Community Berry Stories

The Alaska Communities of Writing (CoW) program and Winterberry Citizen Science have teamed up to think about reducing barriers to diverse participation in citizen science. Dr. Sarah Stanley, UAF English Department, has created a unique platform for communities involved in the Winterberry Citizen Science project to share their stories about berries. During the 2017 fall kick off season, Winterberry communities of Metlakatla, Sitka, and Fairbanks shared stories about a resource most Alaskans value greatly during community story sharing events. Youth participants involved in Winterberry are encouraged to bring their families, and the whole community is invited to attend. The events are held in a community gathering spaces that attract a large diversity of community members, such as a public library, berry-themed snacks are served, and all are welcome to learn more about how berries are changing across Alaska and share their own personal stories about berries.

Youth and adults who attend the event are guided through writing prompts that help them identify a story, real or imagined, they want to share about berries. They create a symbol of their story using felt, a medium that is used as a metaphor for the feelings the story convey. The story is not just told, but felt.

They then situate their story on a landscape also made of felt, to show that their story connects to a larger community of stories and is important. They stories are shared across communities using the interactive web-based platform, in which a photo of the felt symbol for each story is placed with the recording of the story in a 360 photo of the Winterberry Citizen Science Monitoring site for that community.

Go to the full Winterberry Story Gallery.

Berry Stories shared from Sitka, Alaska