Resources

Every community has a memory of itself.
Not a history, nor an archive, nor an authoritative record...
A living memory, an awareness of a collective identity woven of a thousand stories.

The Center for Digital Storytelling is a California-based non-profit arts organization rooted in the art of personal storytelling. They assist people of all ages in using the tools of digital media to craft, record, share, and value the stories of individuals and communities, in ways that improve all our lives. Many individuals and communities have used the term 'digital storytelling' to describe a wide variety of new media production practices. What best describes our approach is its emphasis on personal voice and facilitative teaching methods. Many of the stories made in our workshops are directly connected to the images collected in life's journey.

They write:

"Our work involves creating a supportive environment to allow participants to feel safe enough to share their stories. We have witnessed Story Circles in which stories urgently bubble up from grief, sorrow, pain, and joy demanding to be told. Some stories have never been told before. Some have finally found a place where they are acknowledged and valued for the first time.

Over the years we have worked steadily to achieve our dream of creating a community media lab at CNH. Because of the diversity of languages and cultures in the communities we work in, we've created a peer-facilitator program in which we train women from our programs to become part of our teaching team. This enables us to deliver Digital Storytelling programs to a variety of communities in various languages."