Sharing our stories. Strengthening our communities.

Give an End-of-Year Gift Today:

Help Window Seat uplift unheard LGBTQIAA2S+ histories in the South Sound and build community resilience for our future

Thank you to the 53 donors who helped us raise $6,680 through our Give Local campaign in support of the Pride Storytelling Project! There's still time to join others in supporting this work!

ABOUT THE PROJECT. Window Seat is partnering with Capital City Pride to uplift local LGBTQIAA2S+ voices through the Pride Storytelling Project—a part of our Community Roots oral history initiative. Drawn from a remarkable candidate pool, our 2024-2025 cohort of 7 members - Queer narrative changemakers - will document stories at the heart of local Queer spaces and organizing. They will meet monthly for two years to learn the ethics and practice of oral history documentation, visit archives, design projects, and interview community narrators. In 2025-26, continuing and new cohort members will design creative projects to amplify what they’ve gathered with the broader community through public presentation and engagement.

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"What occurred here in the past? Why is Olympia the way it is?" Project partner and cohort member Wild Tiny speaks about why they joined the Pride Storytelling Cohort.

WHY IT MATTERS. We believe the future is shaped by the stories we tell today. We work intergenerationally alongside our community to weave many forgotten, silenced, and unheard stories into the fabric of public life. We do this to build collective resilience, strengthen identity, and remember who we are together.

When Pride identified the lack of LGBTQIAA2S+ historical accounts in the local library and archive, we knew it was an important gap to address. Olympia has a rich history of community arts and organizing, yet very little is documented, especially from the perspective of those at the center of those stories. Our community is eager for their stories to be documented and shared. Accurate and inclusive local histories save lives, protect, and connect us, especially as our dominant narratives are politicized to misrepresent and exclude groups from our national story.

The Pride Storytelling Project builds community capacity by fostering a new generation of Queer storytellers equipped with the skills, confidence, and ethical framework necessary to share their own community’s stories and histories. Through our partnership with the Olympia Library, future researchers across the Timberland Regional Library System may access these materials through the Olympia Library’s Local History and Pacific Northwest History collections. Our work also impacts local educators by engaging youth in themes from our oral history collection and learning tools to lead oral history projects in their classrooms.

Make Your Year-End Gift Now!

WHAT IT COSTS AND HOW YOU CAN HELP. We are raising the final funds for our Pride Storytelling Project and seeking community gifts to support our long-term financial sustainability. Gifts of any amount will help. One of the hardest parts of this work is finding the funding needed to do it with ethical, scholarly, and artistic integrity. During this moment when our work is most crucial, grant funding has grown increasingly unreliable, which has drawn down our emergency reserves, hindered our ability to navigate reimbursable grants, and put us in a precarious spot.

An additional $2,000 in monthly recurring donations would allow us to continue making a difference in our community and find stronger footing so that we can be part of this place’s story well into the future.

We are efficient. Our 2024-2025 budget is $142,862, which includes all staffing, operating, and program expenses. Donating to Window Seat creates ripples in our local economy. Our rent goes to Arbutus Folk School, and we further increase community wealth by prioritizing local venues and vendors and by offering stipends for collaborators, teaching artists, and narrators.

Please give today and consider pledging a recurring gift. We accept donations via www.windowseatmedia.org/donate or checks made to Window Seat Media mailed to PO Box 2733, Olympia, WA 98506.

"Window Seat is housed at Arbutus Folk School. We've always shared space from the very beginning." Our founder and project facilitator Elaine talks about why we love being housed at Arbutus with other storytellers and re-investing back into the community.

​Window Seat's mission is to spark conversation, connection, and social change through community oral history and storytelling. Our nonprofit aims to weave the stories that often go unshared into the fabric of our public life. We believe we write our future with the stories we narrate, and we are committed to co-creating a more inclusive, connected, and just world.