This Just In

Got a story? Here’s your chance to tell it

Tales

By CHRISTINA BEVILACQUA | May 23, 2007

StoryCorps, the national project that inspires people to record one another’s stories in sound, and then archives the results at the Library of Congress, got its start in 2003, when award-winning radio producer David Isay opened the first “StoryBooth” recording studio in New York City’s Grand Central Terminal.

Modeled on the Works Progress Administration’s oral history interviews with everyday Americans in the 1930s, StoryCorps aims to expand that collection of voices to include 21st century participants and perspectives. Since 2003, two traveling “MobileBooth” recording studios have fanned across the land, visiting 60 towns in 39 states, from rural outposts to urban megalopoli. Each Friday, an edited interview is heard on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Now, mark your calendars! Among the MobileBooth’s 2007 stops is Providence’s Burnside Park (Kennedy Plaza). The local partner, the John Nicholas Brown Center for the Study of American Civilization (JNBC) at Brown University, is currently scheduling interviews for June 7-30. If you’ve always wanted to ask your great uncle about his life as a quahogger, or your best friend about the year his mother ran off with the circus, or the owner of your favorite diner about her 50 years in business, here’s your chance.

“Today, we rarely take 40 minutes to tell or listen to a story,” observes Julia Lazarus, a graduate student in the JNBC’s Public Humanities program and one of the project’s local directors. “We talk in snippets, and almost never have a chance to sit down and hear each other’s stories — not to impart a lesson, or give advice — but just to learn about one another. And people don’t always think of themselves as having a story. But StoryCorps’ message is that the random stories shared over coffee are part of our culture and history, and deserve to be preserved.”

To set up an interview, learn more, volunteer to assist in June, donate toward production costs, or help make the interviews available to the Rhode Island public after the MobileBooth has gone, contact storycorpsri@gmail.com or call 401.863.1177.

In a landscape rife with sites of self-exposure — like YouTube, MySpace, and blogs — Lazarus says StoryCorps is about something else. “It’s not one person confessing to an impersonal, infinite audience; it’s two people in a room. And it’s very lo-fi — no visuals, only sound. With other cues stripped away, you focus on the words, the voices, the pauses — you hear the process. Things come out in a one-to-one conversation that wouldn’t otherwise. It’s just different.”

The new armies of the ’net
Can pop technology ramp up public interest in politics?
Hot and cold
A revved-up Bang Camaro and techno Freezepop lead the way
Look, Ma! No TV!
A democratic Youtube
More

Topics: This Just In , Internet , Science and Technology , Technology , More

Comments

Add a Comment

Most Viewed

Most Emailed

THE ROAD NOT YET TRAVELED
A layman's guide to the science of time travel

SPACE COWBOY
For more than 50 years, UConn physics professor Ronald Mallett had a secret. Now that it's out, we may be one step closer to traveling back in time.

FOREVER YOUNG
At 67, Joan Baez is more diamonds than rust

OSKAR BLUES TEN FIDY IMPERIAL STOUT
Black gold

PHOTOS: ELECTION NIGHT AT COPLEY
Our photographer snapped photos around Copley, as Boston celebrated President-elect Obama

SPACE COWBOY
For more than 50 years, UConn physics professor Ronald Mallett had a secret. Now that it's out, we may be one step closer to traveling back in time.

RACIAL HEALING
Former mayoral opponents Ray Flynn and Mel King discuss how far their city’s come, and how far it hasn’t, since 1983

BACK BEAT
At last, Kerouac and Burroughs's co-authored noir novel, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, resurfaces.

THE ROAD NOT YET TRAVELED
A layman's guide to the science of time travel

LINDY CITY
It takes two to tango, but apparently only one to lead a good Lindy Hop

HOT TOPICS

Barack Obama , Hillary Clinton , John McCain , Mitt Romney , George W. Bush , Deval Patrick , Mike Huckabee , Tom Menino , U.S. Republican Party , John Edwards (Politician)

This Just In

Got a story? Here’s your chance to tell it

Empowerment on Two Wheels

Ends of the earth

Drowning in a sea of red

Interview: Charlie Kaufman

Interview: Lance Hammer