Week 3: Emily Priebe

Rethinking literacy. Mapping Memories defines this as one of their mandates. I found this to be one of the most profound concepts behind the projects that we watched this week. As we’ve talked about, storytelling has evolved and our relationship to story has changed powered largely by the technology we use to tell stories. Mapping Memories offered the following explanation, which I found particularly meaningful:

“If the next generation is watching, listening, and producing as much as they are reading, we must develop new tools for critical literacy and for understanding the terms of these tools and platforms. Integrating these tools into the classroom or community group, in combination with personal narratives, is a meaningful way to broaden notions of literacy, to introduce critical social issues, and to raise questions around voice, truth, ethics, history, and intellectual property.”

The idea of literacy is no longer confined to whether or not you can understand the written word; it’s about understanding the meaning behind a wide variety of platforms, and understanding how to give meaning to stories using the unique properties of a given medium. The Mapping Memories project is certainly taking this challenge on, using video, in person speaking engagements, interactive online components, books, and more to convey their message.

The Interview Project and the CDS carried on representing this new idea of what literacy means. I saw both projects as almost spoken letters to future generations. The Interview Project gave people ownership over some part of their legacy by asking them how they wanted to be remembered. By offering stories from all over the country, our overall understanding of the project is enhanced. It was fascinating to go from one video interviewing a young woman full of optimism and potential as she waxed poetic about her free spirit and wanderlust, to another of a homeless man in Portland, whose life had perhaps not ended up they way he thought it would. Watching the Interview Project was absorbing because depending on what order you watch the videos in, you might pick up completely different veins of stories. The dichotomy of young vs. old, the reflections of lives well spent, and remorse over chances not taken were all tracks and themes I picked up during the viewings.

 

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