This workshop introduces participants to concepts of: co-creation, shared authority and reciprocity in oral history. It will discuss co-creation as a tool for anti-oppression in interviewing and oral history production; helping narrators express their identities and break-free of traditional narratives providing them with a space to be heard when sharing their stories.
The workshop will draw on examples from different co-created projects and their designs, guiding participants to develop their own understanding of the different aforementioned concepts.
It will focus on two layers:
- Placing the narrator at the center, challenging stereotyped narratives
- Engaging with the narrator in the design and production of the project
Workshop goals:
Attitudes: the willingness to be flexible and responsive to changes
Skills: the ability to design a co-created oral history project, the ability to manage project expectations
Knowledge: understanding concepts of co-creation, shared authority and reciprocity within the scope of oral history
Nairy AbdElShafy is an Egyptian educator, oral historian and social researcher. She draws from her experience in volunteering and working with refugees through different local NGOs in Egypt and international humanitarian organizations to attempt at a documentation of identity and movement narratives for social change. She has worked on documenting personal stories within different communities: Nubians, Palestinian, and Syrian refugees in Egypt; Nepalis, Salvadorans and Puerto Ricans in the U.S. She appreciates food, enjoys travel, and believes one has to be laid back to be able to take on life and take in its beauty. She holds an MA in Oral History from Columbia University and a BSc. of Political Science from Cairo University. She’s currently the Oral History Coordinator at the Education 2.0 Research and Documentation Project; documenting the current Egyptian educational reforms.
These events are open to all. For more information or if we can make any of these events more accessible to you please contact Rebecca McGilveray at rlm2203@columbia.edu.
This event will be recorded. As with our oral history interviews, we will wait until after the event to determine with the guest(s) whether or not they want to share the recording more publicly. You can follow our social media channels/mailing list for updates on if/when recordings are made available!
We have shifted the way we pay instructors for this series and how we charge participants. This shift was influenced by Sarah Dziedzic and Jess Lamar Reece Holler's work on equity budgeting for oral historians, and building on the broader legacy of oral history economic justice organizing & praxis developed by the Marion Voices Folklife + Oral History Program, the Oral History Undercommons working group, Danielle Dulken, the OHA’s Independent Practitioner Task Force, and informal and candid conversations initiated by students and graduates of the OHMA program -- all inspired by decades of BIPOC-led movement work advocating for fair pay for labor.
In the past we paid $500/workshop, as an honorarium. We are now asking instructors to self identify as either a full-time salaried employee who should receive an honorarium or a freelancer who should be paid a fee for service, and we are offering each freelance instructor $1200. This reflects the fact that freelancers have additional expenses (health insurance, equipment, office space, self-employment taxes) to do the same work as salaried employees.
We are also committed to making these workshops as broadly accessible as possible, so we are offering an option of free registration for those who could not otherwise attend, with a sliding scale suggested donation of $20-$100 per workshop. We encourage you to pay what you can to support fair pay for our instructors as well as free registration for those who need it.
In the past we have used these workshops to raise money for financial aid for OHMA students. In order to pay instructors fairly, we have committed to finding other ways to raise these funds. Any money we make from this series beyond that required to pay instructors will be used to continue to build and deepen this work through, for example, paying for interpretation for workshops.
Sponsored by: OHMA and
