Why - Our Story Bridge

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

Create closer bonds between people and promote connections that lead to neighborly acts of kindness, assistance, and support in times of need.
Preserve stories that may be lost if not recorded soon and honor the legacies of your older generations by capturing their stories in their own words.
Engage the younger generations to encourage them to remain in or return to their home community after high school, college, trade school, or any number of life’s adventures.
Increase civic engagement of your younger residents.
Strengthen your organization.
Celebrate what makes your community or organization great, perhaps even famous.
Attract new residents, visitors, members, or donors.
Reveal pockets of rich histories and connections heretofore unknown or not widely known.
Re-ignite a passion for your archives and/or previously recorded oral histories by translating some onto this new digital platform.
Meet your audience where they are: online!

Testimonials for Adirondack Community, The First OurStoryBridge Project

“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, KCS Teacher and Liaison
to Adirondack Community

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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 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

“This project weaves together the different threads of our community’s history into one beautiful tapestry, that is ever expanding.” 
— Katherine Brown

“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