In 2022, AL.com was covering a dramatic increase in homicides. The news outlet partnered with The Birmingham Times, a local Black-owned newspaper, to offer more avenues for community building and solutions storytelling by highlighting the people and programs who were making a difference. That series, Beyond the Violence, inspired a new storytelling endeavor that brought together residents to connect and envision the city’s future.
AL.com hired Salaam Green, Birmingham’s poet laureate and a community organizer, to both facilitate roundtables and help create Birmingham Dreams, a community event.
Ruth Serven Smith, a senior managing producer at AL.com, wrote for API on how the Birmingham Dreams event offers a template for newsrooms that not only want to connect people with journalists but also provide avenues for art, connections and future action. This didn’t happen overnight — it took a few years of building partnerships, community listening and identifying opportunities for connection.
Use poetry to share hope and convene journalists and community members
From the outset, we knew we wanted to highlight art and help people connect with other residents who had a positive vision for Birmingham.
Birmingham Dreams was free and filled a historic theater with a wide range of people who enjoyed stories, live music and cupcakes. Several paying subscribers were complimentary of the event, while other people who said they had never interacted with our newsroom before also said they enjoyed it.
Here are methods that helped us facilitate a fun and engaging evening.
Identify a community partner and collaborator
- Engage a partner from the beginning. Poet Salaam Green was a true partner for this event. She helped coordinate the community roundtables, identify storytellers for the larger event and coach residents to tell their stories. Salaam’s expertise and guidance helped craft a stronger and more interesting event.
- Identify a partner who has a different skillset. Look for partners who are experts in drama, education, comedy or other types of public speaking. As journalists, we know how to put together events and moderate discussions. Salaam brings a complementary skill set around creative listening, writing and speaking.
Think creatively about format
- Explore different types of convening and storytelling. Initially, I envisioned Salaam reading a poem and then moving to a traditional speaker or panel format. She suggested inviting several poet friends who could add creative expression throughout the evening. We mixed these speakers in with prose storytellers.
- Add poetry to your event. One poet shared memories of growing up in a particular neighborhood. Another poet spoke about the Southern experience of visiting neighbors on the porch. We put up a poster printed with a poem Salaam wrote out of a community roundtable session. We invited participants to put their dreams for Birmingham on a sticky note on another poster, creating a shared found art poem of dreams for Birmingham.
Coaching neighborhood storytellers
- Consider presenters who have a range of public speaking experience. Salaam, journalists, and a few speakers who spoke at our Birmingham Dreams event are professional communicators. But we also recruited some neighborhood storytellers who had never spoken to an audience before. Our setlist provided a great range of speaking styles and experiences and ensured that stories were real, interesting and variable.
- Trust your speakers. We set ground rules for mutual respect and asked the artists to keep things PG. Other than checking in with storytellers who were nervous, though, I asked for minimal updates on the specifics of what they planned to say. The week before the event, our lineup only needed some coaching and minimal tweaks. I knew the poets might change their mind entirely about what they wanted to share. If you want to work with artists or host a storytelling event, leave enough room for creativity to come through.
Feedback was strong, including, “Wonderful.” “Compelling.” “Refreshing to hear nice things about Birmingham.” “More of this.” Alaina Bookman, our violence prevention reporter and a speaker at the event, said that several participants later became sources for stories, and said they would not have been interested in talking to a journalist if they had not first had a positive interaction with AL.com via Birmingham Dreams.
Ruth Serven Smith is a senior managing producer at AL.com who leads community engagement and audience development initiatives. She grew up in Oklahoma City and is currently based in Birmingham, Ala.
