Join GroundswellNYC for our first local gathering of the new year!

WHERE: Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, 155 Avenue C.

WHEN: January 22, 6:30-8:30

WHAT: Allison Corbett and Paul VanDeCarr will share strategies for funding oral history for social change work, from grassroots to grantwriting.

Please bring some food or drink to share.

Since 2000, Paul VanDeCarr has worked as a writer and strategist for nonprofits in the areas of media, arts, and religion. He wrote the Working Narratives guide for grantmakers on Storytelling and Social Change, and authored or co-authored such publications asMedia and Movement Building (Auburn Media), Communicating for Impact: Strategies for Grantmakers (GrantCraft), and The Prenups: What Filmmakers and Funders Should Talk About Before Tying the Knot (Active Voice). He has worked in diverse storytelling forms, including for playwright/actress Anna Deavere Smith and the Columbia Center for Oral History, and has trained nonprofit groups in storytelling and media production. He has master’s degrees from the Divinity School and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Allison Corbett received a BA in Hispanic Studies and American Studies from the College of William and Mary in 2009 and is currently an Oral History MA candidate at Columbia University in New York City. She has spent over 8 years working in Latin America and Latino communities in VA, Chicago, and Washington, DC as an educator, interpreter, and sometime-documentarian. She is particularly interested in traumatic political memory in the Southern Cone. Her (partially crowdfunded) thesis explores the intersection of collective memory and urban space in Argentina, and will lead to a documentary film based on her interviews. She currently works as a freelance Spanish interpreter in New York City, and is a member of the Oral History Collective. She is excited about the ways that oral history can be used as a tool for community transformation and activism.