We work with organizations & individuals to help people tell their own stories
Hire us for expert consultation, to facilitate cultural documentation & research services, or for community workshops!
We work alongside communities to help shift narratives, improve historical memory, and build resilience. We love adding capacity to your storytelling projects by bringing our research skills and technical know-how. We focus our efforts on the needs that the community brings to us. We can play the role of story steward, facilitator, and convener - providing a space to come together, to document and share new stories of who we are and how we want to live together.
Our work is highly collaborative & experimental
We use a variety of formats - live storytelling, theatre, community conversations, podcasts, film screenings, video and audio production, exhibits, and more. We love collaborating to increase our collective impact. We are a worker-self directed nonprofit with two paid staff and many collaborators (both paid and volunteer) who bring their unique skills to help further our mission. Our collaborators include multimedia storytellers, artists, academics, community organizers, and other organizations doing good work locally. Our Board is made up of a diverse group of 3-6 community members who serve as guides, generators of possibilities, a sounding board for staff, and connectors to people, places, and ideas to strengthen programs and increase impact.
See Staff & Board
With us, you can
- Learn community-based oral history practices to document and share your family or community history
- Practice deep listening and oral history interviewing skills
- Gain knowledge, skills, and media literacy using accessible recording technologies
- Honor the wisdom of people all around us - our family, community members, and peers - who are all knowledge-holders and educators
- Connect with others, be curious, and build community by listening and sharing true stories
- Activate public histories through interactive and creative community engagement projects.
If you are interested in partnering with Window Seat, please send us a message through the site or contact Elaine Vradenburgh or Meg Rosenberg.
Our Services
Cultural Documentation & Research
We bring our background in ethnography, folklore, and journalism to support public history, cultural documentation, and participatory action research projects. Let us bring our research skills, processes, and technical know-how to your next project.
City of Olympia - Indie Music History Project
The City of Olympia hired us to facilitate a two-year research project, documenting important locations, ideas, and influences, and preserving the stories of Olympia's late 20th-century “Indie” independent music scene from the 1980s to the early 2000s. We teamed up with local librarian, Kelsey Smith, of Lefty Copyrighting and Research Services, to carry out this work. View project
The Evergreen State College – Oral History Project
The Evergreen State College hired us to conduct oral history interviews with founding faculty and staff as part of a multi-year oral history project at the college. View project
Center for Washington Cultural Traditions - Cultural Traditions Survey
The Center for Washington Cultural Traditions hired us to conduct a yearlong field research project with "tradition bearers" in the Twin Harbors region of the Washington State coast for their Cultural Traditions Survey. We produced short media products from the interviews, available on the Center's online publication, Rites of Green, and for use by those featured in the videos. View stories
Asset-Based Storytelling for Nonprofits & Organizations
Our background in nonprofit fundraising, public administration, oral history, media literacy, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and theatre makes us uniquely positioned to produce compelling stories with ethical and artistic integrity. We produce video and multimedia stories in conjunction with our other services to assist in asset-based community building and storytelling.
Brave Practice Playback Theatre Collective
Invite Brave Practice, our group of theatre teaching artists, to facilitate a Playback Theatre workshop or performance with your organization. Playback is an original form of improv theatre where people tell true stories from their lives and others enact them on the spot. Together, we'll practice bravery in community through deep listening and storytelling so that we are more prepared to be courageous in our everyday lives. View project
Our Stories | Nuestras Historias
"I loved this project - so deep and satisfying, with so much potential." - Project participant
We partnered with CIELO Centro Integral Educativo Latino de Olympia to design a participatory storytelling project – Our Stories | Nuestras Historias - where Window Seat trained a small group of CIELO staff, volunteers and clients to interview each other. We edited the interviews into short audio stories for use on their website and communications campaigns. View stories
Community Storytelling Circles
"I liked the deep sharing amongst the participants" -Circle participant
Using the model of our ongoing Community Narratives project, "Ordinary People Living Extraordinary Lives," invite us to facilitate community storytelling circles with your organization or group. This activity is perfect for a staff meeting or retreat where you want to make space for personal storytelling and building community. We work together to choose a theme and adapt the structure to fit your group. We can also teach you the structure so you can facilitate future community storytelling circles on your own. View project
Preserving Working Farms
We partnered with the Thurston Conservation District, the Community Farmland Trust, and several local farmers to produce a series of videos helping raise funds to preserve working farmland, educate eaters about the challenges farmers face when producing food for local markets, and educate farmers about tools to protect their land from development. We gathered this collection of stories between 2015-17. View video collection
Workshops for Educators, Groups, & Individuals
We offer workshops in oral history, organizational storytelling, community-building, and media literacy. We are an OSPI- certified Washington Educator Clock Hour Provider. All of our workshops are custom designed to meet your needs. Workshop examples include:
- Document the stories of your family or community through an oral history workshop - Youth & Adults
- Incorporate an oral history project into your classroom curriculum through consultation or training - Teachers & Educators
- Use storytelling as a tool for empathy, belonging, building community, or personal reflection at your next staff meeting, retreat, conference, or event - Groups & Organizations
- Improve organizational storytelling and strategic planning to help staff, volunteers, and Board members be more effective organizational ambassadors - Public Service & Nonprofit Professionals
- Learn how to produce your own ethical and artistic stories for web or social media through a media literacy workshop, technical training, or coaching - Individuals & Professionals
- Learn what goes into telling your own story and explore personal narrative through a chosen medium or multimedia format - Individuals & Groups
Community Foundation of South Puget Sound
Nonprofit Storytelling Workshops
How do we frame nonprofit storytelling to focus on the assets of the people we serve? What does nonprofit storytelling look like when we decenter our organization in favor of showing cooperation across sectors and the community? These are the kinds of questions we explore through our CFSPS workshops. We’ve been providing workshops to support nonprofit fundraising during Give Local since 2019. Past workshops have included:
- Asset-Based Storytelling for Nonprofits
- Nonprofit Storytelling: Production Basics
- Nonprofit Storytelling: Moving Beyond Curated Storytelling
Center for Washington Cultural Traditions
Cultural Documentation Field School
We teamed up with the CWCT to co-design and co-facilitate an 8-session virtual cultural documentation field school. We taught skills such as interviewing, audio and video production, and photography, as well as how to activate the stories participants captured within their communities through exhibits, gatherings, and events.
South Puget Sound Community College Offering
Using Story to Build Community
We worked with SPSCC to design this 90-minute storytelling workshop for staff and faculty as part of their 2022 academic year kick-off week. Participants shared stories around the theme of belonging on campus, and how to create welcoming and inclusive environments for their students, especially in the wake of the pandemic. We shared our Community Storytelling Circle structure, where folks are invited to reflect as a community through personal narrative and storytelling. Participants left with a framework they could bring back to their classrooms .
The Evergreen State College, In-Program Workshops
We love visiting college classrooms to provide skill-building workshops to students in ethnographic and oral history interviewing skills. We've been invited to offer workshops as part of a variety of undergraduate programs at The Evergreen State College, including Community Connections, Making Place Through Archives and Oral Histories, and Making Empire.
Your Next Workshop?
Get in touch! Let's plan it together. Email us at hello@windowseatmedia.org
Here is an example organizational partnership proposal with a community storytelling menu of options from Window Seat. Our proposals will include a large sliding scale cost breakdown and cost-sharing options.
