Get an idea of what a successful storytelling initiative looks like as it relates to cultural organizations, museums, and communities in towns across the United States through a project called "Be Here: Main Street," a collaboration with MuseWeb and the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program. Learn tools for posting and sharing stories, including favored social media platforms and mobile apps.

1. Are there examples of
successful cultural storytelling
projects? Heather Shelton, Digital Curator
MuseWeb Foundation

2. Beginning in 2011, Museum on Main Street (MoMS)
at the Smithsonian began gathering stories from people
in communities hosting their traveling exhibitions.
About topics such as:
• Food
• Journeys
• Sports
• Music
• Work
• Water
More than 1,100
people recorded
stories.

3. Here’s are a few sample
stories:
Stories are snapshots of people’s experiences in small-town
America, not hard dates and facts.
Anywhere between 20 seconds and 3 minutes, these casual
stories were prompted by broad themes that related to MoMS
traveling exhibitions and small-town life in general.
Storytellers created their own narratives. They told stories
about their own towns, families, and relationships, in their
own words.
This is cultural storytelling.

4. How were these
stories collected?
Nuts and bolts.

5. Stories were gathered using
an innovative tool that
allowed people to instantly
listen to and record their
stories. The first version of
the app reached #24 on
Apple’s Educational Pick List.
Today, the app is called
“Be Here Stories”.

6. Museums and communities
that hosted MoMS
exhibitions were given iPads,
loaded with the app, and
asked to collect stories at
events.
It was an opportunity for many cultural
organizations to truly connect and hear from
people in the community. Some towns—like
Alpena, Michigan, and Jamestown, Tennessee,
gathered hundreds of stories!

7. Once recorded, all stories
now appear on a national
map, tied to the locations
where they were told.
The stories help create an authentic
sense of place, created not by the
media or by tourists, but by the
people who live in a town.

8. Realizing that this was a
powerful way for small towns to
help drive the narrative about
their communities . . .
MoMS added an on-the-ground, human element to
the app in 2017.
With help from the MuseWeb Foundation and the
Minnesota Humanities Center, they enlisted a small
team of storytellers in Minnesota to bring the idea
of community storytelling to towns hosting the
Water/Ways exhibition.
And, the Be Here: Main Street project was born, the
next iteration of the original Stories from Main
Street project.

9. These local project directors
worked with communities to
talk about how storytelling
could empower the
community and capture
important histories.
Some sponsored workshops
or storytelling circles, and
others came together to make
food and tell stories.

10. “The events we created did draw people together.”
“One of the coordinators also found renewed inspiration for launching
her bread-baking business in the midst of this project, and conversations
about place and story were important to her confidence in getting herself
out to local farmers markets and events.”
–Shanai Matteson

11. “This has been a catalyst for bringing
people together.” –Shanai Matteson
The Be Here: Main Street ambassadors in Minnesota, Shanai
Matteson and Ben Weaver, connected with people in myriad
ways, hosting . . .
Storytelling music performances
Storytelling nights at a local bowling alley
Storytelling activities at local nursing homes
Storytelling discussions at women’s poetry clubs
Storytelling and bread baking and soup making activities
Storytelling workshops and listening circles

12. “This project gave me a
deeper awareness of the
needs and challenges
that other organizations
and communities are
facing in Red Wing.”
Whatever your storytelling focus—
history, water, work, or something
completely different–the act of coming
together to think and listen, can
achieve the following:
• Create a sense of shared purpose
• Reinforce the importance of local
culture
• Build trust among disparate groups
• Open people’s mind to similarities
between people of different groups
• Bring people face to face
• Make people think outside of
themselves and their immediate
families
-Be Here: Main Street participant

13. The nationwide
Be Here: Main Street project
is changing the way people
think about small towns by
sharing your stories with
listeners across the world.
Outside of Minnesota

14. To date . . .
Hundreds of stories about small-town life,
told by people in places like Alpena, Michigan; Orange
Mound, Tennessee; and Lewiston, Maine, have been shared
on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
SoundCloud, YouTube, and Wikimedia.
More than 300,000 Twitter and Facebook users
have seen Be Here: Main Street content and stories.
Those stories resulted in 4,200+ likes, shares, and
comments about the project and its stories.

15. With Be Here: Main Street,
stories can be used to build:
What are the benefits
to communities?
• Shareable audio playlists
• Local exhibition content
• Digital collections
• Cultural radio stations featuring local stories
• Mobile app tours of your town
• Long-term collecting initiatives outside the confines of a single
exhibition
And, these are all free or low-cost outcomes!

16. How can you replicate this
project?

17. 1. Be open to
experimentation.
“Stories have to be
told or they die,
and when they die,
we can't remember
who we are
or why we're
here.”
-Sue Monk Kidd,
author, The Secret
Life of Bees
The Be Here: Main Street project has been through many ups and
downs, fits and starts. It’s okay. You won’t get it perfect right away.

18. 2. Determine what the goal of your story
collecting initiative is.
It could be to:
Create a sense of camaraderie in your community
Build or diversify your audience
Expose more people in the community to local history
Encourage people to invest in local business
Explore a critical problem facing your community
THINK BIG, and the build your strategy for collecting
based on your goals.

19. Will you . . .
Accession them as part of your collection?
Publish them or post them somewhere?
Include them in an exhibition?
Make them part of a tour of your town?
Whatever you decide, make sure people
know what your goals are and what you
plan to do with the stories.
3. Think about what you will
do with the stories?

20. 4. Explore new partnerships.
Everybody, everybody has a story.
Could you work with local businesses to tell their stories about
how they came to own that business or what is was like to
purchase a historic building? What about asking local leaders
how they came to get involved in the community, or simply,
what their favorite local places are?
Getting stories from unexpected partners encourages authentic
investment from unlikely sources.
Teachers and students can get involved in story collection too.
Have teachers create assignments for doing oral histories that
can feed your cultural organization.

21. Supported by Smithsonian
Stories: YES
Student Storytelling
Since 2012, hundreds of young people in 15 states have created digital
stories and shared them online through the Smithsonian’s Stories: Yes!
project, sponsored by Museum on Main Street.
Each winter, young people across the country engage their communities
to discover and digitally document their unique history by utilizing new
professional equipment.
Organizations hosting a MoMS exhibition are invited by Humanities
Councils to submit a proposal for Stories: YES.

22. 5. Think about equipment.
Do you have pro equipment?
If not, use a simple smartphone to
record stories.
On iOS, use Recorder+ or Mp3 Recorder
to capture easily transferable files.
On Android, use Audio Recorder or Easy
Voice Recorder
> BBC tips on audio recording.

23. 5. Organize events to collect
stories
Whether it’s an exhibition opening
or dedicated storytelling event,
make story collection a legitimate
part of our program

24. 6. Record!
Make sure people are aware that you won’t monetize the stories.
Have a release form giving permission to use the content. (The Be Here Stories app has
a terms of use agreement embedded in the tool).
Give yourself options for future use by taking a photo of the storyteller or securing a
photo of their choosing so that you can represent the story in digital form.
Have a back-up recorder or additional devices available if you are saving the stories on
your phone, camera, or other recorder. (The Be Here Stories app eliminates this need
because content is saved in the cloud.)
Transfer the stories to computer or hard drive as soon as possible so that the task is
not forgotten or placed on the back burner.

25. Tips for Recording:
What noise?
If you’re recording at a loud event, hold the phone or
recorder VERY close to the speakers’ mouth!
Don’t cough, interrupt or otherwise talk over the
speaker.
Try not to move around too much, picking up the sound
of clothing.
Use a smartphone lavalier microphone (starting at $20)
to plug into your phone and clip to the speaker’s collar.

26. 7. Get a good story.
Let people find their own voices.
How, not what.
Details and sensory experiences.
Ask about places, foods, the things we all love.
“I think better stories come from speaking or writing in our own voices, and not trying to
sound a particular way, or to censor ourselves for a perceived audience.
Tell the story as you’d tell it to someone close to you. Talk about your own experience, and if
you want to, how that experience changed you.
I try to discourage stories about other people’s experiences.” –Shanai Matteson
Read the full article: https://www.museweb.us/storytelling-tips/

27. Don’t worry if they’re not all
perfect, high-quality stories.
There are always a few of these.

28. Create a SoundCloud channel.
Make a free mobile tour of your stories, using
izi.travel, TipTour, or PocketSights.
Upload to the Museum on Main Street website.
Museumonmainstreet.org
Make your stories into an exhibit onto themselves,
featuring photos of the storytellers.
8. Publish: What will you
do with the stories?
Exhibit from Georgia Tech and izi.Travel mobile tour

29. 9. Post to all social media!
Where is your organization active on social?
Write compelling, click-worthy headlines that bring in issues of
the day, tie into popular trends or anniversaries, or celebrate
local landmarks and institutions.
“Happy birthday to Pauline’s bakery at 123 Main Street. Pauline
Grafton opened her now famous sweet shop on this day in
1923. Listen to her granddaughter talk about their secret recipe
for Maryland’s best doughnuts and how Pauline followed her
dreams to make them.”

30. Create a hashtag for your
stories so you can keep track
of them across platforms.
Our hashtag is
#bHereMainSt

31. Keep posting and sharing, even
if it seems that the “payback” is
small.
Eventually, word will spread
that you’re listening to people
and gathering stories.
After about one year of sharing content for the
#BHereMainSt project, this is what we saw.
*Basic access to analytics come free in Twitter,
Instagram, and Facebook

32. 10. Don’t give up.
Think about story collection as a long-term prospect. It
doesn’t have to be confined to a singular exhibition or fund
raising campaign.
Storytelling can be part of a larger, sustained initiative to
engage the community in an authentic, two-way dialogue.

33. Let’s work on a
sample story.
1. Try the Be Here Stories app.
2. See it on the map. https://museweb.us/be-
here-stories/map.html
3. Use a file to upload to SoundCloud.
4. Finally, we’ll post it on social media.
5. Find resources at
https://www.museweb.us/be-here-main-
street-resources/
Heather Shelton
@MuseumsAgo on Twitter
804.741.1978
heather@museweb.us