Each year, the 7th-grade students at C.S. Porter practice an amalgamated form of Winter Count. There is a written component as well as a visual component in which they bring items or make pictures to share with the class that helps tell the story of their past year. This year the teachers at Porter, with…

Spoke is a new app that’s been released to the Google Play and Apple App Store. I gave it a spin after being introduced to it when one of the curators began following @pssttellus on Twitter. First, I submitted the Tell Us Something podcast feed to the app, which was a pretty straightforward process. Submitting is…

Tell Us Something has a YouTube channel. Now what? Since the beginning, I have intended to share people’s stories on YouTube. I have overcome one roadblock after another in this endeavor. Initially, the issue in creating the YouTube channel was obtaining a custom URL. In order to obtain a custom URL, at the time, there…

  Wow!  Summer is here in full effect. The fires have arrived and the smoke is thick in parts of Missoula Valley. I hope you all are staying cool, creating new stories and getting out of the smoke when you can. My intention at the beginning of 2017 was to send a newsletter each month…

After the June 20 live event, several people either spoke to me in person, emailed or called me to express their concern or confusion about ticket pricing. Their concern is one I shared and I’ve worked to eliminate this confusion. Tickets, since we began selling them, have traditionally been priced affordably at $8 in advance…

Thank you so much to EVERYONE who gave to Tell Us Something during Missoula Gives. I have been chipping away at the thank you cards since May 6th, believe it or not, and I finally wrote the last one. Premiums are on the way to those of you who donated in that capacity. As soon…

Last Tuesday I finished my SPARK artist in residency at Washington Middle School. I was there to teach approximately 190 students the art of storytelling. These 8th graders taught me a lot, and I hope I taught them a little bit about storytelling and how it’s done. The first day, I was nervous. I’m trained…

Missoula Gives was a success! Thank you to everyone who donated. This year’s Tell Us Something fundraiser was a success. We haven’t hit our goal (yet), and there is still time to give if you haven’t already (or if you want to give some more). The experience of Giving Day was much less stressful this…

The Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation, Missoula County Public Schools (MCPS), the City of Missoula, the Missoula Cultural Council, and a broad range of local arts organizations have teamed up to help bring our community the Any Given Child Initiative. The program, developed by the Kennedy Center, focuses on ensuring equal access to diverse arts…

Thursday of last week, Joyce and I packed the truck and headed to Helena for the second Tell Us Something event there. Again we were hosted by the very gracious folks over at Free Ceramics. Last year, the recording failed and I was overly concerned about having it be successful this year. I was stressed…