Workshops

These workshops grow out of more than fifteen years of oral history and digital storytelling practice and over thirty years as a professional educator… from co-founding the Celebrate Oklahoma Voices statewide initiative in 2007 (later “Storychasers“) to community workshops with historical societies and school programs across the midwest and the Carolinas. These workshops are available as standalone sessions or as a connected series. Each can be adapted for professional development, university courses, community organizations, or public library programs. For booking inquiries, contact Wes!

To better understand the types of digital stories which you can create, check out the “Examples” page on Storychasers.org.

Your family’s stories are irreplaceable. The tools to preserve them fit in your pocket.

Every family holds stories that exist nowhere else — in the voices, memories, and experiences of people growing older every day. This hands-on workshop equips participants with the practical skills and confidence to capture those stories before they’re lost.

Drawing on more than fifteen years of oral history work and the resources of Storychasers.org, this workshop guides participants through the complete process: preparing meaningful interview questions, recording high-quality audio with a free smartphone app, editing your recording with accessible tools like Audacity, and sharing your finished story online for family and future generations.

No prior experience is required. Whether you’re an educator hoping to bring oral history into your classroom, an adult wanting to interview an aging parent, or anyone who has ever thought “I should ask them about that before it’s too late” — this workshop is for you.
Participants will:

• Learn proven interview techniques that draw out meaningful, specific stories
• Record a practice audio interview using the StoryCorps app or Voice Memos
• Understand basic audio editing: trimming, volume, and adding music
• Explore publishing options from private family archives to public podcasting platforms

Ideal for: General public, educators (K–12 and higher ed), library programs, historical societies, faith communities

Check out the “Family Oral History” page of our family learning blog for more examples!

Past workshop curriculum and examples:

1. 2024-07 Oral History Workshops (Mint Hill Historical Society, Mint Hill, NC)
2. 2022-10-22 Chasing Family Stories (Nexus CoWorking, Matthews, NC)

Every place has a history that most people have never heard. Your community deserves to tell its own story.

The most powerful stories are often the ones that never make it into textbooks — the people who shaped a neighborhood, the events that defined a town, the voices that were never recorded. This workshop explores how digital storytelling can become a form of community memory-keeping and civic engagement.

Building on projects from the Celebrate Oklahoma Voices statewide digital storytelling initiative, oral history work with the Mint Hill Historical Society (Charlotte, NC), and a growing archive of place-based stories at Storychasers.org, this workshop shows participants how to identify and interview community members whose stories matter, connect personal narratives to broader local and regional histories, and publish those stories in ways that are accessible, lasting, and meaningful.

This workshop is particularly well-suited for partnerships with historical societies, public libraries, museums, civic organizations, and university community-engagement programs.

Participants will:

• Identify the stories and storytellers most worth preserving in their community
• Develop interview protocols for place-based oral history
• Explore how to connect individual voices to larger historical and cultural contexts
• Build a plan for archiving and sharing community stories online

Ideal for: Educators, community organizations, historical societies, librarians, local journalists, university service-learning courses

Past workshop curriculum and examples:

1. 2023-10-28 Using Technology to Build Community and Tell Our Stories (Caldwell Presbyterian Church, Charlotte, NC)

Where did you first learn about race? What messages did you absorb — spoken and unspoken — about who you were, who others were, and how the world worked? These questions sit at the heart of the racial autobiography, a reflective practice developed by Rev. Dr. Ben Boswell through the Confronting Whiteness course and curriculum. When that autobiography becomes a digital story — recorded, edited, shaped for an audience — something else happens: it becomes a gift to others, and a catalyst for conversation. A means to help heal ourselves and potentially, help heal our culture.

This workshop brings together the reflective practice of racial autobiography with the hands-on digital production skills from Workshops 1 and 2. Participants will work through guided prompts to surface their own racial histories, learn to shape that material into a coherent narrative, and record and produce a short digital story using accessible, free tools.

Drawing on a growing archive of racial healing stories at Storychasers.org, including videos from North Carolina and Oklahoma, and on Wesley Fryer’s experience as a trained Confronting Whiteness facilitator, this workshop creates a supported space for the kind of honest reflection that community transformation requires.

If you have completed the Confronting Whiteness course in the past, this workshop can be a powerful experience to extend and share your racial learning journey with others.

Participants will:

• Engage with exemplary digital racial autobiographies as models and discussion prompts
• Work through guided reflection to surface key moments in their own racial history
• Draft and record a short personal narrative using free smartphone tools
• Discuss how racial autobiography can be used in classroom, congregational, and community settings

Ideal for: Faith communities, university courses in communication and education, nonprofit organizations, professional development for educators, community healing initiatives

Note: This workshop is most effective in a multi-session format (2–3 sessions) that allows time for both reflection and production. It can also be adapted as a single extended session focused on the conceptual framework and planning, with production completed independently.