our
rationale
workshop
process
impact
on storytellers
|
|
Silence
Speaks is an international digital storytelling initiative offering
a safe, supportive environment for telling stories that all too
often remain unspoken. We hold intensive workshops in which participants
share and bear witness to tales of struggle and courage, resulting
in short digital videos known as “digital stories.”
These first-person stories aim to challenge media legacies of voyeurism
and naturalized representation by ensuring that workshop participants,
not producers, have primary control over what is shared and how
events and people are portrayed.
Our process is modified
to accommodate the languages, literacies, and technologies of a
given setting. The guiding vision is to listen deeply, facilitate
reflection and transformation, and encourage involvement in collective
action to support justice. We emphasize work with youth and adult
communities that have been denied a voice in decision making that
affects their lives, such as people living in poverty, survivors
of trauma, those who face social stigma due to chronic medical conditions,
etc. Silence Speaks stories are used in training, community organizing,
and policy advocacy arenas to promote global health and human rights.
We teach workshops
through our parent organization, the Center
for Digital Storytelling, and travel throughout the U.S. and
internationally. If you would like to explore the possibility of
attending or hosting a workshop in your area, please contact
us.
We would like to thank one of our original
storytellers, Amisha Patel, for generously allowing us to use the
project name “silence speaks,” which comes from a poem
she wrote and adapted for her own digital story.
|
|
|
