StoryCorps - leading the way!

It's hard for me to remember when StoryCorps wasn't part of my life - and yet, it's only been with us for twelve years. 


It started in October 2003, in busy Grand Central Station.  A strange-looking BIG sort of orange-box appeared one morning, its sides blazing the message, “Listening is an Act of Love.” 

It was StoryCorps’ first-ever StoryBooth.  People dropped into the compact recording facility to tell their stories. Small stories, stories they might once have thought as inconsequential as my Mom long thought her stories were.  

The first StoryBooth was followed by a second in July 2005, bittersweetly located at the World Trade Center site in July 2005, which was subsequently closed in 2007 due to construction, the StoryBooth location shifting to Foley Square.  

The format is brilliantly simple.  People who have agreed to be interviewed arrive at the StoryBooth location.

It could be stationary...

...or mobile.   

Subjects never come alone - always with a friend or relative.  Because it is the friend or relative who will cpnduct the interview, with a StoryCorps "facilitator" is close at hand, ready with tips & to deftly manage the tech aspects.  

Participants receive a CD of the interview - and the knowledge that a copy will be sent to the Library of Congress for archiving!  Excerpts are often used as part of StoryCorps' NPR broadcasts.

 

 

StoryBooths are currently located in Chicago, Atlanta & San Francisco, with the mobile version parked in Omaha.  


I could easily spend the rest of my afternoon writing about StoryCorps.  And I will write more over the next few days - about its many initiatives, including Military Voices, StoryCorpsU, StoryCorps Outloud, September 11th, and especially its Memory Loss Initiative.
  
The elder care expert who suggested families have an "NPR story" event with elderly loved ones was possibly thinking about StoryCorps.  And she is right - listening to StoryCorps, steeping yourself in all the stories, will help any & all of us ask better questions, become better listeners, be better relatives friends care givers.  

I promise that I'll take a stab - and ask you to help out, too - at finding or figuring out ways that families & friends can become better story gatherers, appreciators, guardians!  Praise be, we have StoryCorps to help lead the way!

Almost forgot (and that elder care expert didn't mention either) - - want to interview someone, to be the caring listener who gets down their story?  

They have an app for that!