- StoryCorps
StoryCorps is an American
non-profit organization , whose goal is to instruct and inspire people to record one another's stories in sound. StoryCorps is modeled—in spirit and in scope—after theWorks Progress Administration (WPA) of the 1930s, through whichoral history interviews with Americans across the country were recorded. StoryCorps hopes to build and expand upon that work, creating a well-documented and archived Americanoral history . It was established in 2003 and is based inBrooklyn ,New York .Participants usually record their stories in one of six StoryBooths. One StoryBooth, opened on
July 12 2005 is located inLower Manhattan near the site of theWorld Trade Center , while the original StoryBooth, opened onOctober 23 2003 , is housed inNew York's Grand Central Terminal . A semi-permanent Outpost recently opened inMilwaukee, Wisconsin . Two MobileBooths and one GriotBooth, built from convertedAirstream trailers, travel the country, recording stories in various cities throughout the year.StoryCorps also offers three levels of service for those who can't make it to a booth: Door-to-Door, where a StoryCorps facilitator visits on site; StoryKits, a portable recording apparatus along with a set of instructions; and a downloadable Do-It-Yourself guide.
A trained facilitator guides the recording session, but the participant is most often interviewed by a family member or loved one. The participants receive a
CD of the session, while StoryCorps places another copy of the interview in theAmerican Folklife Center at theLibrary of Congress . StoryCorps does request a voluntary donation after each interview.A select few of the interviews are broadcast on
National Public Radio . These interviews can also be heard at the StoryCorps website.In 2007, the StoryCorps
Griot Initiative began to collect oral stories fromAfrican Americans , with the intent of gathering at least 1,750 oral histories over the course of a year, mainly fromWorld War II veterans and those who participated in thecivil rights movement .Also in 2007 StoryCorps was awarded a rare Institutional Award at the 66th Annual
Peabody Award s and published its first book, "Listening is an Act of Love." [cite web |url=http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16088311 |title= StoryCorps: 'Listening Is an Act of Love'|accessdate=2008-03-05 |author=NPR Morning Edition |date=2007-11-08 |work= |publisher="NPR Morning Edition "]StoryCorps is a project of Sound Portraits Productions. Its founder and director is
Dave Isay .References
External links
* [http://www.storycorps.net Official StoryCorps website]
* [http://www.soundportraits.org Sound Portraits website]
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