Our 2017 Annual Report is Here!

Dear Friends,

January is our anniversary month here at Window Seat Media. On January 25, 2016 I filed the paperwork to turn this idea that had been percolating for quite some time into a nonprofit in the state of Washington.

Although we’ve been official for two years, 2017 was the first year we were able to really dig in and explore how our skills and framework could be put to use in the community. It was a rich year of experimentation and reflection in our three program areas - workshops, multi-media storytelling services, and participatory oral history initiatives. We feel grateful to all the individuals, businesses, foundations, and organizations who believed in this vision as it took its first steps. We are particularly grateful to Stephen Buxbaum, who took a leap of faith to partner with us on our first major project through his academic work at The Evergreen State College. He helped us develop a model that we’ll continue to refine in the years ahead. Many thanks Stephen!

We believe that stories matter, deeply. Writer and journalist, Joan Didion, goes so far as to say that “we tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Tsering Lama, storytelling advisor at Greenpeace, refers to storytelling as “world-building.” Our work is driven by a few key questions:

What stories do we hear, what stories are left out, who decides, and what are the implications?

What would our world be like if we not only made room for more than one story to lead our communities forward, but made a conscious effort to turn up the stories that are being silenced, forgotten, and ignored?
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What new understandings would we arrive at if we chose to listen to the stories that don’t fit neatly into boxes, stories that contradict or complicate what we assume to be true about ourselves and others?

We’ve tried to capture our exploration of these questions in 2017 in our annual report. I hope you’ll take some time to take a look. Thank you for following along and believing our vision. We’re excited to see where this work takes us next!

Onward into 2018!

Elaine Vradenburgh
Curator, Window Seat Media

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