Oakland — In-person Digital Storytelling Workshop
Turning Lived Experience into Story
Client: Storycenter
The Challenge:
Digital storytelling is for everyone, but creating accessible on-ramps for everyday community members to tell their own stories is harder than it sounds. This workshop was open to the public, which meant bringing together a general mix of Bay Area community members who hadn't necessarily worked together before, didn't share a common background, and came in with varying levels of comfort with technology and self-expression. The challenge was creating a container that felt welcoming enough for anyone to walk in and safe enough for them to go deep.
The Approach:
In partnership with Urban University, whose Executive Director joined the workshop as a participant herself, we hosted a 3-day in-person digital storytelling workshop in Oakland. Participants moved through the full StoryCenter process — finding their story, writing a script, recording their narration, and editing it all into a short digital story they could keep. The mix of participants made the room rich. People from different walks of life, different neighborhoods, and even different parts of the world sat together and did the vulnerable, meaningful work of telling their stories.
The Impact:
Participants from across the community, and across the world, left with a completed digital story of their own
The diversity of the room created unexpected connections between people who would never have otherwise met
Urban University's Executive Director was so moved by her own story that she committed to hosting a screening in her space, bringing the work back to the community
The workshop demonstrated that digital storytelling isn't just for organizations — it's for anyone with a story worth telling