Cover of The House of Dance & Feathers catalogue - NSP 2008
If you don’t yet know about the Neighborhood Story Project (NSP) – then this blog post is for you. Based in New Orleans Lousianna, NSP is a project at the intersection of education, collaborative anthropology, community development and the making of locally relevant literature.
Their own self-description is: “through writing, interviews, and photograph, neighborhood writers create portraits of our places, then edit the stories with the neighborhoods to make sure we get it right. We publish the books and have block parties to celebrate.” Their tag line sums up the heart of participatory documentary practices: Our Stories Told By Us…
I’m lucky enough to be about to spend a month in New Orleans and be around when the NSP launch their next books, written by young people about their neighborhoods as part of the book making program at John McDonogh Senior High. The first set of books made in this program are now know as Before the Storm and are a set of 5 books written by young new orleanians in the years before Hurricane Katrina. The next ones are due to come out in early December and are the culmination of 2 years work with a group of young students. You can read a little about their workshop process in this program by clicking here.
NSP doesn’t just work with young people – they respond to requests from community and neighborhood groups in their region and beyond to work with them to author their own books, posters and stories. In an ongoing collaboration between NSP and my work in the Kimberley, Rachel Breunlin (Co-director of NSP) came to Derby in the Kimberley, Western Australia, in mid 2008 and collaborated with Side by Side Community Project Consulting and local Derby Aboriginal organisation Jalaris Aboriginal Corporation to use the NSP writing workshop model to make a book about Aboriginal women’s experiences of education in the Kimberley. You can read more about the Singing Out book project here….
Sale of books from NSP goes towards funding their ongoing work – check out the books they have for sale on their website.
[...] – especially for young people – has more advocates in the USA than in Australia. My last post about the Neighborhood Story Project is an example of a project that has a partnership with a high school to engage young people in [...]