Great Examples

Skowhegan Revitalization Project: schools and community partnering to engage youth in revitalization efforts, including historic walking tour podcasts

Face Up: Telling Stories of Community Life “is a documentary/public art project that grows out of local conversations about neighborhood goals in Southwest Central Durham, North Carolina. The project blends an artist’s residency with collaborative documentary exploration and art-making in community settings, building relationships in the process.”

Murmur [murmur] “is a documentary oral history project that records stories and memories told about specific geographic locations. We collect and make accessible people’s personal histories and anecdotes about the places in their neighborhoods that are important to them. In each of these locations we install a [murmur] sign with a telephone number on it that anyone can call with a mobile phone to listen to that story while standing in that exact spot, and engaging in the physical experience of being right where the story takes place.”

Placeography, “A wiki where you can share the history of and stories about a house, building, farmstead, public land, neighborhood or any place to which you have a personal connection. If you don’t have a place to contribute, please enjoy learning about others.”

Why Here Why Now “Collecting the sights, sounds and stories of Yellow Springs, Ohio” This project is one person’s brainchild. Some excellent examples of interviews here and Wordle tag clouds of the story theme. It includes an excellent overview of Wordle, Tagul and Many Eyes for analyzing the interviews.

Going Coastal “Our coast defines Nova Scotians like nothing else. Our ancestors fished off it. Tourists from all over the world bask along it. And people from near and far fulfill a dream by building on it. But development along our coast is threatening the very thing we hold so dear. CBC Nova Scotia investigates the issue of coastal management through your stories.” Here’s an example of an audio story.

Kodja Place Stories, Australia “The Kodja Place is the story of country Australia – as experienced by one farming community in south western Australia. It welds state of the art design and technologies with the simple directness of the traditional Noongar style of storytelling – we use our own words and our own images to tell own story – it is not the packaged words of outside experts.”

Glasgow, Scotland 2020: Imagining the Future of the City “Glasgow 2020 is a project to collect together the imagination of the city to tell a new story about its future. This site is a place to read and submit stories, make wishes and check out events about the future of Glasgow. What’s your story?”

West Medford MA historic walking tour (by Brandeis University class)

Saving the Sierra: “..explores the geographic, political & philosophical boundaries of the new Sierra Nevada Conservancy. Through public media & citizen storytelling, the project documents community efforts to conserve the environment, culture & economy of the Sierra Nevada.

The Organic City Project: “ is a community storytelling project focused on the downtown Oakland areas surrounding Lake Merritt. We encourage you to find and tell stories about local places through this website. These stories form the basis for mobile media that can be experienced while walking around the city.”

Meadowlark Institute Stories as springboards to community dialogues and planning for the future.

Holding Up the Memories An audio-slide story to capture the voices of Kentucky

Capture Wales Digital Stories

Storymapping Example from Ukiah, California “Stories collected and integrated into a stage production featuring 21 stories, many performed live by the authors.”

Neighborhood Narratives “A mechanism though which students can explore neighborhoods across the globe while developing transnational connections. By examining the similarities and the differences of their “neighborhood narratives,” students begin to develop heightened understandings of the effects of globalization both at home and in other nations.”

PhilaPlace: “Explore the City of Neighborhoods through maps, stories, photographs, and documents, and share the story of your PhilaPlace.”

Mapping Memories: Stories of Refugee Youth in Montreal “is a collaborative multi-media project which uses personal stories and a range of media tools (video, sound walks, mapping, photography) to share the experiences of youth with refugee experience in Montreal.”

KCET Story Shares “Join us in weaving together a collective narrative for the city.

Media Arts Center San Diego Projects in community digital storytelling

Coramandel New Zealand Community Digital Storytelling Project: “This is an initiative to record, preserve, and share the history and stories of the Coromandel community using Digital Storytelling.”

Talk About Local in the UK “is a project to give people in their communities a powerful online voice. We want to help people communicate and campaign more effectively to influence events in the places in which they live, work or play.”

Echo Archive in Leeds, England: “Collaborating with local residents and schoolchildren, we recorded a variety of sounds that reflect life in the area. Machinery and playgrounds, community choirs and rappers echoing in tower block stairwells. The project is a document of that process, resulting in a custom audio instrument that allows users to remix & resample sounds of the area into their own compositions. On this site you can download the instrument, or review what others have done with it.”

Westminster Stories: “Stories from a street in Providence, Rhode Island”

Big Stories Small Town in Australia: “… features collaborations between communities & filmmakers in residence”

The Audio-Video Barn “is full of stories about Illinois agriculture. It contains audio and video recordings of more than 130 oral-history interviews with people involved in agriculture and rural life in Illinois.”

Transom.org and Radio for Local Sense of Place

My Block NYC

American Memory from the Library of Congress

uMAP the Community

Hear Here Tell your story about a neighborhood place