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PUBLICATIONS, PERFORMANCES, & CAMPAIGNS
Creating content that creates
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Center for Story & Witness (formerly The Voices and Faces Project) is partnering with survivors, artists, writers, and content creators who are as passionate about human rights as they are about artistic excellence. Together, we bring the stories developed through our testimonial writing workshops to life in powerful, provocative, change-creating ways.
BOOK & STAGED READING
Lived Through This: Listening to the Stories of Sexual Violence Survivors
Called “heartfelt and beautifully rendered” by playwright V (formerly Eve Ensler), Anne K. Ream’s Lived Through This is a narrative and photographic memoir of a multi-country journey spent listening to survivors of gender-based violence. Published in 2014 and featuring the photography of Patricia Evans, Lived Through This has since been adapted for the stage through a collaboration between Ream and award-winning playwrights Marilyn Campbell and Caity-Shea Violette and director Ann Filmer (Steppenwolf Theatre, Goodman Theatre). The played debuted at Chicago’s Piven Theatre featuring live musical performances of the rock ’n’ roll playlist that helped the book’s author heal. The staged reading of Lived Through This has since traveled to theaters in New York City, Chicago, and Virginia, through our ongoing collaboration with Virginia Stage Company.
Bring the staged reading to your community.
STAGED READING
Writing a New Refugee Story: A Literary Performance
Directed by Lookingglass Theatre Company’s Lanisse Antoine Shelley, “Writing a New Refugee” is a staged reading of writings from our Stories We Tell workshop at RefuSHE in Nairobi, Kenya. Elevating the stories of a powerful community of refugee girls from across the African continent, this staged reading reminds us that we are shaped but not defined by what has been done to us.
Bring the staged reading to your community.
LITERARY JOURNAL
LEAP: A Literary Journal By and For Teen Girls
LEAP, our literary journal for teens who are loud, empowered, accepted, and proud, was developed by and for graduates of our testimonial writing program. Each edition of LEAP is design-forward, graphic, art-focused, and published in digital and print form. Featuring poetry, memoir, creative nonfiction, and spoken word, LEAP reminds us that behind every social, racial, or gender injustice there is a personal story and a powerful young person ready to tell it.
Take a LEAP with us!
POETRY & PERFORMANCE
Louder Together: Our Crowdsourced Poetry Project
Louder Together, our Center for Story & Witness crowdsourced poetry project, seeks to create video poetry that speaks to a range of human rights and social justice issues. Each crowdsourced poem in the series features the voices of those who have lived through or witnessed an injustice, and uses their words as a call to social and political action. We work closely with trusted allies – including Surviving the Mic, Justice for Migrant Women, and World Without Exploitation – to reach communities where they are in order to create work that is inclusive, representative, and change-focused.
Every crowdsourced poem begins with a national “all-call” to activists, writers, and those who have lived through or been impacted by a specific social injustice. Lines of poetry from selected submissions are then woven into a crowdsourced piece by a writer affiliated with Center for Story & Witness.
We believe that powerful poetry deserves to be heard in as many ways and places as possible. So the Louder Together team at Center for Story & Witness brings each of our crowdsourced poems to life, either through a video, live performance, or one of our literary publications.
To partner with us on a crowdsourced poetry project…
LITERARY CONVERSATION SERIES
We Tell Stories: Conversations with Rising and Established Authors
Created to center memoir, fiction, and creative nonfiction that speaks to a range of social injustices and human rights issues, “We Tell Stories” is a literary conversation series moderated by Center for Story & Witness co-founders Anne K. Ream and R. Clifton Spargo. Previously featured writers have included Pushcart Prize finalist Chris Stark, Emmy Award-winning journalist Ruchira Gupta, and memoirists Rachel Moran, Hannah Sward, and Brenda Myers-Powell.
Join our e-newsletter list to be a part of the next conversation.
PUBLIC CHANGE CAMPAIGN
The Ugly Truth: A Multimedia Anti-trafficking Campaign
Created through a collaboration between Kinetic Media, NoVo Foundation, and The Voices and Faces Project (now Center for Story & Witness), “The Ugly Truth” was developed by listening to the stories of survivors of human trafficking. This multi-media public service campaign has made over 700 million audience impressions, been recognized by the European Union as a model gender justice campaign, increased calls to National Human Trafficking Hotline by 26%, and contributed to changing state and federal anti-trafficking law in the United States.
Bring our campaign to your community.
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