Dear Friends,

I have been thinking a lot lately about change, about impermanence.

On our staff, we will soon celebrate the first birthday of Marcos, Andrea's baby boy. And we are excited to announce that another of our staff, our managing director, Emily, is pregnant. In the Spring, Daniel's wife Leanne faced cancer, and we are so joyous to share with you, it is now in full remission. Amy Hill has sent herself off to college, to become our Dr. Amy Hill. Profoundly special people have joined our staff, Gayle Nicholls-Ali, Stefani Sese, Eilish Cullen, Jennifer Nazzal, Jessica McCoy, Rob Kershaw, Nina Goodby and Michelle Spencer. We have so many wonderful partnerships, and relationships, and just amazing projects with folks like Pip Hardy in the UK, Carin Karlsson in Sweden, Carroll Parrott Blue in Houston, Heather Pleasants in Alabama, and Ana/Karen and the gang at the Museu da Pessoa in Brazil.

It is a special time for our little organization, one that fills me with tearful awareness, about how my story and so many other stories have come to be intertwined. It is true of all of us, if we live long enough, we have these enormous webs of connection to others. When I ponder it more I realize I have been especially blessed to have such fabulous humans around me.

I guess this is also one way to say thank you, to all of you in our community that have come to our workshops, collaborated with our organization, read about us on the web, bought my book, worked with us, taken up the work which we value so greatly, or just read these missives every so often. You are why we are enjoying this new happy era at CDS, and your trust and faith in the purpose of this work has made us feel, well, like we are doing something that counts. And in the end, that's really all that matters.

Even as I am feeling so wonderful about this little world of ours, I am feeling something profoundly pregnant in the American Empire. Change is coming, but not the change of new life, more the change that is death. And that in the last months, all my reading, all my awareness has been on how much we are standing above the precipice.

The stories I have told myself are old ones, that the cycles of imperial greed and materialism have always been met with decay and destruction. All empires fail. I am sobered and scared about my children's future. The folks that have driven the American empire, surfing the great petroleum wave, and the Faustian technological miracle of the 20th century, are so addicted to their image of endless prosperity that they are borrowing and fighting and scheming and scamming to sustain it, and they are driving us right over the edge. But so were the Great Empires of the Romans, the Spanish, the Dutch, the Ottomons, the English. Old stories.

I also had another thought. It is quite possible that the American Empire could be the first to awaken to its own demise, and in a Buddhist sort of way, face death wide awake, and make room for the future. When I think of the literature and art of previous empires in decline, while they knew full well where they stood, I always had heard that the dominant tendency was to turn nihilistic, cynical and barren. And we have certainly had our share of this culture.

We also have had resistance. People looking past greed to collective solutions. And we enjoy a huge literature, cinema, art, and intellectual class dedicated to seeing beyond this empire and its natural decline, and to our modest future. And we are not afraid. We are embracing this death.

If our work has shown me anything, is that we are part of a profound effort by the elite, the privileged, and the struggling masses within this empire to see beyond the end to something else. Something resurrective and purposed, far from easy, but communally determined. We still need to wake up each morning and do everything we can to make it possible, but it suggests profound hope. We can dance beyond the death of our consumer paradise, and just come to grips with the sublime knowledge that Spaceship Earth is a precarious gift, and be joyous in knowing that if we have enough food, water and shelter that all our children will sleep peacefully, we are going to be OK.

Our little part in this has to do with Memory. An essential part of disaster capitalism, as author Naomi Klein has so well documented, is that through shock and awe we forget the past. In our country, World War and McCarthyism made us forget the hope of the New Deal, and its memory had to be mined out of the past. We had the civil rights and peace movements shocked out of memory by gas shortages, cold war stand-offs and hot wars in the tropics. But its memory was mined out in the anti-globalization movement. And with 9-11, we had a stolen election shocked out of us, and a descent into the most sinister type of crony capitalism - its merit displayed in its "success" in Iraq and New Orleans. And we are hopefully bringing that era to an end next November.

These big social amnesias manifest in people moving into suburbs and forgetting their poor neighbors. They manifest in fear and isolation, and forgetting that solidarity is still the only appropriate response to disaster. They boil down to the stories we tell ourselves, about what we need to do to make ourselves, or little world's whole, forgetting that especially in our personal disasters, we need to be embraced by the circle of an entire community to survive. And that circle does not stop with a clannish sense of tribal familiarity, but extends to the web of every single human, every single living thing, every part of the earth itself.

Despite all of the terrible shocks that may yet come, and I believe there will be many, we can remember our stories, our stories of being connected, of caring deeply and profoundly about each other's fate.

And when we do.

Well.

Maybe despite all our troubles, we will survive.

I look forward to hearing your stories.

-joe for cds

Schedule of Open Workshops

CDS has open workshops scheduled in seven cities in the US and Canada. If you are interested in developing an open workshop in your city, let us know. All workshops are $495. Contact workshop@storycenter.org for the Berkeley, Pasadena, Seattle, Toronto, Ukiah, and Washington D.C workshops, and contact daniel@storycenter.org for workshops in Denver. Updated information at www.storycenter.org/schedule.html. Continuing Education Credit through Dominican University of California and University of Colorado at Denver (2 CEUs).

Berkeley, California
Location: The Center for Digital Storytelling

2007 dates:
November 8-10
November 12-17 - Train the Trainer Workshop, Monday - Saturday
November 14-16 (Wednesday - Friday, led by participants of Train the Trainers)
December 13-15

2008 dates:
January 2-4 - Workshop for Educators, Wednesday - Friday
January 24-26
February 4-9 - Train the Trainer Workshop, Monday - Saturday
February 21-23
March 17-19 - Workshop for Educators, Monday - Wednesday
March 13-15
April 17-19
May 15-17
June 19-21

Los Angeles, California
Location: Pasadena Armory Center for the Arts
December 14-16, 2007
March 28-30, 2008

Washington, DC
Location: Latin American Youth Center Art and Media House

2008 Dates:
January 16-18
March 26-28
May 14-16
June 5-7 (Thursday-Saturday) - Workshop For Educators
August 20-22
September 10-12

Copenhagen, Denmark
Location: Copenhagen Business School
Howitzsvej 60, DK-2000 Frederiksberg
November 29 - December 1, 2007

Charlottesville, Virginia
Location: University of Virginia
January 31- February 2, 2008 - Workshop for Educators

Union, New Jersey
Location: Kean University
January 9-11, 2008 - Workshop for Educators
April 7-9, 2008 - Workshop for Educators

Train-the-Trainers
Location: Berkeley
February 4-9, 2008

Location: Near Boulder, CO
June 23-28, 2008

International Day for Sharing Life Stories, May 16, 2008

CDS is joining wth the Museum of the Person International Network (Brazil, Portugal, USA and Canada) in a joint call for Listen! - International Day of Sharing Life Stories, on May 16th 2008. The day will be an opportunity for people around the world to gather in community halls, classrooms, public parks, theaters, auditoriums, as well websites, email exchanges, and virtual environments to hear each other’s stories. 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.

We will encourage participation in the day through many possible events, including:

· Story Circles in people’s homes, at workplaces, schools, community centers, virtual environments
· 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

To facilitate this process our two organizations will act as the coordination body for compiling a worldwide calendar of events for the day, and over the entire May 16-18 weekend. Calendar listings will appear, along with a map of the participating organizations, on a special website dedicated to the day.

We encourage you to begin to think of how you and your organization could participate on the day. If you would like to endorse our proposal, send a note with your name and contact info to internacional@museudapessoa.net. We are planning to formally announce the day with the organizing blog and event website later in November.

StoryMapping.org

CDS Storymapping projects continued over the summer with our visit to Houston's Third Ward community. Working with Carroll Parrott Blue, Joe was joined by editor and documentary producer Sam Pollard, former White House photographer Sharon Farmer, and D.P. John Simmons, to record an additional 10 stories related to the Emanicipation Park project. The project will continue editing and production work this January. The goal is to have the stories in a walking tour by next summer.

Our first film project with the Marin Agricultural Land Trust was completed in August. The seven minute film, shot by Amir Terkel and edited by Mahri Holt for CDS, told the story of the Sharon Doughty, a remarkable dairy farmer in the Point Reyes area. You can see the film online at 4blacksheep.com. If you know any festival or venue in which the film could reach a broader audience, please let us know.

We are moving forward with projects in Denver, Tuscaloosa, and Tulsa. For the Tulsa project, Joe spoke at a fundraising event at Mayor Kathy Taylor's home in October that initiated the project. The Tulsa Project will look at stories from the Greenwood district , including the tragic race riot of 1921.

Humanizing Healthcare

Good health is the privilege of some, but illness is the reality for many people throughout the world, and all of us will, at some time in our lives, be patients. The provision of safe, compassionate, high-quality healthcare and prevention services is a crucial global concern. Digital stories provide an effective, affective and empowering means of capturing, distilling and sharing the experiences of those effected by health and social care issues and provide a platform for sharing experiences with strategists, decision-makers, managers, educators and providers of healthcare.

During the past year CDS has been working with Pilgrim Projects, creators of the award-winning Patient Voices Programme, in the US, UK and Canada, with representatives of many of these groups. Two master classes in the UK and several presentations in Canada, notably at the Chronic Disease prevention and management conference, have elicited a good deal of interest in healthcare-related digital storytelling. Pip Hardy from Pilgrim Projects will also be teaching at the University of Colorado School of Health Sciences in January 2008 (see Denver Report).

Community Program Report

“I suffered a lot during that time. My husband left me, my mother hated me, and I couldn’t fit in with people. Finally I sold my goat and managed to get to a doctor.

They operated on me, and it was successful. I’m happy now. I want to tell pregnant mothers who hear my story that they must always go to the hospital, instead of delivering in villages.”

- Sifa Nansamba, Mbarara District, Uganda; participant in obstetric fistula workshop.

Digital Storytelling traveled to Uganda this past August, where we held a workshop with women who have experienced obstetric fistula. Participants were given disposable cameras at an orientation and asked to photograph their homes and villages. At the workshop, we communicated through interpreters to work with the women on crafting narratives of survival and courage. The stories will be used to train health providers on appropriate fistula care, promote available treatment, and raise awareness (through the development of radio spots) about the problem at the village level. For information about fistula, please see http://www.fistulafoundation.org/aboutfistula/faqs.html.

The past few months have also been busy for our Silence Speaks project, which held workshops with women survivors of violence in Pennsylvania; with youth and adults affected by domestic violence and child custody, recruited by the Sheila Wellstone Institute; and with former child soldiers in Northern Uganda. The Wellstone stories will be used to train advocates and educate policymakers, and the Uganda stories will be shared in local communities to support reintegration and healing for youth affected by conflict.

And finally, our work with current and former foster youth continued in two workshops – one in Yakima, Washington and one in Portland, Oregon. The Oregon stories, which were created by young people and their social workers, will be integrated into a national training program for social work supervisors. We have also begun an ongoing collaboration with a group home in the Los Angeles area, to develop customized approaches to digital storytelling as a long-term healing and empowerment tool with foster youth.

For more information on these efforts or to obtain related community stories, please contact Amy Hill, amylenita@storycenter.org.

Education Program Report

It’s clear that digital storytelling is starting to catch on in K-12 programming across the country in a serious way. Our workshops for educators this summer were filled and wait listed a full month before they were taught. In these workshops, we carved out time to discuss how to integrate and implement digital storytelling into classroom curriculum.

We are currently offering four upcoming workshops for educators between January and May 2008 in locations across the United States. Summer workshops are on the calendar for June 5-7 in Washington DC, June 25 to 27 in Berkeley and August 13 to 15 in Berkeley. We will be organizing additional workshops in Los Angeles, the East Coast and possibly the Midwest. Please see our schedule for updates http://www.storycenter.org/educators.html

If you are interested in holding a workshop in your region or school district please contact Education Director, Andrea Spagat, at andrea@storycenter.org.

Our Education Program, in collaboration with the CDS Silence Speaks project, finished developing the multi-media curriculum Hear Our Voices: Stories of Children Exposed to Domestic Violence. The curriculum was in conjunction with the Department of Public Health in Contra Costa County. It includes a DVD of stories created by men and women who were exposed to domestic violence as children, and an accompanying CD with discussion guides and learning activities. The stories and learning activities will be used to help social workers, teachers and community members understand the dangers of childhood exposure to violence and identify intervention methods.

Work continues in the City of San Francisco. We are putting the finishing touches on a year long project to produce a series of documentary style stories about the contribution of day laborers to the City. In addition, CDS will initiate a project to create digital stories with individuals who receive services from Community Behavioral Health Services (CBHS), as well as train staff at CBHS to form their own digital storytelling program. Finally, we are working with the Alliance for Technology Access to train staff at Neighborhood Centers in the Bayview-Hunters Point area of San Francisco to create digital stories with youth from their neighborhoods.

In August, we taught another successful workshop in collaboration with the California Film Institute creating place-based stories with San Francsico youth from the Mission and the Bayview-Hunters Point area. And just recently, two stories produced at the April 2007 California Film Institute workshop were screened at the Mill Valley Film Festival as part of their YouthReel program.

Denver Office Report

Out in Denver, in collaboration with the University of Colorado at Denver, we have launched the first ever university-transcripted certificate in Digital Storytelling. The certificate is comprised of our 3-day workshop, 5-day Train the Trainer workshop and an online course that focuses on in-depth review of how DS programs are implemented. Anyone who has taken our 3-day or 5-day workshops in the past 2 years are already on their way to getting their certificate! For more info, visit www.storycenter.org/certificate.html or email daniel@storycenter.org.

Additionally, we are about to begin a series of three workshops at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center that will run through the Graduate School of Nursing. The workshops will involve gathering the stories of practicing nurses, their medical colleagues and eventually patients, and are part of the "reflective practice" focus that the School of Nursing has become known for worldwide.

We also completed our 3rd summer session with 7th and 8th graders out at DAVA (www.davarts.org). This summer we worked in conjunction with documentary photographer and teacher extraordinaire Josh Schachter (www.joshphotos.com) to come out and work with the youth for three weeks prior to the workshop, helping them to visually capture their community. The results are spectacular and the stories will be up on their website soon.

Due to the success of our Colorado Italians project (www.milehighstories.com) with the Colorado History Museum, we are now in talks to expand our work with them to include audio stories tied to a walking tour, as well as additional digital stories, for their upcoming 2008 exhibit on the city of Denver. This will be a wonderful implementation to the Storymapping work that we are so excited about!

East Coast Office Report

Our Washington DC Workshops are going strong and our collaboration with the Latin American Youth Center’s Art & Media House continues to provide a creative and inspiring environment for digital storytelling.

In 2008, CDS will offer six public Digital Storytelling workshops at the Art & Media House. For more information and workshop dates: http://www.storycenter.org/basic.html.

Our university collaborations on the east cost included a first-time workshop at the Ithaca College Park School of Communications in New York. We returned to offer workshops at the University of Maryland Baltimore County New Media Department and at Williams College.

In January 2008 CDS will partner with the Virginia Center for Digital History at UVA, and the Roanoke City Public Schools to introduce local history teachers to digital storytelling.

Los Angeles Office Report

Telling Stories
The Alliance for Community Media held their national conference Friday and Saturday, October 26 and 27th in Ventura, California. Gayle Nicholls-Ali, Los Angeles Director, led a workshop in Ventura, CA at the Alliance for Community Media (ACM—www.alliancecm.org).Discussion focussed on the many distribution options and content creation tools available to media access centers at this time. Participants learned about honest, engaging, human experience stories and to learn techniques for helping individuals to find, shape and share their stories.

Collaborations
The Center for Digital Storytelling and the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, CA are now officially partners. We thank them for hosting many workshops in the past and look forward to collaborating on many projects in the future. The next open workshop in the Los Angeles is December 14-16th, 2007.

Thank you 911 Media Center for hosting our first Seattle Open Workshop in August. These collaborations make it possible to connect with our friends in Vancouver and at the University of Washington.

In late August, an Equality Ohio digital storytelling workshop was made possible through a partnership with the Equality Ohio Education Fund, the Center for Digital Storytelling, and the Digital Union at The Ohio State University. We look forward to all Ohioans willing to tell their own story.

Los Angeles County Office of Education held their first open workshop at the LACOE office in Downey for teachers from across L.A. county. This effort to work with educators and the technology, to help educators think about how to successfully integrate digital storytelling into their curriculum.

Canada Report

CDS will hold five workshops in Toronto, Calgary and Inuvik between mid-September and to mid-December. Along with the workshops, CDS is helping foster a solid group collaborators, including Michelle Spencer in Alberta and Jennifer LaFontaine in Toronto. Jennifer, along with Camille Turner, have been offering digital storytelling programs to Toronto’s inner-city immigrant women for the past three years with their own program at Central Neighbourhood House (thestoryproject.ca). Jennifer will be coming to Berkeley along with past CDS collaborators; Chloe Brushwood-Rose (Toronto, York University), and Surya Govender (Vancouver, Found Out Ink), to take part in the fall Train the Trainer session.

Michelle meanwhile worked on CDS' behalf this summer establishing contacts in the provincial and national healthcare system. This past week she and Pip Hardy of Pilgrim Projects and Patient Voices co-presented at the International Conference on Chronic Disease Management (cdmcalgary.ca). Leading up to the conference they also met with carers and administrators with the Calgary Health Region's Palliative Care program. We are planning a workshop for palliative care nurses within the Calgary Health Region in either late 2007 or early 2008.

A workshop scheduled for the first week of December with the University of Calgary's Native Office will conclude Phase One of our partnership with the university's Faculty of Social Work's Digital Storytelling Program. Phase Two will commence early in 2008. We will be working with the Faculty to begin taking our joint efforts off-campus into various social work and community agencies within Calgary and the province.

The November 5-7 workshop in Calgary will be our second with with the Cows and Fish Riparian group (cowsandfish.org). This time, the workshop will include five ranchers and landowners along with five Cows and Fish field staff. This workshop and a follow-up Train the Trainer early in 2008 will help the Cows and Fishers establish a digital storytelling program in their efforts to help landowners manage their land more sustainably.

A recent grant with Fort McMurray’s Community Family Support Services has lead to the approval of a customized workshop in this northern Alberta early in 2008. The workshop will be with Adoptive and Foster Care parents, we hope for more follow up workshops in the future.

The recent work in Inuvik has sparked discussion with educators and researchers in the Northwest Territories to look into funding an Arctic digital storytelling project as part of International Polar Year in 2008.

StoriesforChange.net

StoriesforChange.net continues to grow and thrive since its launch in May. StoriesforChange provides an online space for digital storytellers and facilitators to publish stories, share resources, and connect with one another. The site now has over 150 active users; 50 separate resources spanning curriculum, technology tips, and case studies; and 110 digital stories for viewing.

The site was recently updated, making it more user friendly. You can now browse user profiles, see what stories or resources an individual has contributed, and contact users through the site. This new feature makes networking with other storytellers and facilitators who share your interests much easier. Check it out today at storiesforchange.net.

CTCVista Position Available

Hello there friends of digital storytelling! This is Jessica McCoy, former VISTA volunteer, writing to let you know about a wonderful opportunity for you to follow your heart, put your tech skills to use, and volunteer your time at the Center for Digital Storytelling.

For the past year I served at the Center as an AmeriCorps CTC VISTA volunteer. The CTC VISTA program is a special branch of AmeriCorps, dedicated to placing skilled volunteers at community media and technology centers for a year of full-time service. The program provides volunteers with a small monthly stipend, enabling them to concentrate full-time on volunteering. For me, during my year of service at CDS, this meant helping to teach workshops, develop various community-based programs, update curriculum materials, and assist in the creation of the StoriesforChange.net digital storytelling project, among other things. Serving as an AmeriCorps volunteer gave me the chance to immerse myself in the world of CDS and become a fully trained digital storytelling facilitator.

Now that my year of service has ended, CDS is recruiting a new CTC VISTA to begin service in January. I would encourage you to consider this chance to become part of the CDS team! To learn more about the CTC VISTA program and AmeriCorps, check out http://www.ctcvista.org. If you have specific questions about serving as a VISTA at the Center for Digital Storytelling, please email me at jessica@storycenter.org.

Other CDS Summer/Fall Workshops

Girls Inc
Thanks to a grant from Starbucks, CDS worked with a group of young women in San Leandro, CA.

Catalina Foothill School District
Gayle and Allison visited this school district outside of Tuscon.

Faculty of Social Work Train-the-trainer
As part of our ongoing partnership with this University of Calgary department, we trained a group of local social service workers and other faculty.

Vail Valley Youth Foundation
Daniel, Gayle and Jessica worked with local youth.

Delta Garden, Sweden
CDS continued its development of the Delta Garden collaboration with two sets of trainings in Kalmar, Sweden in July.

National Women's Labor Project
Erica Cooperrider and Jessica joined with labor activists from around the country to share stories about their efforts.

Japanese American History Workshop
Lina Hoshino and Sadie Blackman led a group of youth exploring issues of history and identity.

Waikato University/Spark Festival
Joe visited Hamilton, New Zealand to present and lead a workshop.

Ithaca College
Jessica returned to her alma mater with Stefani to lead faculty through a workshop.

California College of Arts
Brenda Laurel's Graduate Design students were led through a workshop as part of their orientation

Atira Women's Resource Center
China Ching and Amy worked with staff and clients of this center in central Vancouver.

Harlem Health Introductory and Train-the-trainer Workshop
With sponsorship from Columbia University, China and Amy will work with youth around HIV and other related health issues.

Los Lunas, New Mexico
Stefani and Liane Scott led a group of local educators.

Finally, look for an announcement in the coming week about the OurStories project with Google, StoryCorps, UNICEF, and One Laptop per Child.