Barbara Geralds Institute for Storytelling and Social Impact

• Creating spaces for narrative encounters that encourage understanding, empathy and connection across differences.
• Working alongside community members to witness, create and share stories in creative forms to educate and effect change.
• Collaborating with non-profits, granting agencies and private industry.

Image: Lynn Harter (right), Megan Westervelt, and Jorge Castillo film artist Tad Semsel and his creative process at Passion Works Studio.

• Involving OHIO faculty and students in the creation and analysis of storytelling.
• Conducting inter-disciplinary, participatory and narrative-based research.
• Cultivating narrative pedagogies that harness the power of storytelling for catalytic learning.

Image: Joe Bianco (right) interviews OHIO doctoral students Chuck Kaminski and Tobi Odunsi in Studio B at WOUB Public Media Center.

• Elevate community voices and local forms of knowledge.
• Surface and amplify voices previously unheard or dismissed.
• Shift dominant narratives that limit human potential.
• Enhance individual and communal well-being.
• Model ways to thrive amid trauma and hardship.

Image: Benefactor Barbara Geralds (left) joins Bernadette Henry, Hannah Back, Kelsey Williams, and Lynn Harter on set during a filming session at the University of Texas AD Anderson Children's Hospital in Houston, Texas.

• Interactive workshops
• Feature-length films
• Art installations
• Academic essays
• Digital stories
• Audio podcasts
• Immersive media
• Poetic interpretations

Image: During a Turn it Gold OHIO men's basketball game, 10-year-old childhood cancer survivor Ethan Barnhart receives a Passion Works Studio flower.