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Story Interviews

Page history last edited by bgblogging 13 years, 6 months ago

 

 

Watch story interviews from the Heart & Soul Pilot Project Towns:

 

 

 

From Damariscotta's First Story Interviews,  A Digital Story

 

From Victor, Idaho's First Story Interviews, A Digital Story

 

From Biddeford, Maine's Story Interviews, A Digital Story

 

 

 

Planning & Conducting a Story Interviewing Project    (from Orton's Upcoming Storytelling Discussion Paper)

 

 

Decisions to Make

            •          Size and Scope of the Project

            •           Who to Interview

            •           Who to Train

            •           What Is the Script

            •           Where To do Interviewing

            •           What Happens after the Interview

 

 

 

Story interviews have several beneficial outcomes: the process of story interviewing builds trust within the community and attracts people to Heart & Soul planning; the stories themselves have a life beyond the moment of telling, and thus continue to build good will and common ground through ongoing access to the stories.  The stories can be collected in text, audio and multimedia forms to be distributed throughout the community or shared during community gatherings. They hold the pleasure of the local as well as being a treasure trove of insight into what the teller holds important about the town and community life. Accompanied by a values-analysis exercise, they yield detailed information about people’s hopes, values and views.  Well past storytelling, stories can be clustered and compared according to theme, location, era; they can be integrated into other Heart & Soul planning events and activities, bringing along their compelling human element and reminding professionals to listen deeply to the people of a community before making decisions.

 

Although story interviewing is fruitful, it is also time-consuming and requires training.  It is unrealistic in most communities to plan a story-interviewing project that will reach every person directly in every neighborhood, so using your community network map to reach a representative grouping or targeted voices is essential for a thoughtful project.

 

1. Size and Scope of the Project

Heart & Soul story interview projects usually start small to give volunteers a chance to grow familiar with the techniques, and to build a repository of stories.  Like a pebble thrown into a still pond, story interviews ripple out, the project gathering momentum as it spreads out from tier to tier, with the potential of becoming a town-wide endeavor or even a tradition.  (Example: community where storytelling has become an annual event or tradition)

 

Story interview projects require considerable yet flexible planning, establishing who to interview, why and when and by whom; and then deciding how the stories will be used and where they will be published.  A practice round of interviewing builds skill and confidence in the interviewing team while a small but strategically designed round of early interviews with key individuals can spark interest in the project across the town.

 

Story interviews take time.  They take training in effective story interviewing techniques and in catching and recording the stories.  The stories need editing: you can count on over an hour per interview.  So either you need to be quite strategic in selecting the townspeople for story interviews, according to your community network map, or you need to train a veritable brigade of story interviewers. Some communities have relied on local talent and resources to gather a portion of their stories, creating paid storytelling fellowships (Victor) involving students from the local college (Starksboro) or high school (Biddeford).

 

Based on your Heart & Soul goals, the timing of the interviewing thread within the overall project, and your particular community’s temperature (how much work needs to be done to bring together a fragmented community), decide on the degree of thematic focus appropriate to the story-interviewing project. If you will be easing into Heart & Soul due to a resistance to change or entrenched positions within the community, start with a more general theme: stories celebrating the people and places of the town.  A close-knit community familiar with community dialogue and engagement may launch into a story interview project with a specific land-use focus: stories of the waterfront, or Main Street, or neighborhoods.  Be careful though.  If you start with too narrow a focus, you run the risk of becoming a talking survey, asking leading questions, or being perceived as carrying a specific agenda. In most projects, you’ll first seek broader project parameters—stories of life in the town that illustrate what residents value here and what they imagine for the future of the town and then drill down into more specific topics as the project develops. 

 

Temporal focus is useful, balancing stories of the past with those of the present and the future, all aimed at identifying what needs saving, fostering, changing according to the people who actually live in the town.  It is tempting to be seduced by the charm and difference of the past, to view the present and future as pale in comparison. Through story interviews we wish to learn the lessons of the past that will serve us to plan for the future, not to scroll back what cannot, realistically, be changed.

 

 

 

The large red circle at the top of the diagram represents how communities all too often engage with storytelling: the temptation and the danger is getting caught in the past--how great it was, or how horrible and how the present pales in comparison. Good story interviewing can allow for these comments but bring people into the here and now and how their values of the past relate to the present and the future. Being able to carry one comment into a question about the present and future helps to guide people - sometimes this is done through good questioning or digging deeper right at that moment. Be on your toes and listen for moments to either dig deeper or carry the conversation to this place and time.

 

 

Some communities are tempted to capture oral histories only, and forget that the children and newcomers as well as those who have been here for some time, have important stories about the now, the here.  When capturing stories of the here, you are searching for common ground--what is good and worth saving as well as what isn't. When planning a project, think, too about future stories--how do we create the future together? The second diagram with the large green future circle illustrates the balance of focus we seek in Heart & Soul projects, reflecting how interconnected the eras are, and how we are keeping our eye to the future rather than to the past.

 

 

A Story Interview, Not a Fact Interview

 

One hurdle many new story-interview projects must surmount is understanding the difference between the information-oriented interview and the story-filled interview.  We are used to filling out surveys, being canvassed by phone or in person, but we are less accustomed to being asked open-ended questions that are meant to lead us to tell about specific experiences with the people and places of our communities as a way to reveal values.  Stories are the examples that help drill down into the specifics of what we really mean when we say we like the “small-town feel” or the “family-oriented” quality of the place, or the “warmth of the merchants.”  The journalist is often looking for information and opinion when interviewing someone; we’re interested in those, too, but also in the specific experiences that have led people to their views. Interviewers bent on answers only on a particular topic come supplied with questions that seek out little beyond a framed response.   Such questions often lead to short answers unless coupled with questions asking for examples: “Can you tell me about a time when you experienced that value you just mentioned….”

 

 

Sometimes it makes sense to open a story interview with such a focus, but we want to ease our storytellers into their stories, by warming up with factual questions, or celebratory questions—what do you like about this place?  When did you come here?  Before you ask about changes or the things desiring change.  It is through the exploring of one’s experience—through remembering the specifics, that details come out that lead to nuanced, vividly detailed explanations that will prove valuable to Heart & Soul planning.  Every story interview should have a story or two (or more) at its heart.

 

 

Story interview projects can branch into several arms: a concerted effort to reach out deep into the community through arranged interviews in people’s homes and a more open, informal effort at including everyone who wants to be interviewed through setting up an interview booth where people sign up to come tell their stories.  The community of Damariscotta chose both routes: a small group of volunteers conducted at-home story interviews with people unlikely to participate in public functions, and another group of interviewers signed up for shifts at a story booth in the local library to catch and record the stories of anyone who cared to share their experiences of community values. Both achieved different but complementary outcomes.  Neighbor to Neighbor interviews built understanding and trust between interviewer and interviewee and these stories formed the basis for the intro audio slideshow that has been used to set the tone at later community meetings. 

 

 

Depending on the size of your project, it can be advantageous to recruit a skilled trainer and coach for the project, someone who is able to build successive waves of interviews, and train and inspire a team of interviewers.  It is also possible to plan a small interview project with a handful of volunteer interviewers who self-organize, as long as there is strong leadership and capacity among the group.

 

 

 

2. Who to Interview

 

Note: Choose easy-to-interview subjects in the opening round, if possible, as you want to avoid returning to interviewees for more stories if the interviews did not go very deep into story.

 

 

Story interviewing is the one sort of storytelling effort that intentionally goes out to specific people in the community, one by one, and because this sort of storytelling takes time and a trained interviewer, you will want to think carefully about whose story to actively seek.  Depending on your town’s specific Heart and Soul project goals, and once you have mapped your community (its groups, networks, connections, and capacity), identify people in the community you would like to interview. Think strategically and inclusively about whom to reach out to and in what order. 

 

  • Who will wish to be interviewed, expect to be interviewed, feel honored to be interviewed?  Think of whose stories people really want to hear; as we know, stories beget stories, participation spreads outward from person to person, group to group, and engagement threads its way through the community. 
  • Whose stories will the town find compelling and interest people in participating in Heart & Soul planning? Certainly long-time residents come to mind as their stories provide glimpses into the town of time past.  The well-known storytellers, too, might be good early choices—they will surely attract their already established audiences. Think, too, though, beyond the obvious and well-known story holders. 
  • Who might be a surprise?  People less likely to tell their stories in other ways or in public and who represent groups not particularly well represented in the project thus far will make your must-interview list.
  • Who do you want to involve down the road as trainers or connectors to a specific group? Look closely at your community maps—can you interview the connectors (the hubs) within groups, in the hopes that they will get excited about the project and spread the word, or possibly wish to be trained to become an interviewer? 
  •  
  • Refer frequently to your community maps to ensure that you are capturing the heart & S Soul stories from across the wider community, identifying community members who can build bonds and bridges within and across groups as they encourage participation in Heart & Soul planning.

 

 

3. Who to Train

 

One of the biggest surprises many story interview volunteers experience is how they benefit personally from sitting down with their fellow townspeople and listening to their stories.  The interviewers are the recipients of the gift of the story itself: the intimate experience of listening to the story being told to them personally creates a special kind of connection between sharer and listener. Indeed, story interviewing can be a transformative experience for the interviewer and interviewee together. This connecting is precisely why it makes sense for local citizens to do as much of the interviewing as possible: to forge the kind of connections that will make coming together as a community around land-use planning issues possible. A vivid example occurred during a story-interviewing training. The Committee interviewed a town elder-one well known for his strong political views and outspokenness at town meetings.  Here on this evening, with good humor, he endured the bumpy questioning by the interviewers-in-training.  What no one anticipated was how his telling of his stories of boyhood in the town would charm and captivate the group and reveal a side of this man many in the room hadn’t imagined.  After the training, one new interviewer exclaimed that she had always viewed him as someone she really didn’t want to know—she knew enough, thank you very much, from his statements in town meetings.  Hearing him tell his stories, laugh, engage with them around what he loved about this town shifted something for her.  She realized that she had judged him unfairly and would never again view him—or anyone else in town—through such a narrow lens.  His storytelling brought her face-to-face with her own biases and assumptions as it brought her into contact with his own heartfelt story about the way the town had changed over the years.

 

 

In other words, everyone in town would benefit from being a story interviewer, and in turn, Heart & Soul planning would benefit!  However, even if we secretly hope that the entire town takes to story interviewing, we want to make sure the project is manageable, and so we start by training a highly motivated small group of interviewers representing as much of the larger community as possible in the hopes that they will attract and train more would-be interviewers and provide access to the community’s stories. In some communities, capacity limits the interviewing to a small group of citizens, but the story listening and values identification component has been essential to understanding personal biases and assumptions and for building empathy and bridges across political lines.

 

 

Note: Heart & Soul story interviewing takes time, effort and some skill; it thus can be challenging to jumpstart a story interviewing project without a committed group of volunteers and a reasonable, well-organized plan of action, including a list of possible first-round interviewees, an interviewer’s packet, trainings, and someone to keep things organized and moving.

 

 

First-round interviewer groups:

 

 

Experienced local story interviewers

 

Enlist local skilled story interviewers to catch and publish a handful of first stories, and then (have them) soon train and mentor a team of inexperienced interviewers.  This option ensures a high level of story quality at the outset, but it is important to make sure these interviewers understand that this is neither a strictly ethnographic interview nor oral history. This group might have to adapt to a more flexible Heart & Soul approach. Involve your experts as community members interviewing community members and as mentors who can share the experience of deep listening and bonding one-to-one, neighbor-to-neighbor. As a recent study has indicated in urban neighborhoods, people get involved in civic life when they see the people around them actively participating. (Kim, Yong-Chan, “A Storytelling Model of Civic Engagement in a Multiethnic Urban Space” http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/9/2/2/6/pages92263/p92263-3.php  p.3)

 

 

We want to bring as many people in the community in contact with one another, to listen to one another, and to share their stories and values.  Local skilled story interviewers are a tremendous asset if they are first viewed as citizens with stories to share and to listen to, and second as experienced practitioners of the art and craft of interviewing.

 

 

Note: The Case of the Local Oral History Buffs

 --If your community has an active oral history group, they might naturally gravitate to the story-interviewing project.  Spend time with them on understanding the relationship between past, present and future stories in Heart & Soul storytelling.

 

 

Paid professional story interviewers

 

Communities struggling to enlist volunteers might do well by hiring a professional story catcher (preferably local) to conduct the first handful of interviews, to edit them and to publish them and then to train and mentor volunteers. These stories will be beautifully told and presented, adding a luster to the project, and provide examples of the depth and length of Heart & Soul stories you seek. Hiring outsiders to do parts of the storytelling project takes some of the burden off busy volunteers, but you do risk losing important opportunities for community bonding and bridging. You also risk intimidating volunteers who will naturally compare their own story catching skills to those of the professionals and might balk at participating if they sense that their own interviewing or story editing skills are not up to snuff. 

 

 

Each community will have to weigh the relative importance of local volunteers against the need for professional assistance.  Some towns team with volunteers, or with people waiting for a project of this nature to come along, and so most of the story interviewing can and should be accomplished by community members.  Other towns do not have the same volunteer field and in these towns, paying a professional to oversee the story-interviewing project could well prove beneficial. You might be surprised by who lives in your community – it is well worth taking the time to discover and advertize for local expertise and interest. Paid professionals can also assist with the editing and produce an excellent larger piece, a community story, woven together from excerpts of the volunteers’ interviews, for public screenings in town and beyond. 

 

 

Volunteer Interviewers (Neighbor-to-Neighbor Interviewers)

 

Train a core group of volunteers, from across the community if at all possible—having the full community represented, not just as story holders, but also as active participants in the collecting of stories. Plan waves of story interviews, as volunteers feel more comfortable and inspired. By spreading the effort across the community, the story-interviewing project includes many groups, thereby creating a positive buzz about the project:  stories beget stories.

 

 

Elders and Youth Interviewers

 


 

Recruit a group of retirees and/or youth for the initial wave of story interviews.  Both groups seem to have a bit more time on their hands than those in the workforce and youth seem to have a knack of getting people to open up with stories. Training these groups together creates opportunities for inter-generational understanding and bridging as the youth learn the lessons of the past and the elders learn about growing up today. In practicing together by interviewing one another, the two groups gain new perspectives, and can open hearts and minds of the town as they weave a community experience across the generations. A key ingredient to a successful Heart & Soul storytelling project is bringing people together from across the community to experience the rich diversity of perspective and experience.

 

 

Retirees and youth –especially youth—have a way of getting people to share their stories.  Retirees often know how to listen well, to be patient with open silent spaces within an interview, and can be relaxed about equipment failure.  They often know how not to sweat the little stuff.  Youth interviewers often charm their subjects into telling their stories through their directness, lack of an agenda and the mere fact that they are volunteering for a town project.  Subjects relax with youth and do not feel pressured to have a “good story” or to tell it well—they share their experiences and views with youth well because they feel they are bringing something new to the interviewer, a story s/he has not yet heard, or a lesson or view that might serve the youth well.  Many youth have little fear around recording equipment, troubleshoot when there are technical difficulties, and enjoy the editing process. It is valuable to put the youth and retirees into teams, with the retirees focusing on question asking while the youth can operate camera and voice recorders and help with the questions. 

 

 

Note: Whichever way your town opts to launch a story-interviewing project, just keep in mind the time, effort and benefits.  Plan small and well to begin with, with the intention of growing the corps of interviewers and the bounty of stories collected in this intimate one-on-one process.

 

 



 

 

Tips

 

  • Show, don't tell.  Make it visual by helping us to see what you are describing.
  • Use the small details that tell the big stories--what do people really need to hear that makes this story unique?
  • Make sure the microphone is about six inches from the speaker.
  • Wearing headphones will ensure that you hear what is actually being recorded.
  • For interviewing tips, see here.
  • Podcasting, in Plain English, a wonderful video tutorial
  • OurMedia's Tips on Oral Histories 

 

 

 

Equipment Needs

 

  • Recorder

High quality: Digital Voice recorder; high-end digital video camera capturing sound only; high-end external microphone with DAT or computer. There are many excellent models out there, from Edirol, Sony, Marantz, H2,and Olympus.  The models change so frequently that it is a good idea to check with professional folklife centers (though they often recommend high-end models as they are professional ethnographers).  The same goes for microphones.

Medium Quality: iPod with iTalk

Medium-Poor Quality (depending on your computer)  Computer microphone

 

  • Headphones

Helpful while recording:you hear how the recording will sound

 

  • Editing Software

Audacity (free download and easy to use) :  How-to manual here.  A Google search will give you many options for free tips on Audacity.

Garageband (for MACS)

Many other free audio editors, listed at wikipedia

 

  • Storage space

Many online options including Soundcloud, The Internet Archive, OurMedia, Yodio

CDs

 

 

 

Publication Venues

 

Community Almanac

Website, Blogs and wikis

CD for the town

Radio: Example from Rural Voices Radio

Podcast or cellphone tours

 

 

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Quick Tips for Story Interviewers.doc

 



Quick Tips for Story Interviewers

 

The one-on-one story interviews work well with people who you wish to reach but will not necessarily come to you, people with stories essential to include in the larger project, and people who might well become significant participants once they trust you and understand the purpose of the project. They are wonderfully intimate, build bonds, and can give rich insight and detail to the project as a whole.

 

Many people want to tell stories of times past because those moments appear as crystallized story nuggets to them.  The present is much messier, and the future, well, unknown.  An interesting interview option would be to ask the interviewee to tell you the three kinds of stories--one about what was, one about what is, and one about what might be--and have fun with the third.  It's okay to dream a bit, but you can also ask for ideas about how the town might actually make that dream a reality.

 

There are advantages and disadvantages to knowing your interviewee. Your subject might trust you and open up more; you might be able to anticipate excellent questions if you already know a little something about the person and the story.  You and/or your interviewee might, however, leave important details out because they are known to you.

 

 

Preparing for the Interview

 

When making an appointment to interview someone, explain why you would like to conduct the interview and how you hope to use the interview.  Explain that you would like to record and publish the interview (explain if you will use a voice or video recorder and where you hope to publish the results), but that the subject has the right to ask that the interview be used only for information gathering and not for publication.

 

Location—Where will the sharer be comfortable, feel at ease? Do you want to take a walk to the place where the story occurred? (Think about possible noise interference and distractions.)  Will you collect ambient sounds? Will you take visuals of the location, of the storyteller?  (Take pictures at the end of the interview once the interviewee is comfortable).  Some interviewers like to schedule a visit a few days before the interview as way to get to know one another and to see the place.  Will there be other people around?  Will having family members or friends present help the interviewee feel comfortable?

 

Equipment—Familiarize yourself with the recording equipment.  Practice!  Test!

 

Questions—Prepare three-five questions that frame the purpose of the story (to explain a connection to Victor, an experience that reveals something the person wishes to change or to keep)—open-ended but focused questions work particularly well, to open the memory, the story, the connection.  Ask for examples; pursue interesting veins in follow-up questions: “Tell me more about…”  Reframe questions that the interviewee didn’t quite answer. Start with easy, factual questions.

 

 

Before the Start of the Interview

 

    * Think of the interview as an opportunity to make a connection with someone, to engage that person in this exciting community endeavor.

 

    * After thanking your subject for the honor of interviewing him/her, explain that you will be asking permission at the end of the interview to use the recording, so the interviewee can decide then about how public s/he wishes to go with the information.  Also ask if it would be okay to take a photograph of him/her to go with the interview as well as any collateral material.

 

    * Make sure you have all of your equipment set up and tested before starting the interview.  It can be distracting for your interviewee to see you paying as much (or more) attention to your recorder and mic and notes as to him/her.

 

    * Choose a quiet location without distracting ambient noise.

 

    * If you are videotaping the interview, make sure objects in the background will not distract viewers.  Make sure you have ample lighting.  Use a tripod.  Avoid zooming.

 

    * Start the recording before starting the interview.

 

 

Opening the Interview

 

    * Make sure you have the interviewee state his/her name.

 

    * Asking factual questions, who-what-where, about how long the person has lived here, etc can allow the person to get comfortable with you, the machine(s) and the warm up to the story.

 

    * Some questions to move into the heart of the interview: How has the community shaped you?  How have you shaped the community? Tell me about a time... Explain to me...

 

    * You could also show your subject some photos about which you would like to hear his/her stories.

 

 

 

 

During the Interview

 

    * Listen attentively with your body language as well as your ears and recording devices through eye contact and by nodding, smiling and leaning forward.  Be friendly and interested!

 

    * Do not interrupt your interviewee, but judge how much s/he will open up through conversation rather than through Q & A. Sometimes you will have to offer some of your own examples--but try to avoid directing attention to your opinion or your story.

 

    * To gather more precise detail:  Can you tell me more about that? What was so important about that particular event? Why is that a critical piece of the story?

 

    * Do not ask skewed questions that lead the interviewee to a specific answer.

 

    * Silence is okay.  Let your subject think a little.

 

    * If s/he gets off track, tactfully find a pause, and pull the focus back to the topic with a question, or a "I was really interested in what you said about..... Could you tell me more about that?

 

    * Keep checking in with well-being of your interviewee by reading his/her body language.  Do not fatigue someone!  

 

    * Its okay for you to jot down notes for follow-up questions, but remember to return your attention to your storyteller!                                  

 

 

Closing the Interview & Harvesting Values

 

    * What else should I have asked--did we miss anything?

 

    * Ask if you can take pictures of collateral materials (if any)

.

    * Show your appreciation and interest. 

 

    * Ask the sharer to put in a nutshell what s/he hopes s/he conveyed through the story. 

 

    * Harvest values using the sheet provided.

 

A Note on Harvesting Values

 

Working with storytellers to harvest the values from their stories ensures a measure of accuracy and specificity.  By using effective story-stirring prompts, listening actively and following up with a series of summarizing and clarifying questions, story catchers help the sharers tell a compelling story replete with supporting details, examples and explanations.  In addition, tellers retain ownership of their stories by explaining how the story reflects their connection to the town, the characteristics they value, and the hopes they have for the town’s future. Storytellers continue to be engaged in the process by seeing how their stories contribute to the tapestry being created of the town’s values, and in feeling listened to, understood and valued, they begin to trust the process and might even wish to become more deeply involved in civic life, embracing the social contract that makes thorny planning issues less daunting and less divisive.

 

You can then ask sharers to relate challenges to that value, or, if they have lived in the community for some time, their experience of that value through time. Ask newcomers to explain how their experience of that value differs from their experience of it where they used to live.

 

Idea: As we’ve seen elsewhere, maps help people people to think of their communities.  Images can lead people too much by suggesting a mood or a kind of experience, but maps present themselves neutrally and can help stir memory and story.  Bring a map and removable sticky dots and have sharers mark where they see and experience this value. Indeed, you could save these maps, and after the storytelling  and harvesting session, enter the dots of each person on a master map as a way of tracking the places associated with that value.  An added benefit of this exercise is that sharers will mark more than one place even if their story only touches upon a single location—a more detailed, accurate portrait of the value-in place can emerge from the full storytelling cycle.

 

Filing out the Form: Specific questions delivered on paper can come as a relief to sharers, who have shouldered the burden for bringing their story out into the air.  These questions can assist sharers pinpoint and expand on the details they glossed over in the original telling and help to reassure story catchers that even if they missed some opportunities during the storytelling to ask for clarification, additional detail or the like, they can return to the essential meaning of the story during this exercise.  Harvesting Values with Interviewee.doc

 

The important thing is to let sharers have ample opportunity to explain their story within the context of the Heart & Soul goals. The last thing you want to do is go merrily off with a fistful of stories, listen to

 

 

them later and assign them meanings that were never intended by the sharer. We want to be as mindful as we can of the teller’s intended meaning.

 

This particular form is meant for both sharer and listener/catcher to complete and thus gives both people a common task, and something to compare afterward. Useful for reflecting back on the stories and then looking ahead into the future based on that story, it also helps story sharers to feel that their stories are more than merely diverting, that what they mean and show matters. 

 

Tip: Showing the forms before the story interview can help the sharer understand the purpose of the interview and help them to settle on an effective, detailed story. It can also help you make a smooth transition from storytelling to value harvesting.

 

Tip:  Some people might balk at doing more than sharing a story.  They don’t want to have anything to do with deciphering its meaning and relationship to Heart & Soul Planning.  Make sure you ask them if they would permit you to analyze the story at a later time for the values it illustrates.

 

IDEA: If sharer and catcher have the time after comparing what they wrote, they could add a little brainstorming session, jotting down ideas for ways this value could be preserved or developed or found once again in the town.

 

 

After the Interview

 

Go over the release form and ask if s/he will sign it.  Also ask if s/he would like a copy of the interview as recorded, and then a copy of it once edited.

Envision Victor Story Gathering Sheets.xls  

 

Follow up with a thank-you note and copy of the interview.

 

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Story Interview Training Exercise.doc


Story Interview Training Exercise

 

Time: One Hour

 

Set-up: This exercise works well if participants are paired.  It is also possible to practice group interviews, in groups of four or five.  Following the interviews, form small groups of four-five; the full group will discuss results at the end.

 

Objectives: To develop skill as an active listener and question-asker; to explore an effective interview arc; and to develop sets of questions for story interviews

Instructions

 

The most promising questions are open-ended and allow the storyteller (interviewee) to take ownership of the interview/story.  Preparing the teller for the questions you will ask often leads to better answers.  We recommend sending out a list of questions before the interview.

 

1.  Think about the one story you would tell to illustrate ___________________________ in your community.

 

 

1.  Make a list of open-ended questions you think someone might wish to ask you about your story. (5 minutes)

 

2.  Without knowing your partner’s story, but knowing the topic and your own story, generate a list of questions to ask your partner, letting the kinds of questions you came up with for your own story help you write good questions.  (5 minutes)

 

3.  INTERVIEWS

 The goal is to keep the interview focused on getting the interviewee to tell the story

 in such a way that what the teller values about the community is detailed and clear,

 and the interviewee feels appreciated and heard.

 

a.  Partner A interviews Partner B, asking the questions prepared in #2, but departing from them when and if necessary.  Keep the interview goal in mind! Record using the Flip recorder. (10 minutes)

 

b.  Swap roles.  Interview. Record. (10 minutes)

 

c.  In small groups, discuss what you learned about asking questions and listening—what did you notice about yourselves and one another as interviewers and interviewees?  What did each role tell you about the other? Which were useful questions?  Which questions and kinds of questions did not accomplish much in the time allotted?  What did you learn or notice about how to listen well?

 

4.  Large-group discussion (20 minutes)

As the small groups share the lessons learned, the workshop leader will write them down:

  • Techniques for starting the interview well:
  • Kinds of useful questions
  • Less useful questions
  • Good listening strategies
  • Poor listening strategies
  • The story of an interview:  How to start, keep things moving on track while honoring the voice of the interviewee, and end the interview

 

5.  Refer to the Tip Sheet for more ideas about listening and asking good questions.

 

Document Version for Download Exercise Three.doc

 

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