The Oral History Association describes the practice of oral history as:

“...a method of recording and preserving oral testimony and…the product of that process. It begins with an audio or video recording of a first person account made by an interviewer with an interviewee (also referred to as narrator), both of whom have the conscious intention of creating a permanent record to contribute to an understanding of the past. A verbal document, the oral history, results from this process and is preserved and made available in different forms to other users, researchers, and the public. A critical approach to the oral testimony and interpretations are necessary in the use of oral history.

The Oral History Association encourages individuals and institutions involved with the creation and preservation of oral histories to uphold certain principles, professional and technical standards, and obligations. These include commitments to the narrators, to standards of scholarship for history and related disciplines, and to the preservation of the interviews and related materials for current and future users.”

I had the blessing of having one year of dedicated mentorship with Dr. Amy Starecheski, Director of Columbia University's Oral History Masters of Arts program, through monthly practice sessions where I was able to workshop my oral history projects through Groundswell’s Practitioner Support Network. Early on, I also did a Mindfulness for Educators intensive at Spirit Rock which fused my oral history story collection practice as a mindfulness process and practice. My ultimate goal in every project that I collaborate on, and every commission that I accept, is that oral history methods are not isolated tactics, but rather a dedicated form of cultural work that gets incorporated into the foundation of social change and individual transformation aims.

I thought that you would never ask! This interview with Zaretta Hammond is a good primer for those who are new to the term.

First off, because I started as a social worker, my brain is hard-wired for holistic design and activation of any and every kind of learning, healing and transformative story work.

The second reason is because that is what I learned through my Doctoral research and the oral histories I collected with cultural workers and leaders who use teaching as a tool for social change.

The third reason is that I feel like my personal learning around the blend of the two really, really, really, really solidified in 2021, while collecting the oral histories for the Kennedy Center’s 50th anniversary kickoff week.

I had been curating and hosting talks in Santa Fe, New Mexico, when I was recruited to interview for the Executive Director position of a small media arts education nonprofit, working specifically with marginalized youth and young adults.

In that role I was tasked with executing multi-faceted projects across academia, museums, artists, students, scholars, and public media. One of my biggest highlights from that work was having a hand in bringing the “Imagining Home Storytelling Project” to life. It was a collaboration between the media arts education organization and the Museum of International Folk Art’s Gallery of Conscience. The project’s goal was to train youth to conduct oral history interviews with international folk artists, exploring the themes of belonging, immigration, and displacement. The training was unique in that it provided workforce development through the contemporary field of media, paired with the traditional folk art of oral history, while utilizing the framework of community-based education. For my role as the New Mexico Humanities Council Scholar, I created open-ended oral history and dialogue prompts on the “Imagining Home” themes that framed the context for the community Listening Events, which were hosted inside of the museum exhibition. Additionally, I was one of the practitioners tasked with mentoring them as they produced the media pieces that combined the interviewer’s reflections alongside the oral history narrator’s reflections, on the global themes of home and belonging. My proudest, most meaningful memories of this project were the reactions of the international folk artists and youth: they each felt exceptionally honored. This was the first time for the youth, as well as some of the artists, to have their work viewed in a museum setting, and the stories of their life and cultural heritage practices embraced through large public events and media distribution channels. As a cultural program designer and cultural producer, as well as a practicing oral historian, I saw the transformative power of public storytelling in a way that I had not cultivated or witnessed before.

Serving as faculty for the Banff Centre’s Cultural Leadership program, I designed and taught the learning units on storytelling and story collection, as well as equity, diversity, and culturally-responsive approaches to programming within the sector. I sought to provide Canadian arts and cultural leaders with tools to develop competencies in the work of inquiry and deep listening, in service to equity building within the sector.

The week that I returned home from the Banff Centre, I began co-writing a social impact essay for Rockefeller Foundation, and also presented an artist talk hosted by Kim Parko, creative writing professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). Based on that talk I was invited to join IAIA as Documentarian-In-Residence in the Essential Studies Department, and I had the honor of teaching workshops and guest lecturing on the framework, ethics, and methodologies of oral history and digital storytelling, from a decolonized approach to the work, as I understand it.

What I loved the most about that experience was designing a public oral history interview series with Indigenous students and Artist-In-Residence at IAIA. The goal of that programming was learning how to adapt my teaching methods for an Indigenous learning community through a series of guest lectures. I went on to mentor the students and faculty on oral history interviewing, story collecting and community-based archival practices. This experience culminated in a co-interview with renowned, contemporary Indigenous artist, Cannupa Hanska Luger, in front of a live audience, alongside an advanced film student who was learning and practicing oral history methodologies from me. Up until that point I had never conducted an oral history interview in front of an audience as a teaching method, and I had never shared interviewing responsibilities with someone else during a live interview. That’s what I loved about my time at IAIA: it contributed to my evolution of my oral history practice in collaborative ways that supported the learning and development of the students, faculty and me. A testament to the mutual success of my time as Documentarian-In-Residence is that I periodically consult faculty on curriculum development, and provide artist talks for the Institute’s academic community several years later.

In 2019, as an acknowledgment of my ongoing professional commitment to my oral history and community-based cultural art education practices, I was named by our nation’s cultural center as a 2019 – 2020 Kennedy Center Citizen Artist. Each Kennedy Center Citizen Artist is a cultural arts ambassador, and I received this national recognition and honor based on my commitment to equity in all of the work that I do, alongside cultural leaders, youth, elders, educators and policy workers.

There's a concept for approaching oral history narrators called “chain of trust,” that Voice of Witness formally taught me, however something I intrinsically knew to do throughout my career. If there's one degree of separation between us, one relationship between the interviewer and the narrator, and we both trust this person in common, the odds and likelihood that the narrator will say yes to my request, and also be open and vulnerable in the interview process, is much higher.

I inadvertently established my professional chain of trust through my very first three oral history projects, yet I didn't realize those three different projects kicked off a professional network ecosystem, where people really liked the way that I did this work, trusted what I did, appreciated the outcomes, and then recommended me to others inside their own organizations and networks.

Consequently, I never had to ask for work or advertise. On the flip side, it never occurred to me, until 2021, while doing an internal audit of my practice, to ask myself, “What am I most excited to learn? Where is my growth edge? Who, out of all of the projects that I've worked on, designed and brought forward, was good for me, and who was good to me?”

Asking those tough questions helped me realize easily and quickly which projects feel great to me, that I want to consciously multiply. I had been saying yes to everyone who directly expressed need and had an existing relationship with a previous project community. Now my team and I review expressions of interest and do our best to determine alignment based on the intended scope of the work, which of their community members they want present, and if our visions about the potential impact of the proposed cultural work are aligned. (As a result of my audit, I learned that I love designing and serving as a creative director for story-rich projects, and hosting events that give me the latitude to curate and assemble cultural worker teams composed of DJs, muralists, documentarians, community chefs, visual artists, compelling subject-specific narrators etc).

When I consider hosting events and delivering story-rich keynotes, I evaluate for preliminary fit and then connect the interested party to my agent so that both parties may solidify my commitment. For my commissioned projects, we set up a time to talk about the scope of the work, the intended outcome, and alignment with my practice.

The first step with all potential collaborations is to send my team and me a note outlining your request, through the Interest Form page.

As part of my Kennedy Center Citizen Artist professional development, I took part in an amazing strategy meeting that served as my very first audit into the business side of my practice. I was nervous at first, however it was a kind, gentle and insightful process that represents a turning point in my career. Working together, I listened carefully to the very tangible ways that I was burning myself out and missing growth opportunities. One of my biggest blindspots was related to the ongoing cost of time it took to evaluate potential speaking and hosting engagements, and how working with an agent could streamline and enhance that aspect of my story work. Particular praise goes to Sydney Krieck, who generously flew in the founder of a prominent speaking agency in North America to meet with me in person.

I started out as a freelance consultant. After leaving the executive director position, I decided I wanted to open up my own studio practice, and I went back to being a freelance consultant. However, as the business needs began to scale and the scope of projects began to increase beyond what I could handle, I realized I couldn’t do this alone. That's when I began working with an assistant, around 2019. In 2021 I hired my current assistant; midway through the year it became clear that my practice would experience significant growth in 2022, and that I better begin planning beyond a two person team with a roster of specialists.

Every year I go through a planning and reflection period, along with the seasons that mirror our cycles of life. The winter is my time to hibernate. I use this time to audit the past year, professionally and personally, and begin the planning process three months before the year closes, around late September. (My practice is planned and contracts are locked in before the new year begins). So winter is about reflection, auditing, writing a bit, and visiting with family & friends.

Late winter and early spring is the time in my praxis cycle of activation - not preparing, that’s already happened - but activating. The summer season expands on the activation, as well as figuring out what's working well, and what is not. I prune a bit, step away from my computer, and dive into the final active stage of work for the year: Autumn. Like the agricultural season, that season is really about harvesting the current year’s good work, including the good work of my personal praxis. Many wonderful opportunities come my way during this season and that's when I complete the negotiation of contracts for the upcoming year, block out the dates for professional development/residencies/vacations/rest time for the upcoming year, and do my pleasurable ritual of setting the auto-responder that the team is out of the studio.

I actually have a lot of help. The very first time I heard about someone outside of academia taking a seasonal sabbatical every year was from my colleague, peer mentor and dear friend, Liz Ogbu. When I initially heard about Liz’s annual sabbaticals I knew that I wanted to cultivate the practice for myself, however I also realized that I did not have enough time or systems in place to make it happen that quarter. But I realized that if I started planning that month, and gave myself a 12 month runway, I could do it! I didn’t know what I was doing and I come from a family of matriarchs with an incredible work ethic, so I asked Liz for her help. The pandemic definitely threw my sabbatical and hiatus time out the window, and while I don't have the whole thing figured out, I do believe that I have fully returned to protecting my hiatus time, as well as my time off throughout the year.

In a simple statement, residencies give me: creative space to experiment, and new communities of relationships comprised of exquisite people.

My very first artist residency was at the Red Poppy Art House in San Francisco, and it came about through a friend who was a current resident artist at the time. I loved my Poppy residency because it was unstructured, and did not require me to leave my home community and live somewhere outside of my work or home communities. That particular residency gave me the space and a community of extremely creative peers to begin my oral history folk art practice in parallel with academia.

After my Poppy residency, I realized that I was gravitating to annual residencies so that I could either develop new relationships, or do a focused, deep dive on creative work production. Eventually I developed the following flow: after hearing news of my acceptance, I plan out the residency time and schedule with my writing coach or the residency program director, so that I remain focused on my cultural production outcome goals. I also have learned - especially with the longer residency programs - to ask for recommendations for different ways that I may positively contribute to the organization and community, and I schedule that time into my residency duration. And at the end of my residency time, I spend time trading intentional recommendations with the residency staff and my cohort, discussing future residency opportunities.

I am a firm believer that learning experiences support one’s professional path(s). To that end, I chose different interdisciplinary programs where I could learn multiple hard skills and continue cultivating a unique way of seeing & being in the world.

In terms of my formalized education, I have earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology, a teaching credential and two teaching certifications, and an M.A. in Multicultural Literature for Children and Young Adults, as well a Doctorate degree in International and Multicultural Education, with a concentration in Second Language Acquisition. When I needed specialized training in the folk art practice of oral history, I found kindred spirits at Voice of Witness and ongoing tangible support through a year of dedicated mentorship via Groundswell’s monthly meetups with Dr. Amy Starecheski.

All of these programs supported me in my different cultural work practices, however my longest running mentorship has been with Dr. Jackie Reza, who invited me to be her Teaching Assistant in her “Participatory Action Research” and “Understanding Whiteness, Power, and Privilege” Doctoral courses. I claim Jackie as part of my cultural worker lineage, and I believe it shows. Jackie’s background is in anthropology, multicultural education, and Marriage and Family Therapy. Learning with Jackie was like going to the most tantalizing, supportive place for your mind and heart to heal and grow!

At this point in my practice as a cultural worker and producer, I invest in deep dives through fellowships, artist residencies, cohorts-of-practice, mentorship and coaching relationships. I also intentionally accept commissions where I stand to continue expanding my practice and learning - with gentleness, care and consideration - from/with my narrators and commission collaborators.