Listen. Share.
Your story is you. Be heard.
Our mission is to preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people fostering compassion and empathy.
Sheboygan Stories is an oral history project that gives ordinary people the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of their lives.
Sheboygan is an interesting community. We’re only about 50000 people living on Lake Michigan about halfway between Milwaukee and Green Bay in Wisconsin. Our history includes everything from the first professional basketball team in the country, to big-top circuses and carnivals, commercial fishing, a thriving lumber industry, and more that aren’t a part of our daily narative now. With so much history, we want to make sure we have records of our past and our present.
Stories are universal. Stories are personal. Stories can strengthen the work we do.
Hearing the stories of others initiates empathy and helps to instigate a sense of social connectivity. By hearing somebody tell their story, we, as listeners have to acknowledge that we are not any more or less significant and that other people matter. This may sound mundane, or perhaps, highlights what some may see as basic common courtesy, but empathy and compassion need to be developed, or at the very least, something we need to be reminded to practice. Recording these stories gives us an archive of human experiences – a library of the human condition – to reference and use as a tool to keep the past relevant and to make sure that people’s’ lived experiences can be honored by future generations.
Sheboygan Stories will become part of the Library of Congress, American Folklife Center collection.
Sheboygan Stories is now in production. Our first in the series is expected to air in the fall of 2020. If you are interested in sharing your voice, please feel free to contact us. We want to hear your story.