Mark Lyons (pictured here with BuildaBridge Teaching Artist Julie Rosen) of the Philadelphia Storytelling Project demonstrated the power of storytelling Saturday January 28, 2012 at the BuildaBridge House. The 3-hour workshop covered the fundamentals of storytelling, how to integrate it into the arts or other programs, and examples of computer-based tools to mix audio with other art forms. Participants developed questions for interviews, practiced the art of storytelling, played back the stories, and discussed the outcomes as group.
Specifically, the goals of the training included:
- Learning transformative possibilities of using storytelling when working with youth and adults.
- Integrating the BuildaBridge model into their storytelling work, emphasizing hope, dreaming of a better future, affirmation and honoring of each of our life stories and reflection.
- Integrating storytelling into the various art forms used for healing purposes
- Utilizing computer-based tools to mix audio stories and other art forms, visual arts, photography, dance and music.
- Developing a lesson plan for integrating audio storytelling into their current art discipline.
Mark Lyons is co-director of the Philadelphia Storytelling Project, which uses digital storytelling in their work with teens and adult learners in summer workshops, computer courses and ESL classes. Participants write stories or interview others about their immigrant experience, record, edit and mix their stories, and create short audio stories. He also does workshops with teachers on doing community oral histories. He is the co-editor of Espejos y Ventanas / Mirrors and Windows, Oral Histories of Mexican Farmworkers and Their Families,which is published in Spanish and English.
He has worked in the Latino community for the last twenty five years, as a health worker and community organizer. For eight years he was the director of the Farmworkers Health and Safety Institute, a consortium of grass-roots organizations in the U.S. and the Caribbean. The Institute trained farmworkers to use theater and other popular education methods to train other farmworkers concerning health and safety issues such as pesticides, field sanitation, housing, drinking water, HIV/AIDS and workers’ rights. He also worked for several years in a community health center, as a provider and health planner.
Mark is also a fiction writer who has published several short stories, and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He is a recipient of Pennsylvania Council of the Arts fellowships for 2003 and 2009, and the J.P. McGrath Memorial Award from Whetstone Magazine.