tories are powerful communication tools. They can build or harm communities. Join Vanport Mosaic “story midwife” Laura Lo Forti to explore strategies and best practices for compassionate and ethical storytelling that protects the communities you serve, honors their experiences, and creates space for inclusive engagement. Participants will have an opportunity to bring forward challenges they face in collecting, understanding, and sharing community perspectives in their own work in transportation.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Laura Lo Forti is a multimedia journalist, community engagement practitioner, and a “story midwife” supporting communities in defining how their stories should be told and shared. She is the co-founder and co-director of Vanport Mosaic, a “memory activism” platform that amplifies, honors, and preserves the silenced histories that surround us in order to understand our present, and create a future where we all belong.
Since 2014 she’s been facilitating a community-based oral history project capturing the memories of those who lived in Vanport, the largest WWII federal housing project, and those who survived the 1948 flood, Oregon's Hurricane Katrina-like disaster. Collaborative endeavors include art-infused story circles, story-centered dialogues, participatory oral-history projects, and the annual Vanport Mosaic Festival, a multi-disciplinary event that received the Spirit of Portland Award and the Oregon Heritage Excellence Award. Her approach to community engagement and storytelling has been featured, among many other events, at Tribeca Film Festival, Collaborating for A Cause, Media that Matters, Restorative Narratives conferences.
THIS WTS PORTLAND EVENT SERIES
This is one of three professional development events from WTS Portland that will focus on storytelling and communication. Stay tuned for more information on the third event! All events will be hosted online, and submitted to AICP for continuing education credit approval.