Sometimes you have to travel far to find the things that are most obvious and most relevant to you. This last week, I traveled to Bardufoss Norway, north of the Arctic Circle, to consult with Midt-Troms Museum, which includes a coalition of a dozen or so local history museums and a new children’s museum — the first children’s museum in Norway in fact. And in those travels, I found the Museum and its director Lisa Bostwick...

Read More

There’s a lot packed into the title of this blog post, I know…Here’s the rundown: 42 Design Fab and I created a StoryBike to record stories at the Fresh Paint Springfield mural art festival celebrating the transformation of downtown Springfield MA. The day included nine murals and their artists, family paint activities, music, local craft beer, food trucks, and a ton of enthusiasm from community members. An amazing event, and...

Read More

Here’s something we’ve been doing a lot of lately: outfitting museums and universities with story capture systems to record memories of visitors and alumni. Institutions tend to celebrate their anniversaries at events throughout the year, providing multiple opportunities to gather stories from people who are motivated to share. Harvard Law School celebrated it’s 200th and we gathered dozens of stories at alumni events throughout the...

Read More

What a great time this weekend setting up our Storykiosk at Boston Mini Maker Faire with 42 Design Fab. The idea: families make puppets together from wooden spoons, and then record their spontaneous puppet shows on Storykiosk, projecting their images on a story waterfall (see images below). I was blown away by the quantity and quality of stories — we ran out of spoons twice due to the popularity of the activity. The main goal throughout...

Read More

In our community storytelling work, here’s a central question: how do we best tap into the stories in a community? How do we draw out stories that can live long after the event? Sometimes the stories just start flowing, especially within communities that are motivated and enthusiastic. And that describes the community of educators attending the annual Scratch Conference at MIT this summer. In the course of two days, we gathered nearly...

Read More

It’s always a pleasure to evolve our work with museums, and especially a pleasure as museums evolve too. We’ve upgraded our longstanding Storykiosk installation at the California Museum for incorporation in the museum’s Unity Center, a large center in the museum focusing on the state’s diverse people, taking a stand against intolerance and hate. The Center, designed and developed by West Office with the Museum and...

Read More