New Initiatives: Global Story Swap Project

New Initiatives: Global Story Swap Project

If you’re heading to ACM Interactivity, the national children’s museum conference this week, be sure to stop by our booth and check out the latest: our prototype  allowing visitors to create and share puppet shows between museums in different countries. The idea behind this: simple, fun moments of creative family expression go a long way toward building connections. I’ve been working on this with Vicky Cave, an exhibit...

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Community Storytelling via Mobile Devices: Museum of Durham History project

Community Storytelling via Mobile Devices: Museum of Durham History project

I’m quite excited to announce a new frontier in our community storytelling mission — the use of visitors’ own mobile devices to record stories. The Museum of Durham History incorporated our cloud-based tool to record stories of members of the Ar-Razzaq Islamic Center in Durham. Ar-Razzaq is one of the oldest Muslim communities in North Carolina, and a year long community-storytelling initiative culminated in an exhibit at the...

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Friends of Waterfront Seattle videos

A pleasure to replay the stories we recorded in mid-September in our popup booth at Pike Place Market, the Salmon Homecoming Festival, and right on a waterfront trail at Olympic Sculpture Park. The goal: to use stories to help Friends of Waterfront Seattle make the central waterfront a public mixing ground where all communities can share cultural, recreational, and civic experiences in a beautiful environment. We asked people questions such as:...

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Waterfront Stories Project: Seattle

Waterfront Stories Project: Seattle

It’s been a pleasure to further develop our community storytelling model with Friends of Waterfront Seattle, the nonprofit organization interfacing with the public as Seattle undergoes major development along its waterfront. The multi-year project will create new public spaces as the city’s elevated highway is removed. Our mutual mission: to use local residents’ stories as the connector between a diverse range of communities...

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Alumni Stories: Harvard Law School Storykiosk Project

Alumni Stories: Harvard Law School Storykiosk Project

When an organization has a major anniversary, such as Harvard Law School’s Bicentennial, a window of opportunity opens to draw out stories spanning decades of experience. With Harvard Law School (HLS), we provided a portable Storykiosk to set up at alumni gatherings and other special events such as the HLS Celebration of Black Alumni. The stories gathered were remarkable — alumni are very motivated to reflect back and share their...

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Community Storytelling: celebrating institutional anniversaries with stories

Community Storytelling: celebrating institutional anniversaries with stories

I wrote about “community storytelling” a couple years ago for a presentation at SEGD, and I’m still working through that intriguing phrase.  At the time, I focused on special events, such as institutional anniversary celebrations, as a hub for gathering stories. So we created a portable Storykiosk with 42 Design Fab for recording stories at popup events and celebrations. Now we’re adding a major new tool: an online...

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