Foster collaborative storytelling
- Create spaces for narrative encounters that encourage understanding, empathy, and connection across differences.
- Work alongside community members to witness, create, and share stories in creative forms to educate and effect change.
- Collaborate with non-profits, granting agencies, and private industry.
-
Defining Moments Podcast
Humans tell stories to make sense of birthing and dying and everything in between. Defining Moments Podcast showcases stories about living well in the midst of inescapable illness, suffering, and hardship. Episodes feature an eclectic group of guests who share moments of uncertainty, innovation, and resilience.
-
Realistically Ever After
Charlie Dina traded in part of his childhood for chemotherapy, which saved his life. Afterwards, the Dina family founded Turn It Gold to elevate awareness about childhood cancer and survivorship. Realistically Ever After profiles their efforts as they partner with schools, athletic teams, and community members to communicate the hard facts of childhood cancer and increase funding for research.
-
Passion Works Studio
Passion Works Studio is dedicated to building more inclusive communities through collaborative art. Through their studio, projects, and art events, they aim to strengthen communities and create inclusive, welcoming spaces for all. They are a trailblazer in creating employment opportunities for creative people with and without developmental differences.
Catalyzing Cancer Care
1 / 4
Compassion, humility, and openness
Advance Narrative Scholarship
- Involve OHIO faculty and students in the creation and analysis of storytelling.
- Conduct inter-disciplinary, participatory, and narrative-based research.
- Cultivate narrative pedagogy that harness the power of storytelling for catalytic learning
-
Brave Space-Making
The Poetics & Politics of Storytelling explores the generative potential of storytelling by focusing on its centrality in brave space-making. Brave spaces are spheres of possibility where participants undo in order to become, question and disrupt dominant narratives, and imagine otherwise. By extension, brave space-making is a vulnerable, risky, and often tension-riddled process of perspective-sharing, capacity-building, and creative invention.
-
Open Book Project
Moving toward Narrative Competence and Inclusive Healthcare through the Open Book Project.
This essay offers a layered account of the origins and enactment of a narrative medicine program at the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine titled the Open Book Project (OBP).
-
Podcasting as Storycrafting and Translational Health Communication Scholarship
Defining Moments is a podcast that extends the reach of articles published in Health Communication into public acoustic realms. In this essay, we locate Defining Moments in the broader realm of podcasting and highlight its inception, production, distribution, and impact through available data analytics.
-
Behind the White Coat
"Behind the White Coat" is an annual student storytelling event held at Ohio University's Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, that is inspired by "The Moth" Radio Podcast. Founded by two medical students, Sami Nandyal and Aiesha Polakampalli, strived to create a space where medical students can take a step back from the rigor of their work load to have a humbling reminder of who they are, and why they chose to commit themselves to a lifetime of service.
Lessons from the Field- Student Spotlight on Makenzie Price working with Farm to Ohio project.
1 / 4
Guiding Principles
- Elevate community voices and local forms of knowledge
- Surface and amplify voices previously unheard or dismissed
- Shift dominant narratives that limit human potential
- Enhance individual and communal well-being
- Model ways to thrive amid trauma
-
Operation Hummingbird
The family of Barbara Geralds launched Operation Hummingbird as a living legacy of Barbara’s spirit. It is a movement to make kindness the norm and to use our time, talent, and treasure to enrich the lives of others through mindful acts of service and generosity. We share stories of kindness from our OHIO community.
-
Poetic Interpretations
“A Beautiful Name,” written by Taylor Anne Weaver, is a poetic reflection of her experience mothering a child, Gibbs, as he lives with childhood cancer, its treatment, and the aftermath. The Storytelling Institute proudly stands with Turn it Gold, Passion Works Studio, and OHIO Athletics to provide a loving platform to honor stories such as this and ensure that no family or child feels alone as they walk this life-changing journey.
-
Interactive Tapestry
Throughout the academic year, we invite students to participate in our interactive tapestry project inspired by the collaborative quilt hanging on the wall in Scripps Hall. Last year, we encouraged students to write six-word stories about autumn, ring in the new year with a big dream, and draw their visions of springtime. To honor their stories, we post many of them on the walls surrounding the tapestry.
Sourcing and Upcycling Local Resources
1 / 4
Celebrating International Student Stories
Culture is an intrinsic part of our individual identity. It is found in the food we choose to eat, the clothes we choose to wear, the holidays we choose to honor, the stories we choose to tell. At Ohio University, we have an unparalleled opportunity to celebrate a diversity of cultures from around the world by walking alongside our international students as they stay connected to their native cultures from around the globe. The 3C initiative is a storytelling collaboration that invites international students to share their narratives of staying connected to their culture while integrating into the Athens community after arriving here to Ohio University. We aim to highlight the beautiful diversity of our student population and open the door to new voices. Because every story is as unique as its storyteller, the method of storytelling ranges from photography to podcasting.