Interview one or more members of your community to consider how you belong to a larger group.

Preparation & Recording

Step 1: Define your community
What “community” do you want to focus on for this project? You can decide how
broad or narrow you want to go for this. You could choose to focus on your family or
neighborhood, or you could consider a demographic community you feel connected
to based on ethnicity, culture, religion, age, gender, or sexuality. It’s up to you! Just
make sure that: 1) it’s a community you feel a part of, and 2) you have access to
people within that community to interview.

Briefly explain why you chose this community:

Step 2: Find your interview subjects
Decide who you would like to interview for this project. If you can, try to find at least 3
different people who are members of your chosen community. These might be family
members, friends, teachers, or members of an organization (like a religious center or
school) that you are connected to. Don’t worry if you can’t find 3 people, though – you
can make a very powerful piece with one person’s story. For each subject, write down their name, a bit about them, and how you know them/their relationship to the community.

Step 3: Plan your interview questions
What do you want to learn from your interview subjects? What stories do you want
to hear or tell? Brainstorm a few questions that relate to themes from the module.

Not sure where to begin? Here are some ideas to help get you started:
● What does being part of this community mean to your interview subject?
● How did they become part of or discover that community?
● Have their feelings about the community changed over time? How so?
● What kind of gifts or challenges does being in this community bring?
● What shared experiences or traditions are important to being part of this
community?
● What stories are shared about the origin or significance of the community
among its members?

Editing

Once you have conducted your interviews, take some time to plan out how you want to edit them together into a single audio story.

Step 1: Record an introduction
Begin your project with a brief introduction that explains who you are and how you
approached this project. What were you trying to accomplish with these interviews?
What aspects of belonging and community were you particularly interested in?
Draft your introduction by answering some of the following: What is your name? Where do you go to school and what grade are you in? What was your goal with these interviews? What does community mean to you?

Step 2: Organize your clips
Listen back through your interviews and pull out clips that you want to use. Then
make a rough draft plan of how you will arrange them. Here’s an example outline.
This is just a sample – Yours doesn’t have to look exactly like this!
1. Introduction (30 seconds)
2. Transition music (5 seconds)
3. What does community mean to you?
a. subject #1 clip (10 seconds)
b. subject #2 clip (20 seconds)
c. subject #3 (10 seconds)
4. Transition (5 seconds)
5. subject #2 fishing story (2 minutes)
6. subject #1 story (1 minute)
7. Transition (8 seconds)
8. subject #3 story (1 minute)
9. Outro (30 seconds)
10. End music (5 seconds)

Step 3: Edit together your story

There are various software resources that can help you edit audio including: GarageBand, Audacity, Anchor, Kapwing. Most have tutorials online.