The Urban Stories Project is a program in which we use creative exercises to share our individual experiences and stories and then develop an artistic piece - performance, film, poetry- using elements of those stories.

 

The Urban Stories Project is inspired by the Life Stories program of The Theatre Lab School of the Dramatic Arts in Washington DC.  There are many expressions of the Urban Stories Project. Its mission is to give voice to the marginalized, and participants have included inner-city middle school and high school students, first generation American immigrants and formerly incarcerated women, just to name a few. 

 

The benefits for participants include:

• Help in expressing difficult and perhaps painful experiences in a safe space as a step toward healing

• Improvement of both spoken and written communications skills

• Strengthened sense of community because of the sharing involved

• Increased self-confidence

• Increased empathy from hearing each other’s stories and realizing that they have more in common than they have differences