Listen with curiosity.
01
Begin with open questions. Follow the meaning people give their own experiences, including the details that challenge expectations.
Being heard begins with being respected.
Your experience is more than material for a story. The proposed approach makes room for your perspective, your feedback, and a conversation about what you want to share.
Reflect on assumptions.
02
Notice the interviewer’s perspective. Compare initial reflections with the recording and remain open to a different interpretation.
Share with care.
03
Invite participant feedback on how a story is presented. Discuss consent and identification before any public sharing.
Language can open a door.
You don’t have to have the perfect words to have something to say.
Trying a new language can be an act of trust. Accent, uncertainty, and imperfect expression belong in the conversation, too.
English and Spanish are part of the project’s language context. Transcription and captioning appear in the pilot budget; translation resources and specific language accommodations will need to be agreed before participation.
A resource for language justice.
Kortenay recommends Orienting Towards Language Justice: a Toolkit for Organizational Change by Wave - a Language Liberation Hub. It offers practical tools for planning language justice work, interpretation, translation, and multilingual communication.
This resource is a starting point for developing the pilot's approach. Specific language support still needs to be agreed before participation.
Published fall 2025. Shared with attribution under the toolkit's Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license; the PDF is unchanged.
Consent is a conversation.
Before recording or publishing, the project needs a shared understanding of what participation involves, how a story may be used, and how someone can raise concerns or request changes.
The discovery process identifies ongoing consent, privacy, and participant agency as essential. Detailed procedures for anonymity, changes, and withdrawal are still being developed. The initial pilot will begin with adults.
The participant review step
The pilot proposal includes sharing edited stories with participants for feedback before completed stories are shared publicly.
A few good questions.
Will participants review their stories?
The proposal includes an opportunity for participants to review how their stories are presented before they are shared publicly.
Can someone participate without public identification?
Identity and sharing preferences need to be discussed individually before a conversation is published. The pilot’s detailed consent process is still being developed.
Is the project trying to prove a fixed conclusion?
No. The project begins with questions and working hypotheses. Reflection, participant feedback, and what emerges from the conversations will shape its understanding.
What could we build here, together?
A conversation, a connection, a place to begin. Help make this small pilot possible.