The LAVA Center is excited to present a workshop led by folklorists/oral historians Carrie and Michael Kline. The Klines work to illuminate various aspects and history of the Connecticut River Valley and the people who live here.
Michael Kline was staff folklorist for the Pioneer Valley Folklore Society in the 1990s. Now, after decades of living and working in West Virginia, Eastern Pennsylvania and Southern Maryland, the Klines have returned to Western Mass. On Sunday, Oct. 27, they teach their approach to interviewing in a five-hour introductory workshop they call “Listening for a Change.” With over thirty years’ experience, the Klines gather what they call “oral testimonials.” Their aim is to include and illuminate voices and views usually excluded from public discourse and policy-making.
As interviewers, Micheal and Carrie Kline aspire to create a spacious environment for narrators to arrange their own telling, assuming responsibility for what they say and how they say it. This is best achieved through intensive, non-verbal listening and suppression of questions and comments on the part of the interviewer. Sound simple?
Come join the training and find out how to document life stories and experience through the art of deep listening. Explore the means and purposes of story gathering. The Klines are eager and excited to work with participants to develop profound listening skills and approaches to interviewing which get beyond the mere informational listings of greats and dates to a deeper sense of meaning.
Trusting their subjects as experts on their own experience and informed conveyors of family lore and local knowledge, the Klines facilitate oral tellings with active, though largely non-verbal, responses. By keeping questions to a minimum and suspending judgements, they are able to travel a magical journey that comes with delivering a life story testimonial.
Come and learn and share in this process, and take on an oral history project of your own or forge one together!
This programming is made possible by a grant from Mass Humanities, with funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and The Markham-Nathan Fund For Social Justice. The LAVA Center strives to make its programming and events accessible to the widest possible range of community members.
