<incom> FW: International Day for Sharing Life Stories Launches Ausculti.org

[Michael Gurstein]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Center for Digital Storytelling <  <mailto:info at storycenter.org>
info at storycenter.org> 
Date: Jan 15, 2008 12:33 PM
Subject: International Day for Sharing Life Stories Launches Ausculti.org
To: Ashlee Cunsolo <  <mailto:ashlee at uoguelph.ca> ashlee at uoguelph.ca >


Dear Friends,

We have a favor to ask. 

Find below and attached our press release for today's launch of ausculti.org
<http://ausculti.org> , the home of our International Day for Sharing Life
Stories campaign. We would ask you to forward this to your e-mailing lists,
note this information in any upcoming newsletters, and share this with your
friends and co-workers. 

This campaign is about helping all of us to claim a day to step out of our
accelerated lives and celebrate each other's stories. We would like all our
friends to think about how they can use Friday, May 16 (or the weekend of
May 17-18) as a time for listening to stories, even it is just holding a
storycircle at lunch at work, or around the dinner table that night. 

We also hoping you and the organization's you work with will get involved in
the campaign by coming to the website to share stories and comments, joining
our Facebook community, or contacting us by email,
internacionalday at museudapessoa.net to find out ways to help spread the word,
to endorse the campaign, or to let us know what events you are planning for
the day. Already over 150 organizations and individuals from 33 countries
have endorsed the campaign. 

Again, we appreciate whatever you can do to help us build this project, and
thank you for your ongoing support.

Joe Lambert, Executive Director
Center for Digital Storytelling


January 15, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: internacional at museudapessoa.net



US and Brazilian Organizations Announce Campaign
Declaring May 16 an International Day for Sharing Life Stories 



The Museum of the Person International Network (Brazil, Portugal, USA and
Canada) and the Center for Digital Storytelling (USA) have announced Listen!
– International Day for Sharing Life Stories, an international celebration
of life stories to take place on May 16th 2008. They are launching the
project website, www.ausculti.org*, to assist with information sharing and
coordination of the campaign. The goal of the campaign is to gain broad
recognition of May 16 as an annual day for sharing, listening to, and
gathering the stories of people's lives. 

"Our two organizations see the movement to share life stories as a critical
part of the democratic process," states Joe Lambert, founder and director of
the Center for Digital Storytelling. "As our own work has expanded around
the globe from our respective countries, we have found ourselves in dialogue
with colleagues who have countless different approaches and perspectives to
life story, but who share the sense that this work is vital to our
contemporary societies." 

"What has been lacking is a common call to celebrate all these different
practices," adds Karen Worcman, founder and director of the Museum of the
Person. "Whether it is helping to collect a local oral history, encouraging
new learners to share their life in writing, producing stories using analog
or digital media, or exhibition of life stories online or through mobile
technologies, we felt we needed a day to bring all these different practices
– different roads to the same destination – together. This is what inspired
us to join in this call. We want this day to be especially dedicated to
celebrating and promoting life story projects that have made a difference
within neighborhoods, communities, and societies as a whole." 

CDS and the Museum of the Person are calling on people to gather in
community halls, classrooms, public parks, theaters, auditoriums on May 16
to share their stories. They are also calling on organizations to mark the
day on their websites and host virtual story circles via online chats and
exchanges, and publication of new stories. Some of the other activities they
are proposing include: 

• Story Circles in people's homes
• Public open-microphone performances of stories 
• Exhibitions of stories in public venues as image, text, and audio-visual
materials
• Celebratory events to honor local storytellers, practitioners and
organizations
• Open houses for organizations with a life-story sharing component 
• Online simultaneous gatherings, postings, and story exchanges
• Print, Radio and Television broadcast programming on life stories, and
documentaries that feature oral histories and story exchanges

Already, public events are being planned in globally in Sao Paulo, Cape
Town, Melbourne, Toronto, Stockholm, Hamilton, New Zealand, Los Angeles,
Washington D.C., Denver, Berkeley, Columbus, Ohio and Long Island, New York.
Since October, over 200 individual and organizational endorsements for the
International Day for Sharing Life Stories have been collected, so far
representing fifteen countries and 80 institutions. People are invited to
add their endorsement by registering at the site or writing to
internacional at museudapessoa.net .

Throughout the campaign, CDS and Museum of the Person will be developing
special features, topics, and activities for the website, as well as
creating an events listing. They also hope to share thoughts about issues in
storytelling work, great storytelling examples and case studies, curriculum
for schools and other activities. 

Also, a special online celebration of the life and seminal work of oral
historians Studs Terkel and Paul Thompson will be developed for the day.
Studs celebrates his 96th Birthday on May 16, and Paul Thompson will be
holding his retirement celebration in England that day. 

For more information about the day, please email: 
internationalday at storycenter.org  <mailto:internationalday at storycenter.org>
or  <mailto:internationalday at museudapessoa.net>
internacional at museudapessoa.net, or call Joe Lambert in the U.S., 510
548-2065, or Ana Nassar at the Museum of the Person in Brazil at +55 11
2144-7170. 


WHO WE ARE

Museum of the Person 

The Museum of the Person
<http://www.museudapessoa.net/ingles/about_the_museum.htm> is an
international network of virtual museums of life stories, located in
<http://www.museudapessoa.net> Brazil, Canada
<http://www.museedelapersonne.ca> , the
<http://www.bloomington.in.us/%7Emop-i/> USA and Portugal
<http://www.museu-da-pessoa.net/> . Our mission is to contribute to make
every person´s life story valued by society. 

Museu da Pessoa Brasil –  <http://www.museudapessoa.net>
www.museudapessoa.net
Musée de la Personne – www.museedelapersonne.ca
Museu da Pessoa Portugal -  <http://www.museu-da-pessoa.net/>
www.museu-da-pessoa.net/
Museum of the Person USA - http://www.bloomington.in.us/~mop-i
<http://www.bloomington.in.us/%7Emop-i> /

Center for Digital Storytelling

The Center for Digital  <http://www.storycenter.org> Storytelling is based
in Berkeley, California. CDS is a non-profit training, project development,
and research organization dedicated to assisting people in using digital
media to tell meaningful stories from their lives. Our focus is on
developing large-scale projects for community, educational, and business
institutions, using the methods and principles of the Digital Storytelling
Workshop. We also offer workshops for organizations and individuals and
serve as an international clearinghouse of information and resources about
storytelling and new media. 

 <http://www.storycenter.org> www.storycenter.org 

*Ausculti is the Esperanto word for "listen." 


Selected Quotes from Endorsers

"I agree with Muriel Rukeyser that 'the universe is made of stories, not
atoms,' and that monumental changes are only possible when the stories
people tell each other about the world change. I wholeheartedly and
enthusiastically endorse the International Day for Sharing Life Stories" 

- Howard Rheingold, author, journalist, professor, Stanford University


"I can't imagine anything more appropriate than dedicating a day to
promoting all of these wonderful goals.  We live in a world where
person-to-person communication is often subsumed under the more pervasive
forms of mediated communication that we experience daily.  Intervening in
this dominant media landscape and bringing the focus back to intimate
dialogue between people is the first step to deconstructing the hegemony of
the mediated world."  

-Gary Kolb, Dean, College of Mass Communications, Southern Illinois


"In the last few years there has been an increasing number of organizations
around the world interested in applying oral history, life stories, oral
testimony and voice-related activities in their work.  An International Day
will help to bring some of these far-reaching experiences, organizations and
individuals together to learn from each other and to celebrate their
experiences.  The day would also serve to promote the value of life stories
to a wide international audience and thereby generate greater interest in,
and support for this powerful approach to communication, learning and social
change." 

- Siobhan Warrington, Head of Oral Testimony Programme, Panos London,


Organizational Endorsers include
• The Center for Social Media, American University (Washington DC, USA) 
• Centre d´Histoire de Montreal (Montreal, Québec, Canada)
• Departamento de Museus e Centros Culturais do Iphan - Instituto do
Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional (Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil) 
• E-Knowledge for Women in Southern Africa (Harare, Zimbabwe)
• Fundação Genésio Miranda Lins (Itajaí, SC, Brazil)
• Instituto Fazendo História (São Paulo, SP, Brazil) 
• International Storytelling Center (Jonesborough, TN, USA)
•  <http://Nabuur.com> Nabuur.com – The Global Neighbor Network (Amersfoort,
Netherlands)
• Panos (London, UK)
• Sonke Gender Justice Network (Cape Town, South Africa)
• Story Express (Wellington, New Zealand) 
• Zone Zero (Mexico City, Mexico). 

Individual Endorsers include 
• Sylvia Bolstad - Artmakers (Hamilton, New Zealand)
• Nur Abdi (Ramallah, Palestine)
• Dave Isay - StoryCorps (Brooklyn, NY, USA) 
• Dave Eggers – 826 Valencia Author, Heartbreaking Work of Staggering
Genius, (San Francisco, CA, USA)
• Susanne K. Jensen – Copenhagen Immigration Museum (Copenhagen, Denmark) 
• Monica E. Nilsson – University of Blekinge (Blekinge, Sweden) 
• Connie Regan-Blake – Storywindow (Asheville, NC, USA)
• Ana Serrano - Canadian Film Centre (Toronto, Canada)
• Don Warrin - Regional Oral History Office, University of California
(Berkeley, CA, USA) 
• Pip Hardy – Patient Voices (Cambridge, England) 
• Theo Hug – University of Innsbrook (Innsbrook, Australia)
• Brenda Laurel - California College of the Arts (San Francisco, CA, USA)
• Thaddeus Miles – Mass Impact (Springfield, MA, USA)
• Michelle Miller – Service Employees International Union (Chicago, IL, USA)