Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I am grateful that I can spend time with people I love, eat delicious food, and remember the blessings in my life. I love having the Macy’s parade and the football games on the TV in the background as I prepare for our guests.
Now that we host the family meal, though, it takes some effort for me to be intentional ALSO about capturing memories on that day.
So this year we’re taking part in “The Great Thanksgiving Listen.”
All we need is a smartphone, the free StoryCorps mobile app, and some participants. We will record interviews with loved ones that we can relive years later. And having these stories – in participants’ voices – will be a treasure.
The app suggests questions, or we can choose our own. Also included are tips for preparing for interviews and best practices when recording. “The Great Thanksgiving Listen” is open to anyone and has captured more than 75,000 interviews.
That’s quite a lot.
If you haven’t heard of StoryCorps, it is a global platform for listening, connecting and sharing the human experience. More than 60,000 interviews from more than 100,000 individuals have been recorded since 2003 through mobile recording booths. Those booths traveled across the United States and some permanent ones were set up in major cities.
But since 2015, the StoryCorps app has puts the gift of storytelling into our own hands. It’s “a way for individuals to connect in a meaningful way with those close to them, and to gain insight into the lives of others.” Completed interviews can be uploaded to the StoryCorps website archives at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress if desired.
I hope to enlist the help of my children to record interviews with my parents, who are local, and my husband’s parents, who live across the country.
Would you like to participate too?
Who Will You Interview for the Great Thanksgiving Listen?
You can download the free app from the App Store or Google Play and learn from the StoryCorps archive and the Great Thanksgiving Listen website.
So who would you like to interview using the StoryCorps app? About what aspect of their life would you like to learn? How could this connect your loved ones in a more meaningful way this holiday?
Thanks for stopping by. I’m Amy Hoogervorst, integrative health coach and certified personal photo organizer. Stories, photos, and memories long have been part of my life. If you’d like to know more about the work that I do after exploring my website, please contact me and also subscribe to my updates. I’d love to hear from you.
