Grand Re-Opening for the website/interactive archive for my 1500 Stories project

1500 Stories is a digital storytelling and collaborative art project about economic inequality in the U.S. I first conceived of the project back in 2015 and in the last 5 years, over 700 stories have been contributed to the project. Thank to support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and beautiful work by the Design Action Cooperative, a worker owned design and communications firm, the project has a gorgeous new website designed to give you a sense of widening economic inequality and to humanize that gap through stories. The website features just a few of those 700 stories, in audio, video, text and visual arts formats (with many more to come!) and is a wonderful resource for exploring what it’s like to live at different economic positions in the U.S. In this time of isolation and polarization, this is an opportunity to connect with lives very different than your own!

Two big boosts to my work: A Belle Foundation for Cultural Development grant and a Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty fellowship

This news from from the Belle Foundation came at the tail end of a two week long bout of the flu in which I was questioning my life choices and what it means to pursue a second shift of artmaking on top of my day job as a sociology instructor. I feel so so grateful for the encouragement that this grant represented to me and am using the grant to develop my printmaking practice and hire an animator for my historical documentary called The Spider Web that is currently in post-production. Since the letter from the Belle Foundation, I also was one of 26 inaugural fellows nationwide awarded a 2019 Mellon Foundation/American Council of Learning Societies Community College Faculty Fellowship, which I will be using to begin reading and analyzing the now 600+ interviews contributed to the 1500 Stories project in order to develop a public sociology podcast about the lived experience of economic inequality in the U.S. It is ridiculously exciting to be facing the prospect of having the time to delve into the stories collected by volunteers in New Jersey, Wisconsin and the Silicon Valley. You can read the abstract for my Mellon/ACLS project here.

In This Together: Working in Silicon Valley, a community gathering on 2/28/19

How can we thrive, and not just survive, in the Silicon Valley?  Join the 1500 Stories Project in partnership with Silicon Valley Rising and the Tech Workers Coalition for an evening of community building around economic inequality in the Silicon Valley.  Come share your work stories, meet others in your community and discover ways to make a difference. On Thursday February 28, 2018 from 6:30-8:30pm in the theater lobby at Mexican Heritage Plaza, we invite you to In This Together: Working in Silicon Valley.  1500 Stories is a collaborative art and digital storytelling project about economic inequality in the U.S. 1500 Stories is honored to partner for this public forum with Silicon Valley Rising, a coalition that works to reduce occupational segregation and income inequality by raising wages and creating affordable housing, and with the Tech Workers Coalition, a coalition of workers and organizers in and around the tech industry working for social justice, workers’ rights and economic inclusion.  Visit 1500stories.org,  https://www.siliconvalleyrising.org/, and https://www.techworkerscoalition.org/ to learn more.  These forums are made possible by support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities (www.calhum.org); views expressed at the forum do not necessarily represent those of Cal Humanities or the NEH.  Contact jennifermyhre@1500stories.org with questions and RSVP at https://www.facebook.com/events/295751351085449/

This year for Giving Tuesday, help 1500 Stories give voice to economic inequality

If you believe in the power of stories to build empathy across our differences, consider making a donation to the 1500 Stories project. 1500 Stories is a collaborative art and digital storytelling project about economic inequality in the U.S. So, far we have collected nearly 500 stories from people living at different economic positions in the Silicon Valley, New Jersey and Wisconsin. Your donation can help us share those stories with the world! If you aren’t ready to donate, you can still become advocate for the project by sharing the Giving Tuesday campaign within your social networks. Go to:

https://www.givecampus.com/schools/FoothillDeAnzaFoundation/1500-stories

1500 Stories makes an appearance at the Euphrat Museum of Art

Come see the first artwork to result from the 1500 Stories project on exhibit in the Justice for All? show this winter at the Euphrat Museum of Art from February 1-March 23rd.   For more information about the show, visit http://www.deanza.edu/euphrat/inthemuseum.html. This piece is a collaborative work designed by me using photographs contributed to 1500 Stories by De Anza students as part of a documentary photography project called Visualizing Economic Inequality.  Each pair of images documents an aspect of contemporary economic inequality while the overall design mimics the distribution of population and wealth in the U.S.  Feel free to join us at the reception on February 16 from 5:30-7:30pm.  Learn more about 1500 Stories, or make a donation, at https://1500stories.org/