News and Information from
MAY 2016 VOL 1 NO 2
Finding the best stories, and the best tools for sharing
By Stephanie Arduini, Director of Education and Programs
Which stories do we tell? How do we best tell our stories? Which storytelling formats or techniques are most effective?
At the Museum, we talk about stories a lot. We create exhibits, present programs, and share content that explores the Civil War and its legacies through stories of the people involved – past and present. In short, we are storytellers.
For three days at the beginning of May, I traveled to New York City for a digital storytelling workshop hosted by the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. The workshop sought to bring people together from a variety of museums from around the country, to talk about how we use digital age technology or approaches to tell stories, and whether we could begin to define best practices in order to be more effective. We experienced a variety of storytelling projects using digital technology, including Shop Life, #MetKids, Connected Worlds, and New York At Its Core. All the while, I was reflecting on how this impacts our work.
We’re still figuring out how we tell stories in the most engaging and meaningful way. How can we use digital tools to enhance our storytelling? When sharing the history, how can thinking of it as a collection of stories enhance the ability of our audience to connect to those stories and make meaning from them? What is the best platform for each story we tell? How and when should we bridge stories across programs, exhibits, and online offerings?
We will be incorporating some of these storytelling techniques into our offerings immediately, and building them into new experiences coming during the next couple of years. Please stay tuned, and as always, feel free to share your feedback so that we can continue to make sure that what we do meets your needs and interests.
To help us in our thinking, we want to hear from you. What was a memorable experience when you explored history like a story?