StoryCorps
StoryCorps is an American non-profit organization, whose goal is to instruct and inspire people to record one another's stories in sound. StoryCorps is modeled—in spirit and in scope—after the Works Progress Administration (WPA) of the 1930s, through which oral history interviews with Americans across the country were recorded. StoryCorps hopes to build and expand upon that work, creating a well-documented and archived American oral history. It was established in 2003 and is based in Brooklyn, New York.
Participants usually record their stories in one of six StoryBooths. One StoryBooth, opened on July 12 2005 is located in Lower Manhattan near the site of the World Trade Center, while the original StoryBooth, opened on October 23 2003, is housed in New York's Grand Central Terminal. A semi-permanent Outpost recently opened in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Two MobileBooths and one GriotBooth, built from converted Airstream trailers, travel the country, recording stories in various cities throughout the year.
StoryCorps also offers three levels of service for those who can't make it to a booth: Door-to-Door, where a StoryCorps facilitator visits on site; StoryKits, a portable recording apparatus along with a set of instructions; and a downloadable Do-It-Yourself guide.
A trained facilitator guides the recording session, but the participant is most often interviewed by a family member or loved one. The participants receive a CD of the session, while StoryCorps places another copy of the interview in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. StoryCorps does request a voluntary donation after each interview.
A select few of the interviews are broadcast on National Public Radio. These interviews can also be heard at the StoryCorps website.
In 2007, the StoryCorps Griot Initiative began to collect oral stories from African Americans, with the intent of gathering at least 1,750 oral histories over the course of a year, mainly from World War II veterans and those who participated in the civil rights movement.
Also in 2007 StoryCorps was awarded a rare Institutional Award at the 66th Annual Peabody Awards.
StoryCorps is a project of Sound Portraits Productions. Its founder and director is Dave Isay.