The Museum of the Person International Network (Brazil, Portugal, USA and Canada) and the Center for Digital Storytelling (USA, Canada, Denmark, Czech Republic, Ireland and Portugal) have announced the Second International Day for Sharing Life Stories, an international celebration of life stories to take place on May 16th 2009. After a hugely successful inaugural year, the two organizations will expand outreach and activities to connect with practitioners in life story work from around the globe. 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 peoples’ lives.

The theme of the 2009 Campaign, Journeys Toward Justice, will seek to promote partnerships and collaborations between activists engaged in the issues of Human Rights and Immigrant Rights with life story organizations. Specifically, they are calling on participating organizations and the public to share 1000 stories (as text, image, audio and video) related to Human Rights and Immigrant Rights as part of the online campaign. The project website, www.ausculti.org, will link to the stories from participating websites including StoriesforChange.net, the Hub at Witness.org, storycenter.org and museudapessoa.net. The organizers invite organizations that currently host stories on this theme to join this campaign. The site will also act as the portal for sharing information and coordination of the broader campaign.

“In last years campaign we introduced the idea of celebrating life story work on an annual day,” said Karen Worcman, founder and director the Museu da Pessoa in Brazil, “Over 100 organizations in 20 countries participated with events as large as conferences and as small as living room story circles. The response of everyone involved was positive. What pleased us was that so many organizations in Brazil connected with this project, inspiring and supporting work at local levels. But we were also amazed to see people in Kenya, Palestine, India, South Africa, the Pacific Island nations, as well as all over Europe and North America, respond to our call. We knew we would have to continue the project.”

Joe Lambert, Founder and Director of the Center for Digital Storytelling based in Berkeley, shared that “while we produced a successful campaign with the limited resources available to our organizations, we felt we had scratched the surface of interest in the concept. We believe this can engage many more thousands of individuals, and find support from countless additional organizations if we can just get the word out to folks. With this year’s effort, we want to make some specific alliances with organizations that are committed to giving visibility to human rights and immigrant rights stories. Both CDS and the Museu have actively worked with these communities, so it makes a sensible focus for the step by step expansion of the International Day concept.”

Author Studs Terkel to Honored As Part of Annual Event

May 16 was chosen in part because it is the birthday of author Studs Terkel, who passed away this October 31 at 96. Terkel’s life’s work as an radio personality, oral history interviewer, writer and activist has served as inspiration for thousands and thousands of life story practitioners in the fields of oral history, journalism, creative writing, and new media. The campaign will encourage reflections on Terkel’s work and link to numerous efforts to celebrate his life in the coming months.
How to Be Involved

As with this year’s event, the two organizations, are also inviting people interested in, or currently involved in storywork, to gather in community halls, classrooms, public parks, theaters, auditoriums to share their stories, regardless of their interests or focus.

The 2008 events included:

• 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
• Conferences discussing the issues of storywork
• Open houses for organizations with a life-story sharing component
• Online simultaneous gatherings in Second Life and other environments
• Print, Radio and Television broadcast programming on life stories, and documentaries that feature oral histories and story exchanges

Nearly 300 individuals and organizations endorsed the 2008 International Day for Sharing Life Stories. The organizers hope to double that number. People are invited to add their endorsement by registering at the site or writing to internacional@museudapessoa.net.

As with last year, the organizers will be develop special features, topics, and activities for the ausculti website, as will maintain an events listing for the day.

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

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