• Why Start an OurStoryBridge Project?

    We all have a story to tell, many stories. Life is a narrative, woven out of experience and emotion. Think of OurStoryBridge as the loom on which the fabric of your community’s narrative comes together. Each thread, each story binds the fabric tighter and tighter, creating intricate linkages between individuals, groups, organizations, events, environments, locales, and more.

     

    In other words, OurStoryBridge offers a user-friendly framework on which to mount your story project, but the shape this project takes and the content it captures and communicates remain yours to construct. We want to help. OurStoryBridge will guide you through how to collect the nuanced histories of your community to preserve its stories and pass their characteristic wisdom from mouth to ear by going digital.

  • Debbie Rice, Keene NY

    “On cold winter evenings in our harsh Adirondack climate, I often felt sad, so I’d listen to stories on Adirondack Community and hear about people in this community helping each other through multiple disasters and challenges. The stories warmed my heart and helped me get through two COVID winters.”

  • Potential Impacts An OurStoryBridge Project Can Have On Your Community

    • Preserve stories that may be lost if not recorded soon and honor the legacies of elders by capturing stories in their own words.
    • Appreciate the history that shaped your community or organization that helps make it what it is today and what it can become tomorrow.
    • Create closer bonds and promote connections that lead to acts of kindness, assistance, and support in times of need.
    • Educate local residents or members of your organization while inspiring them to become more engaged and interested in contributing to your efforts.
    • Cultivate what makes your community unique, perhaps even famous.
    • Reveal pockets of rich histories and connections heretofore unknown or not widely known.
    • Acknowledge the catastrophes, tragedies, or difficult moments that have created change.
    • Learn how the geography and the economics of your area impact how your community members live.
    • Unravel the puzzle of how and why places like streets, stores, clubs, and other institutions came to be.
    • Reflect upon and share the diversity of your community.
    • Reignite a passion for archives and/or previously recorded oral histories by transferring some onto this new digital platform.
    • Use the stories of your community to focus on the issues that are important to your organization’s development activities.
    • Bring your past and present to a wider world through the use of stories in schools.
    • Help students engage with primary sources and find their own voices through listening to and telling their own stories.
    • Leverage today's shorter attention spans with oral histories of three- to five- minutes each to build up the interest and engagement of your audience.
    • Meet your audience where they are: online!

  • Testimonials OurStoryBridge & Adirondack Community, The First Partner Project

    “I love this project and I think of it as a balm and community builder for our times, an amazing education resource, carrying rich historical value.”

    — Janelle Schwartz

    “This project has been a pleasure from the begining. Working with members of the community to record stories is a very rewarding experience. I love learning information about our community from local storytellers and learning new information about our community. We've recorded stories from a certified frog watcher (yes, there is such a thing!), to a lady who attended 6th grade in the 1940s when some students in town were sent to one-room schoolhouses because of the overcrowded school system at the time. It is a wonderful feeling to see a storyteller's facial expression change from apprehensive to delighted after he/she finishes a story.”

    — Shari Merrill

    “Working with OurStoryBridge has allowed the Chenango County Historical Society (CCHS) to accomplish our mission in dynamic new ways! By expanding partnerships and extending community engagment, we are able to more fully explore the culture of Chenango County through the preservation and presentation of our local heritage”

    — Jessica Moquin

    “At Academy of the Sacred Heart in New Orleans, we are using the OurStoryBridge methodology to bring history to life; promoting the investigation of the world with intellectual curiosity and cultural literacy; recognizing and valuing diverse perspectives; and communicating with agility. OurStoryBridge inspire everyone involved-- the storytellers, the listeners, our faculty and students, and, of course, the New Orleans community. I love that it is preserving our history and culture while also building empathy.”

    — Soline Holmes

    “Every story is like a bit of treasure gathered for safe-keeping; recording these storis is laying up treasure for our future generations.”

    — A.J. Gooden

    “I've met with people I've known for years and through their stories, saw new sides of them. The most important lesson I've learned from OurStoryBridge is that everyone has a story to tell, you just have to ask to hear it.”

    — Rosemary Crowley

    “OurStoryBridge understands how fundamental storytelling is to the human experience, the building of community, and for passing on values between the generations. OurStoryBridge is providing communities with the resources to access a common sense of identity, to ground themselves, and find shared history and connection. It is a valuable source of unity in a polarized time.”

    — Cal Page-Bryant

    “OurStoryBridge has given me the opportunity to expand my role at the Old Stone Fort and share my story. Since I began this project I have learned more about Schoharie County's history and developed a stronger connection within the community.”

    — Clay Edmunds

    “OurStoryBridge is a great wayto share the history of the Underground Railroad focusing on the positive activities of people who stood up for the freedom of everyone. It offers individuals a way of learning that is not intrusive.”

    — Jackie Madison

    “On cold winter evenings in our harsh Adirondack climate, I often felt sad, so I’d listen to stories on Adirondack Community and hear about people in this community helping each other through multiple disasters and challenges. The stories warmed my heart and helped me get through two COVID winters.”

    — Debby Rice

    “At Keene Central School we have used Adirondack Community stories in the classroom to enhance our lessons with this amazing collection and to provide students with firsthand historical knowledge, including models of local civic engagement.”

    — Brad Hurlburt

    “The Community Story Project keeps the history of our small town alive and accessible. The older residents of the town have recorded eyewitness accounts of important events that happened 60, 70 years ago, and memories of the people who were born in the 1800s. The younger ones have memorialized more recent ones, knowing themselves to be links in the chain of generations that bind this community together.”

    — Henrietta Jordan

    “My Adirondack Story gives us all a sense of community. It gives us an appreciation of our community members and their history, which makes us all closer to each other. It is wonderful to save the history of our wonderful community.”

    — Jill Murray

    “The project has been important for our community because when you hear stories from people you see in the community, but don’t know much about them and their connection, we find out that we all are connected somehow. That is the true meaning of community! It draws us all closer!”

    — Bethany Pelkey

    “When I hear an interesting tidbit about our town, I ask, ‘Did you tell it to Jery for the story project?’ Usually they say ‘yes.’”

    — Lorraine Duvall

    “It helps tie the community together through the huge variety of our tales, both past and present."

    — David Thomas-Train

    “It preserves memories that might otherwise be lost."

    — Ellen DuBois

    “It has allowed many people to remember treasured things from their past that center around the Adirondacks. In my case it has renewed a bond in my extended family.”

    — Norm Reynolds

    “It gives us a sense of togetherness, and allows us to express our feeling that the community is important. More important, it conserves our history.”

    — William Reed

    “The project has drawn out stories that are important, but not widely known. They’re the root of the character of a community, often unseen but revealed by this effort. It isn’t the first time this sort of thing has been tried. I think that fast turnaround to listeners in town has helped spur others to contribute. Well done.”

    — Dave Mason

    “OurStoryBridge weaves together the different threads of our community’s history into one beautiful tapestry, that is ever expanding.”

    — Katherine Brown

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