WUNRN
amylenita@storycenter.org
SILENCE SPEAKS - Digital Stories for Healing & Empowerment
"Listen Deeply. Tell Stories."
Silence Speaks http://www.silencespeaks.org
is an international digital storytelling initiative offering a safe, supportive
environment for telling stories that 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 the power to influence decision making that affects their
lives, such as people living in poverty, survivors of violence and 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.
Since 1999, Silence Speaks has led more than 35 intensive media production
workshops across the U.S. and in South Africa, Brazil, Australia, and Uganda,
to assist survivors and witnesses of gender-based violence in sharing their
stories. To see just a few examples of our work online, please visit:
http://www.genderjustice.org.za/projects/digital-stories.html
(Stories about HIV and gender-based violence activism in Sub-Saharan Africa.)
http://www.engenderhealth.org/our-work/maternal/digital-stories-uganda-fistula.php
(Stories about obstetric fistula in Uganda.)
http://www.youtube.com/iompretoria
(Stories about labour migration and human rights in Sub-Saharan Africa.)
Silence Speaks has recently put together a collection of twelve pieces by a
diverse group of women and men from across the United States, who talk with
courage and honesty about how domestic violence, childhood sexual abuse, and
sexual assault have affected their lives. These short pieces (2-4 minutes in
length, each) are ideal for use as provider training tools and in other
educational/awareness-raising settings. The compilation DVD, which includes a
detailed Discussion Guide, is available for $50 U.S. plus shipping/handling.
All proceeds will support a partnership with the South Africa-based Rape Crisis
Cape Town Trust. To order a copy, please visit http://store.storycenter.org/.
For more information about Silence Speaks, to subscribe to our newsletter, or
to enquire about how digital storytelling can support your work, please contact
Amy Hill, Project Director, at amylenita@storycenter.org.
Amy L. Hill, MA
Silence Speaks/Special Projects Director
Center for Digital Storytelling
1803 Martin Luther King Jr. Way
Berkeley, CA 94709 U.S.A.
www.silencespeaks.org
www.storycenter.org
510.548.2065 W
510.682.8311 C
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