Michael Bowman, left, with the Office of the Secretary of State, and Peggy Jewell, of the Mason County League of Women Voters, discuss the civic storytelling project.

By Dee Anne Finken, Communications Portfolio Director, LWV of Washington

Carolyn Maddux knows a thing or two about storytelling. After all, with 25 years as a reporter and an editor at the Shelton-Mason County Journal under her belt, Maddux estimates she’s written 12,000 stories in her lifetime.

So, it makes sense Maddux is involved in the Mason County League’s Civic Storytelling Project, an effort the local League has undertaken with the Office of the Secretary of State to boost civic engagement through first-person narrative stories.

“It puts a face, it puts a voice, a human response to all the events of the local world that play into where we go in our future,” Maddux said. The project launched in September with a $2,000 grant from the LWVWA Education Fund. The grant covers the cost of recording equipment, digital tools and transcription services.

“That’s where we’re really going with this,” said Maddux, who has worked with Peggy Morell, Peggy Jewell and a handful of other Mason County League members.

Morell, a transplant to Mason County from Portland, Oregon, leads the project. Under her guidance, volunteers help produce and then collect 15-minute oral histories aimed at finding out what motivates people to become more engaged in their communities. The first participants have been League members, followed by other area residents.

The first participants were encouraged to discuss what drew them to the League with this prompt: Describe the political or personal journey that led you to join the League of Women Voters.

Maddux uses other prompts to prod memories: Who in your community has inspired you? When do you feel most patriotic? Describe a time when you felt politically powerful.

The volunteers are assisted by Michael Bowman, the rural civic engagement specialist at the Office of the Secretary of State. They connected with him last year at his Civics 101 workshop at the Olympic Public Library.

“We often have experienced a particular kind of civic engagement in our schools, but that’s abstract and distant,” Bowman said. As a result, “as adults we might not identify ourselves as being civically engaged.”

Getting people to slow down and reflect on ways they have engaged or seen others in their community be civically engaged can prompt even more interaction and connection.

One obstacle in getting people to tell their stories is their frequent misconception that they don’t have stories to tell. Maddux’s experience as a writing teacher and reporter comes in handy as she helps people think through what they’re going to say.

While Mason County is the only League Bowman has worked with on a special project, he has engaged with League members who have visited a civic story-telling booth elsewhere. In Everett, he interviewed Brenda Mann Harrison, a former journalist who serves on the state League’s local news committee. As she talked about her passionate interest in journalism—a vital catalyst of civic engagement—she recalled a conversation with a hospital nurse.

“She described how, when people were in the waiting room or waiting with their loved ones in a hospital room, that if they pulled out the newspaper and started reading … for a moment, it brought a sense of normalcy to them because it kept them connected to the outside world, to their community,” said Mann Harrison in the recording. “And I thought, ‘Wow.’”

Later this year, recordings from the Mason County League storytelling project will be accessible to anyone through the Washington State Digital Archives. For example, the recordings might be helpful to students or others researching Mason County local history, said Bowman.

Morell added, “We want to make civic storytelling a permanent part of the League’s work and preserve these stories in our archives.”