Use poetry to share hope and convene journalists and community members

At a recent event hosted by AL.com in Birmingham, Ala., local residents weren’t just the subjects of stories — they were storytellers, poets and activists who shared their own experiences directly with others.

AL.com’s Ruth Serven speaks at Birmingham Dreams: A storytelling event hosted by AL.com (Will McLelland/AL.com)

Our 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. But this didn’t happen overnight — it took a few years of building partnerships, community listening and identifying opportunities for connection.

AL.com began the Beyond the Violence story series in 2022 in partnership with The Birmingham Times, a local Black-owned newspaper. Our newsrooms were covering a dramatic increase in homicides. We had to cover crime and public safety concerns, but our publications also wanted to offer more avenues for community building and solutions storytelling by highlighting the people and programs who were making a difference.

The Birmingham Dreams event grew out of the Beyond the Violence series and out of a series of community roundtables I co-hosted in the summer of 2025. We found that many local residents were aware of negative news stories and public safety efforts. What they wanted — and what we felt a local event could offer — was for someone to listen to their experiences and connect them to other people doing similar work.

Inaugural Poet Laureate of Birmingham Salaam Green speaks at Birmingham Dreams: A storytelling event hosted by AL.com (Will McLelland/AL.com)

AL.com hired Salaam Green, Birmingham’s poet laureate and a community organizer, to both facilitate the roundtables and help create a community event. She was an essential partner.

There are many ways to plan an event. From the outset, we knew we wanted to highlight art and help people connect with other residents who had a positive vision for Birmingham.

Here are methods that helped us fill a historic theater for 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. We did not engage her merely to facilitate the event itself; she helped coordinate the local 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. I would recommend looking 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 knows how to do that too, but she brings a complementary skill set around creative listening, writing and speaking.

Think creatively about format

• Explore different types of convening and storytelling. I knew I didn’t want to plan anything boring, but it took a little while to identify the best format. 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. Again, this is why partnering with her from the very beginning was crucial!
• Add poetry to your event. One poet, Kevin Tarver, shared memories of growing up in his Eastlake neighborhood in Birmingham. Another poet, Arlo, spoke about the Southern experience of visiting neighbors on the porch. At the back of the event, we put up a poster printed with a poem Salaam wrote out of a community roundtable session. We also 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 and journalists who spoke at our Birmingham Dreams event are professional communicators. A few speakers were also professional communicators, including a pastor and several artists. But we also recruited some neighborhood storytellers who had never spoken to an audience before. Other speakers had some experience with their regular community groups or at church but had never been asked to speak to a broader group before. Altogether, our setlist provided a great range of speaking styles and experiences and ensured that stories were real, interesting and variable.
• Leave time and flexibility to coach storytellers. We built time into our planning process to make sure our storytellers got some guidance and coaching before the event. We asked one father-son duo, Jeff and Jamaree Collins, to speak together; they helped each other feel confident and prepared in their presentation.
• Trust your speakers. We set basic 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.

This event was free and we were happy to fill 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.

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.