Do you ever wish there was a place to store all of your precious memories?
The Durham History Hub museum might have a solution.
“The Story Room is a place where people’s personal memories and experiences become a part of history,” says Executive Director of the Durham History Hub Katie Spencer. “Most stories don’t make it into the history books, but they can be so valuable to the community.”
![“Oh my gosh, that’s my great-uncle Nathaniel [Cheek]! I didn’t even know!” said History Hub Volunteer Tamar Carroll. Carroll has been a volunteer at the museum since April 2014, but has just seen her great-uncle’s name on the wall. Her coworker, Natalie Dwigans, said sometimes people even come into the museum and see their own names in the exhibits. (Staff photo by Jessica Coates)](https://durhamvoice-dept-mj.cloudapps.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Coates.storysquadFINAL.jpg)
“Oh my gosh, that’s my great-uncle Nathaniel [Cheek]! I didn’t even know!” said History Hub Volunteer Tamar Carroll. Carroll has been a volunteer at the museum since April 2014, but has just seen her great-uncle’s name on the wall. Her coworker, Natalie Dwigans, said sometimes people even come into the museum and see their own names in the exhibits. (Staff photo by Jessica Coates)
“I was their first full-time employee, the curator of all the exhibits,” she says. “And now we want to grow, to reach more people and more sectors of the Durham community. We will always be growing towards connecting more people to the past.”
“As one woman [I interviewed] said to me, we’re not just doing Durham a favor, we’re doing the people we are interviewing a favor,” says Story Room volunteer Joanne Frazer. “The Story Room helps us celebrate ourselves and, in the process, it documents our memories.”
Frazer is one of approximately 15 people, known as the “Story Squad,” who volunteer their time to interview community members in the Story Room. As a group, the Squad has interviewed about 55 people.
“I’ve spent most of my time covering the Durham LGBT community,” Frazer says. “There’s a lot of substance and history with the LGBT community in Durham, and it’s just one of many stories that never really gets told.”
“We have so many different people that are interested in covering a variety of topics,” Director of Operations Patrick Mucklow says. “So we can really match up the right candidate with the right interviewer, so there’s a really natural conversation. The interviews should happen organically, like two people just shooting the breeze.”
Until this point, most volunteers have been untrained in the art of interviewing and storytelling. But, according to Frazer, the Story Room has “matured and is ready for more experienced volunteers.”
“We’re going to begin linking Story Squad members to training resources so that they can hone their interview skills,” says Spencer. “We then hope that they’ll bring those skills back to the Story Room so that they can help document the community.”
One of these resources is the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke, which will be offering a Story Collecting class through their Continuing Education program.
“When I heard that the History Hub had this wonderful new space, I thought it would be a great way for our students to connect with the history of Durham,” says Director of Continuing Education April Walton. “Our classes through Continuing Education are open to everyone of every age, and we want people to document their own community.”
This class will be offered over the course of a weekend and, according to the class’s website, “will introduce students to the practice of oral history and the art of listening.”
But Spencer emphasizes that training is not necessary to be a Story Squad volunteer.
“We love to have family members interview their relatives,” says Spencer, “and we have a cheat sheet of questions here in the Story Room in case people need them.”
The difficult thing, Mucklow says, is to coax people into telling their stories.
“People don’t realize that their experiences can paint a picture of Durham in the past,” says Spencer. “They think, ‘Oh, it’s just my memories,’ but they’re so much more than that.”
Frazer says that she’s been reaching out in several ways to let people know about what the Story Room really is.
“I just want people to know that it’s comfortable in there,” Frazer says. “It’s inviting, and it’s really just you having a conversation with someone who cares.”