Benefits

• • A Personal Stake: Interview near/dear ones
  • Empathy as method to civic engagement
  • Exploration of local history and community
  • Resume building for university applications
  • Learning about immigrant experiences
  • Learning about long-term resident experiences

Key Activities

• • Interview techniques and ethical considerations
  • Digital device usage for recording and basic mapping
  • Making and Interpreting Maps
  • Combine Qualitative and Quantitative Data
  • Combine stories to make new stories: urban policy
  • Civic engagement and policy recommendations

Enroll Your Class

Collaboration

Narrative İnfrastructure focuses on existing neighborhoods and helps them recognize and reinforce their informal traditions.

Developers and politicians can use community story maps to enhance continuity with projects, contextualizing new initiatives with the local sense of identity.

We do this by mapping the oral history stories of the neighborhood, and looking for patterns in the story themes that can be incorporated and expanded upon.

CHAT-MAPs is our school out-reach program to build narrative infrastructure. The students collect the stories and we combine them:

• 1. Students collect and do basic mapping using their own devices and off the shelf software.
  2. Narrative İnfrastructure compiles and creates the final, comprehensive neighborhood map (gratis for a limited number of classes per semester, apply early.)
  3. Narrative İnfrastructure helps teachers reach out to planners, NGOs, local leaders, and neighborhood associations to make the stories the students collect impactful now and into the future.

Benefits

Professional map creation and data visualization. Access to a growing archive of local stories. Student Energy = Community Synergy. Student Deeds = Community Needs.

• • Professional map creation and data visualization.
  • Access to a growing archive of local stories.
  • Student Energy = Community Synergy.
  • Student Deeds = Community Needs.

Flow of Story-Power

Support

• • Pre-workshop consultation with Narrative Infrastructure.
  • Ongoing email and phone support.
  • Potential virtual training sessions.
  • Customization to local education standards.
  • Outreach effort support (planning and marketing materials).

Case Study

Between 1984 and 1986, 13-year old aspiring Eagle Scout Barry Matchett collected nearly 50 oral histories. In 2023 Narrative Infrastructure mapped those stories for the community, and used them to research the process of community integration of newcomers (detailed in a forthcoming book!)

Barry’s Story Map

Please fill out the Interest Form: