City of Lawrence, Kansas
Homeless Response Team
Giving Voice to Lived Experience
Client: Lawrence Kansas Homeless Response Team
The Challenge:
The Lawrence, Kansas Homeless Response Team was doing transformative work in their community — but their personal stories of change had never been told. Many of the team members had experienced homelessness themselves or were in recovery from addiction, which meant their stories carried real weight. The challenge was creating a space where people who had lived through genuine hardship felt safe enough to revisit those experiences, find the story they wanted to share, and trust that their voice was worth hearing.
The Approach:
Over three days, I facilitated with Storycenter founder, Joe Lambert, an in-person digital storytelling workshop with the homeless response team using the StoryCenter method. Participants moved through the full process — finding their story, writing a script, recording their narration, and editing everything together into a short digital story they could keep. The workshop was as much about community as it was about craft. By giving people the time and space to sit with their stories and share them with each other, something powerful happened between participants who were already doing hard, meaningful work side by side.
The Impact:
Every participant left with a completed digital story — something they made and something they owned. The workshop closed with a small viewing where participants shared their stories with each other for the first time. Watching people who had lived through homelessness and addiction tell those stories with pride, not shame, was deeply moving. Team members who knew each other as coworkers left knowing each other as people — the workshop created space for connection that goes beyond what happens on the job. The room shifted during that viewing in a way that is hard to put into words. That is what storytelling can do.