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The Future of Storytelling

In September of 2013, Emmy Award winning Loyola University Professor, Liz Coffman, undertook an inspired project with her graduate Digital Media and Storytelling class in our School of Communication. 

With the help of James Kneen, the Executive Director of The Clare, a residential senior living facility located adjacent to our Water Tower Campus, Professor Coffman’s class recruited four residents to provide their personal life stories for this project. To capture the rich personality and detailed stories of these residents, graduate students in Professor Coffman’s class will conduct a series of video interviews, and then use this footage to put together a brief documentary on each resident.  The residents who have been recruited for this project offer unique socio-cultural perspectives on Chicago history, gender-roles, women’s advocacy initiatives, World War II, and many other topics and historical events.

The graduate students are eager to preserve the stories of these remarkable seniors via a digital media format that can be shared online, and perhaps encourage a younger population to learn about these stories. Through this project, perhaps viewers of these brief documentaries will develop a newfound appreciation for the social and political progress made in the last 50-80 years that affect the lives of younger generations today.