On the UMBC campus, storywork has been integrated into pedagogy, methodology, activism, collaboration, and preservation. For over 15 years various entities at UMBC have hosted Digital Storytelling workshops which have led to the utilization of storytelling as a key tool in knowledge integration, or the way that we personally interact with content knowledge in the classroom and in the world. Faculty, staff, and students from undergraduate up through doctoral studies have used Digital Storytelling and other methods of storytelling including oral history, visual storytelling, visual mapping tools, and others as a method for conducting research, as a tool for connecting to our broader community, and as a way of understanding the world and our diverse knowledge systems.
The idea of a Public Stories Lab or PSL crystallized when a group of Language, Literacy and Culture (LLC) doctoral students, including Jamie Gillan, Charlotte Keniston, and Kaleigh Mrowka conceptualized a hub for publicly engaged storywork on campus. Along with their mentors (Bev Bickel, LLC; Bill Shewbridge, MCS; and Tania Lizarazo, MLLI), they received seed funding from the Jodi Crandall Research Fellowship to engage in a Listening Tour of other university-based storytelling labs and subsequently identify best practices for an interdisciplinary hub where undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff work together toward a common goal, sharing resources, ideas, and mutual support.
The Public Stories Lab launched formally at UMBC in the Fall of 2024 with a series of events that included skill sharing sessions, conversations with storytelling professionals, and a year-end storytelling mini festival.