This presentation explores a Connecticut initiative to build a local and state infrastructure to support inclusive and relevant collecting, curation, preservation, archiving, and programming around oral histories.This presentation highlights how the state is responding to the need for a coordinated effort to leverage oral histories for civic engagement, public education, and inclusive storytelling through four sample projects and a new partnership with the TheirStory platform.
ABSTRACT: How do you build a local and state infrastructure to support inclusive and relevant collecting, curation, preservation, archiving, and programming around oral histories? This interactive presentation highlights a new initiative to respond to the need for a coordinated effort in Connecticut to leverage oral histories for civic engagement, public education, and inclusive storytelling. TheirStory, Connecticut Humanities, the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History, and the University of Connecticut have partnered to tell fuller, more inclusive stories about the state through collaboration and capacity building with community organizations, K-12 teachers, historical societies, public libraries, and individuals. Presenters will highlight case studies from across the state of how to revisit newly digitized collections to reimagine how we can tell new stories based on underused oral history archives; how to build capacity for organizations to use oral histories to design inclusive collecting practices and programming; and how to train a new generation of practitioners, scholars, educators, and the public to consider stories as artifacts. This initiative represents an important step towards democratizing access to a digital platform that addresses fragmentation in workflows for recording, transcribing, indexing, and sharing existing oral histories while streamlining the process for collecting new ones. Attendees will have an opportunity to learn how the project design applies to a 1778 colonial house, a statewide curricular initiative on African American and Latino histories, a 20th century Caribbean social organization building its own museum, and a Puerto Rican Parade that is using oral histories to preserve its legacy of community engagement. These sample projects offer a more expansive view of the possibilities oral histories hold as artifacts in conversations with the communities of their origin and new audiences through access to emerging platforms and technologies.
