CHICAGO (March 1, 2010) – The JustStories initiative, an 8 year-old Chicago area festival that explores diversity through the performances of professional storytellers, is expanding its outreach with a new video web site, racebridgesvideos.com

Debuting on March 1, racebridgesvideos.com features high-quality digital videos of professional storytellers, such as Michael McCarty, Susan O’Halloran and Arif Choudhury, as they share original and personal stories about race, identity and family. By sharing these engaging stories through video, this project seeks to promote understanding and to bridge racial divides.

“These stories are not just about race. They speak of belonging, resilience, the desire for inclusion, and hope—things we all feel as humans, regardless of race,“ says Derek Simons, creative director of Angels Studio, a Chicago-based communications agency devoted to bringing the races together and building bridges of cooperation between different faith groups using the digital and expressive arts. “With the videos, we hope to share these messages with all kinds of people, young and old, whether individually, in classrooms, faith communities or even businesses.”

The storytellers featured on racebridgesvideos.com are both male and female, and represent the wide fabric of American diversity; they are African-American, Jewish, Hindu, Native American, Cuban, Irish, and so on. Their stories are often very personal, such as Syd Lieberman’s “Aunt Helen,” while others are dramatizations of historical people and events, such as Linda Gorham’s “Rosa,” which describes Rosa Parks’ famous stand against segregation.

Simons and the Angels Studio team have been organizing the JustStories Storytelling Festival and other live events around Chicago for the last eight years. They are also responsible for the educators’ resource,RaceBridgesForSchools.com, which provides teachers with lesson plans and other classroom materials to help students explore differences and build inclusive, welcoming communities.

About Angels Studio, JustStories and RaceBridges

Angels Studio is a communications ministry of the Roman Catholic Order – the Society of The Divine Word. This community serves people of faith, or without faith, around the world, in the belief that there is a rightful and just place for all God’s Children at the table of life. Angels Studio produces the RaceBridges and JustStories initiatives. The universal mission of these projects is to unite people of all faiths, people of no particular religious faith, and all people of goodwill to work at the unfinished business of building bridges across racial and class division.

3 Responses to “JustStories Project Launches New Video Web Site Aimed at Celebrating Diversity and Bridging Racial Differences”