We have been busy behind the scenes at Mothers on the Frontline. Thanks to generous funding through the Obermann Fellowship in the Digital Humanities, we have been able to make our stories more accessible through transcriptions. We are in the process of transcribing all of our current digital stories and are on track to be finished in November.
We have also been working on getting our stories on Digital Grinnell, an online archive hosted by Grinnell College. Mothers on the Frontline podcasts will be featured in the new collection called “Digital Stories for Social Justice.” This collection will also feature stories gathered from the School to Prison Project. We are on track to have our first items available through this archive by November and hope to complete our current collection before summer. A shout out to the wonderful librarians who are making this possible – Christopher Jones, Cecila Knight, Mark McFate, and Liz Rodrigues – and to Esther Hwang, an amazing student who is tirelessly entering materials into the system. Thank you to the Grinnell College Innovation Grant for covering student wages and other costs related to the project.
Finally we have been preparing for our first interview training workshop on October 26-27, 2018. Several amazing advocates and activists with lived experience related to the school to prison pipeline will receive training to interview within their community for the archive. This workshop is a collaboration of Mothers on the Frontline and Grinnell College and will be facilitated by Kesho Scott, Stephanie Jones, Angela Riccio, Dionne Bensonsmith, and Tammy Nyden. A shout out to Jin Chang, another amazing student, and Cheryl Fleener-Seymour, an administrative assistant who are doing great work behind the scenes to make this event a success. And last, but not least, a thank you to Gina Donovan for all of her technical assistance with the recording equipment and Angie Vanderleest for assistance in preparing materials.
As you can see, these projects involve a lot of collaboration and invisible work. We are so thankful for the opportunity to work with such amazing people.