Story Collaborative

We have spent our entire careers in magazine editing, documentary filmmaking, and photojournalism, and have seen many examples of inequitable, extractive, and as a result harmful storytelling done on behalf of the people and communities being featured. Unfortunately, these outside perspectives dominate and define how we learn about and what we believe of these places.

The goal of STORY COLLABORATIVE—our sovereign storytelling practice—is to help correct these practices and rebalance the way stories are told by listening to and learning from the local communities themselves. What do they want to share about their lives and experiences? What happens when they tell their own stories in their own sovereign voices and through their own visual storytelling?

This knowledge— the knowledge and perspective of those who live closest to and rely most intimately on the places we all must be working to protect— is something we ALL need, no matter where we live.

We have run workshops with partner organizations including World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, Rare, and USAID, in the Philippines, Mexico, Mozambique, Namibia, Madagascar, Peru, Canada, the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations, and the United States. The STORY COLLABORATIVE process is specifically based on established participatory media methodology but focused on and customized for the dynamics between our partners and the communities they work in.

If you are interested in how we can help integrate STORY COLLABORATIVE workshops into the work you are doing and more deeply engage those communities in that work, contact us, and we can share more information on the process along with examples of how these efforts have impacted communities.