Stories for All Festival to take place April 18-20 in downtown Lawrence
LAWRENCE — Funded by a three-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Stories for All Digital Storytelling Project, based out of the Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas, will host a festival with the theme "Sharing Community Stories in a Digital World.” Events will take place April 18-20 in downtown Lawrence.
The Stories for All Festival will kick off with a keynote panel, including Kelly Baker Josephs, editor of The Digital Black Atlantic (2021); Natchee Blu Barnd, author of "Native Space: Geographic Strategies to Unsettle Settler Colonialism" (2017); Eric Gonzaba, project director of Mapping the Gay Guides and Wearing Gay History; and Alex Ketchum, director of the Just Feminist Tech + Scholarship Lab, discussing the ethics and practice of digitally based social justice storytelling. The panel will take place from 7 to 8:30 p.m. April 18 at the Carnegie Library Building, 200 W. Ninth St.
On April 19, the festival will continue at the Lawrence Public Library with interactive presentations from Stories for All project partners; a funders’ forum, highlighting insights from both national and regional funders of digital storytelling projects; and a digital exhibition of Stories for All projects. That evening, there will be a screening of Stories for All film projects from 7:30 to 9 p.m. at Ready for Good, 708 Connecticut St.
The festival will conclude April 20 at the Carnegie Library Building with additional presentations by Stories for All project partners and a closing reception.
Events are free and open to the public, though registration is requested.
“As this grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation comes to an end, we are excited to share all the incredible work our partners have been doing over the past three years with the Lawrence community,” said Giselle Anatol, principal investigator and director of the Hall Center for the Humanities. “I’m looking forward to an energizing exchange of ideas between scholars, artists, activists, nonprofit leaders and the public.”
Stories for All is a collaborative digital storytelling project that works with more than 40 community and KU partners to recover marginalized and suppressed histories and share them widely through digital media. Addressing the opportunities, challenges, ethics and politics of storytelling in the digital era, Stories for All asks how different stories and storytelling strategies can connect rather than divide us. Learn more about Stories for All at the project website.