Writing Workshop: Samuel Love

Event Details

In this workshop, Sam will share best practices (and occasional failed approaches) from more than three decades of experience as an oral historian. Producing a good oral history involves more than just pressing record and asking a few questions. Sam will cover the process of conducting an oral history project, from selecting the right topic to preserving your work for posterity. At the end of the workshop participants will learn how to build enthusiasm for the project, how to make their potential respondents comfortable, how to develop open-ended questions that yield detailed, thoughtful answers, and tips for preserving and promoting the finished project. Far more than just an academic practice, oral histories are useful in producing family histories, community history projects, and for preserving institutional memory and wisdom of community organizations and businesses.

SAMUEL LOVE is a social practice artist from Gary, Indiana who organizes public projects that connect communities to their cultural histories through publishing, multi-media installations, and performance. He is a 2019-2020 fellow with the Center for Community Progress Community Revitalization Fellowship and the Indiana Arts Commission On Ramp Fellowship and is the editor of the forthcoming Gary Anthology for Belt Publishing.