Dear Listserve Members:
I love this listserve because of its valuable contribution to
storytelling, and I read with great interest all the posts about NSN.
In fact, all of us here in the office (6 of us) read each post and
talked at great length about what various people have said about NSN.
And now I just have to respond:
First of all, it is very important that people share their experiences
of an organization - good, bad or indifferent. It is essential that we
hear what is working and not working because all of us in NSN (staff,
board and members) only want to keep making the organization better. We
have a duty to support both storytellers and the art form and to
increase the influence and visibility of storytelling within the US.
Let me address the question of value, and then I'd also like to tell you
what issues we are currently working on.
What value does NSN have for our members and for storytelling? There is
a lot to say, but you did ask :)
Key words are in CAPS.
1. Each year to our members we provide thousands of dollars in GRANT
MONEY to fund storytelling projects around the country. We've funded
classroom work, bussing children to storytelling festivals, storytelling
programs in homeless shelters, etc. Go look at
http://www.storynet.org/grant/winners.htm to see some of the wonderful
projects we've already funded. We also fund applied storytelling
projects through our Brimstone Grant. The Brimstone Grant is designed
to produce models that will be available for all storytellers to use.
It is vitally important that we nurture and develop new talent so every
year we support an emerging storyteller through our J.J. Reneaux Grant.
2. In response to the devastating hurricanes this year, NSN set up two
funds that people can donate to: a general Katrina Relief fund whose
monies will be split evenly among storytellers affected by the
hurricanes. The other fund is an Emergency Grant Fund (EGF). Any
group/organization who wants to hire a storyteller whose livelihood has
been wiped out by the hurricanes, can apply for a $250 grant to pay the
performer. We just finalized the application and will be formally
announced next week. I'm very proud that NSN is able to help
storytellers in this way.
3. We provide a national CONFERENCE every year. Members and
non-members can come together and network, share knowledge, build skills
and address some of the deeper issues of the art form. It's the only
chance to meet and get to know storytellers whom you may not interface
with at local and regional conferences. Of course if you are a member,
it is less expensive to attend. And if you are a member, you get first
crack at the opportunity to present. Last year NSN marketed the
conference to a variety of national associations. Hundreds of thousands
of people across the US received information about our conference.
Through this act alone, storytelling increased in visibility.
4. Beginning last year our conferences now include a FRINGE FESTIVAL.
This is an incredible opportunity for storytellers to perform innovative
work in front of their peers. This is one of the best and most exciting
ways to bring innovation, creativity and new techniques into the art
form.
5. Our conferences now make sure we have a STORYTELLING LEAVE-BEHIND
PROJECT. We always go into a city and spend a lot of cash. But that is
ephemeral. Now each conference will have a project that leaves behind a
storytelling seed that hopefully increases the visibility and value of
storytelling and that the local guilds and storytellers can reap the
benefits of for many years.
6. This year we came out with a new BOOK, "Telling Stories to
Children." This is a guidebook to help any storyteller who wants to
improve their storytelling abilities with children. This year we are
also producing the definitive GUIDES by Susan Klein on Emceeing and on
storytelling Ethics. The previous year we launched our first new BOOK
in awhile, "A Beginner's Guide to Storytelling" to help those new to the
art form. Contributors to both guides are NSN members. In 2006
Jossey-Bass publishers, a division of John Wiley (a huge publishing
house) is publishing a BOOK on storytelling in organizations titled
"Wake Me Up When the Data's Over: How Companies are Using Stories to
Drive Results." All the contributors to this book are NSN members who
work with organizational storytelling. Seventy national and
international companies are part of the book. NSN is the sponsor and
our logo is on the front cover, we have text on the back cover, and an
entire page in the book telling people about NSN and storytelling. This
is a trade book that will go on every bookstore shelf in the country.
In addition, our board will be working on how to include more resources
into our Marketplace that will help storytellers and the art form.
7. We have five Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and a number of
discussion groups. The SIGs are the places (and sometimes the only
places) where people from different professions and storytellers are
coming together to share knowledge and establish practices in an area.
For example, the Healing Story Alliance (HSA) SIG is incredibly active
in the field of storytelling in the healing arts. The Youth & Educators
Alliance (YES) SIG is also very active in their work of storytelling in
the classroom and supporting youth storytelling. The SIO SIG has
different models and lessons learned for doing story work in
organizations that they share among their members.
8. I believe our MAGAZINE is very valuable. It is also very popular in
schools and libraries. And yes, we are always seeking to improve its
content and design. In addition, many of our SIGs HAVE PUBLICATIONS
they offer. The Storytelling in Higher Education (SHE) SIG produces the
first and only academic journal for storytelling studies called
"Storytelling Self Society." NSN helped launch this journal, the SHE
SIG edits it, and South Florida Atlantic Univ. publishes it.
9. Our New Voices discussion group is also very active. New Voices
members are those 20-30 something-year-olds who are storytellers or keen
on storytelling. It is wonderful that NSN has a place for this age
group since most of us are starting to sprout grey hairs! There's an
upcoming discussion with this group about how to bring in YOUNGER PEOPLE
into storytelling and the art form - a very critical task that almost
every association is grappling with. You can find our other discussion
groups on our website.
10. Along these lines I am very proud that our board of directors now
includes Kindra McGrane, a storyteller who is 24 years old. And that
our board strives for DIVERSITY. If we are to appeal to the younger
crowd and other populations, it starts with the make-up of the board.
Kudos to them for their activities! NSN is a grassroots organization.
It is NOT an organization of top down. All of the NSN board members are
storytellers. They are storytellers of all types who want to make a
difference in the national community.
11. Did you know that if you want to MARKET your products/services to
the storytelling community that you can purchase from us our member
list? And it is very reasonable. Another tool we developed last year
was our Guild and Festival CD called "Storytelling in Our Communities."
We update this CD once a year and it is a list of all the Guilds, state
storytelling organizations, Festivals and regional conferences. All the
contact information we could find is listed. Some we couldn't find.
But once again, it is a tool storytellers can use to PROMOTE themselves
or find local/regional resources.
12. Currently we are asking all NSN members to fill out on-line the
STRUT YOUR STUFF database. We receive calls all the time asking for
information about workshops, classes, newsletters, articles, and
storytelling CDs/videos that are available. Many times we do not know
the answers to these questions. So we are attempting to create a
database of member's workshops, articles, newsletters, and products so
we can help storytellers and others find the resources they need. That
means if NSN has your material in this database, we can refer people to
you and tell others about you.
13. We just launched our new on-line directory listings. Currently our
website receives 350,000 hits a month. And it continues to increase.
People looking to hire storytellers search our on-line directly
constantly. NSN will be promoting our directory to other associations
and state arts councils throughout the year.
14. NSN's AWARDS program is the only way storytellers and others are
able to receive recognition from the national level for their
contributions to storytelling. It's an incredible program and going
through a process now to make it even stronger.
15. All NSN members, if they want to take storytelling classes at ETSU,
receive in-state tuition. This program saves storytellers attending
ETSU thousands of dollars.
16. To build are NSN Member grants program funding storytelling
projects, we now produce NATIONAL STORY NIGHT on the Thurs. evening
before the National Festival. This is a huge fundraiser for us because
we would like to grow our grants program from $10,000/year to $50,000.
National Story Night is to provide a storytelling activity for festival
attendees waiting for the festival to begin on Friday, and to also
provide a modestly priced venue for local residents to experience
incredible storytelling (most local residents to do not attend the
festival). This year was our first year and a wonderful success. Next
year will be even better!
17. NYSS - The City of Pigeon Forge and NSN are partners for the
National Youth Storytelling Showcase (NYSS) each year in Feb. This is a
national program to promote youth storytelling. Each local school and
state has the opportunity to foster storytelling in children. Through a
series of events at the local and state levels, top talent is identified
and brought to Pigeon Forge for the Showcase. Last year children from
11 states participated. NSN continually seeks to find opportunities to
have the NYSS torchbearers and Grand Torchbearer perform as a way to
support storytelling among youth and foster the next generation of
storytellers.
18. NSN continues to promote Tellabration! Each year we provide
updated materials and organizations producing a Tellabration! can
register on our site so people can see who is participating. Then NSN
collects reports and publishes the results. We now have a volunteer
going through all the Tellabration archives, collecting all the material
together, and putting it into a form where we can share it with
everyone. Tellabration is one of the best storytelling advocacy tools
we have available, and a marvelous way for storytelling groups to build
their treasuries.
19. We are now on a regular monthly schedule of New Member Orientation
conference calls. Any new member can join us, get introduced to others,
and find out how to get the best out of their membership in NSN. Staff
was just talking today about scheduling a monthly conference call for
all members as a networking, Q&A and information sharing tool.
20. TECHNOLOGY - Yes, we continually seek ways to bring technology
solutions into NSN. Our goal is to use technology to make us more
efficient, faster and to better serve our members. We want to give
power to the members instead of being a bureaucracy. And yes, doing so
is fraught with bugs and glitches. That's because we operate on a
shoe-string and do not have a lot of money to spend on technology, which
can be very expensive. So we do things by hook and by crook. We have a
part-time intern from the East TN State Univ. (ETSU) computer sciences
department to help us out. A technology service vendor is there to fix
our problems when we crash. My husband Tim, a software engineer, often
gets pressed into volunteering in emergencies. He also does a great job
helping us research different opportunities, options, vendors and
technologies. Technology solutions rarely go smoothly (particularly on
our budget!) but we continue to persevere. Our technology challenges
this year are quite a long story (I'll spare you) and our members have
been wonderful helping us correct errors and fix bugs.
21. STAFF - We have a small staff who is very dedicated to NSN. There
is so much to do that working late or on weekends is not uncommon, yet
never required unless it's the conference or festival. Now that's
commitment! Two of our five staff members have master's degrees in
storytelling from ETSU. They all love NSN and storytelling and are
always there to help you.
22. NSN has a lot of activities and projects going on all the time.
Membership dues account for roughly only 22% of our budget. The
festival accounts for roughly 27%. Over 50% of our budget relies on
other sources of revenue including donations. Given our budget, I think
it is amazing all the benefits we are able to provide members and
storytelling.
23. We also do/did the following: co-sponsored the Healing Through
Storytelling conference in 2005; created compilation CDs preserving and
making available some of the best stories from the National Storytelling
Festival; have helped storytellers in need (Jackie Torrance and the Ray
Hicks family) with special fundraising; we create and distribute online
e-newsletters; we organize and support a network of state liaisons to
provide local contacts for the welcoming of new storytellers and the
collecting and dissemination of storytelling information nationwide; and
as part of storytelling advocacy, we gather together and make available
online a huge number of articles on the value of storytelling from the
mainstream and academic press. This last is located at
http://www.storynet-advocacy.org/news/, which is accessed by the
somewhat cryptic link "Storytelling: It's News!" from www.storynet.org
<http://www.storynet.org/>
.
THINGS WE ARE WORKING ON TODAY:
1. Based on the member survey conducted in Jan-March 2005, we are now
going through a process of matching our member's interests with all the
products/services NSN provides. That way we will know if we are meeting
the interests of our members and can then begin filling in any gaps.
This will go a long way in serving members.
2. We are currently creating a theme index for our magazine, along with
short descriptions of the guest editor section. Soon you'll be able to
search the index on-line and purchase the material electronically. For
example, if you are looking for all the Storytelling Magazine articles
written about storytelling in the classroom, you'll be able to do a
quick search, see the selections with a short description, and then
purchase whichever articles you would like.
3. Overhauling the website. I've been itching to do this since the day
I arrived. We are getting closer and closer to a complete re-design
that will make our website much more attractive and easier to navigate.
4. Searching for additional benefits for NSN members. We are
constantly evaluating different products and services we can incorporate
into NSN for our members. For the last two years we've been doing
research and educating ourselves about different opportunities. In the
next few months we'll be looking at several proposals and I hope we find
some programs that will help our members.
5. I wish you could see our walls in our office. Anytime a staff
member has an idea about a benefit we can provide members, we grab a
card and a pen and post the idea on our idea wall. As we work on these
ideas, they move down the wall into the "In Process" section. As we
finish them, they move into the "Completed" section. The same goes for
our volunteer ideas/projects. Anytime you are in Jonesborough, please
come visit us so you can see our walls and get to know our staff. We
would love to visit with you!
6. Insurance, boilerplate information, ombudsman, press releases, promo
material, and an electronic suggestion box have all been on our idea
wall for awhile now, and we are slowly working our way through them. So
stay tuned.
I could go on, but enough. NSN is only as great as our members make it.
Please help us out make NSN and storytelling even stronger, more visible
and more influential. Our staff keeps the day-to-day running. We add
new projects on our plate as we can. Everyone works hard because we
believe in the organization and storytelling so much.
Don't ever hesitate to give us a call. Tell us what's not working but
also tell us what is working! Both kinds of information are very
important. We want to know what's not working so we can improve. We
want to know what is working so we continue to do it. And we hope you
will participate in NSN as a way to make a difference in the world of
storytelling.
Thank you.
Karen
Karen Dietz, Ph.D.
Executive Director
National Storytelling Network
132 Boone Street, #5
Jonesborough, TN 37659
800-525-4514 or 423-913-8201
www.storynet.org <http://www.storynet.org/>
NSN - A world enriched through storytelling.
Mission -- Bringing together and nurturing individuals and organizations
that use the power of storytelling in all its forms.
Mark your calendars for NSN's 2006 Annual Conference July 20-23, 2006 in
Pittsburgh, PA! The theme is The Storytelling Community: What is it?
Who's part of it? What are the limits? See you there . . .