Story Movements 2024
Our 2024 Story Movements convening took place on March 7th and 8th at Planet Word Museum in Washington D.C.. This year’s convening brought together people from the worlds of tech, comedy, media, activism, philanthropy, filmmaking, and more to share and examine how storytelling can impact the world and create social change. We also enjoyed standup from a stellar lineup of comedians in our comedy show, “Oh, We Can Joke About That?” proving that humor can be a powerful tool to help inspire important conversations.
Story Movements 2021
In 2021, CMSI gathered a group of media makers across a broad continuum of talent to share their culture work, storytelling best practices, outreach strategies, and media technologies. In the act of coming together for two days, filmmakers, movement communicators, comedians and journalists generated new ideas for using evocative storytelling to inspire deep conversations in our communities and propel social and cultural change.
Story Movements 2019
The convening hosted a wide spectrum of social justice-oriented media makers — including documentary film, and journalists to podcasters, and movement communicators, and comedians, and community organizers, and technologists — who were all using the power of media to shift and shape culture and policy and hold power to account. “Most conferences are focused on the challenges of this new [digital] ecosystem,” said Jennifer Humke, senior program officer at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, who directs the Participatory Civic Storytelling program, that supports Story Movements. “But I think it’s just as important to bring like-minded people together to say: ‘how can we take advantage of opportunities afforded by these new forms of media making and distribution to create a more pluralistic and inclusive democracy?’ And I think that is what sets this conference apart.”
Story Movements 2016
Story Movements is a catalytic two-day convening that examines platforms and genres of civic media storytelling through the lens of contemporary struggles for social justice. From documentary film to investigative journalism to virtual reality to participatory storytelling to persuasive gaming to photography, the convening examines and captures the current and future-looking moment in story-led demands for social change.