Ruhr Storytelling Workshop – Voices, Memories, Archives and Empowerment

The first question is always: How can we tell our own story?

The Geschichtenwerkstatt Ruhr project offers marginalised communities a space to tell their own stories outside of official narratives. The aim is to learn from practical experience for practical application, to document lived knowledge, and to develop an accessible toolbox for remembrance work.

This toolbox is aimed at individuals, associations, collectives and activists from established structures as well as from smaller or informal initiatives, and offers a practical tool for collecting, developing and making stories visible.

Within the project, remembrance work is understood as an open process that enables diverse stories which do not originate solely from experts or follow rigid chronologies. Sharing one’s own experiences is understood as an act of resistance, community-building, and recognition and appreciation.

A young woman stands infront of a wall of fabrics and reads a small magazine. — © Calvin Adjetey Hein

To produce the Tools to Remember guide, a series of five workshops and public discussions was organised, each focusing on a different method of community-based history work. The invited experts, who have been working with communities for many years, shared their experiences, which formed the basis for the Tools to Remember podcast. The methods were then put into practice during the subsequent workshops.