, the library (both in our hometown and online) becomes a place for community discourse, a place where everyone’s story can be heard.”
Here are two sample stories from the project:
How a Poet Was Made: On Adoption, Race and Discovering Voice
y Lee Herrick
Dear Danielle
y Brian Griffiths
Find out more about California Listens at CaliforniaListens.org.