Living Cultural Storybases

Wanted!
Skilled Volunteers for an
Exciting and Challenging Initiative on Cultural Diversity

The cultural and linguistic diversity of our planet is fast disappearing into an urban monoculture.
‘Living Cultural Storybases’ (LCS) is an ambitious new global initiative to nurture the oral heritage of minority cultures in the digital world. Two approaches are balanced: respectful engagement of endangered or indigenous communities and novel mobile digital technologies. Our aim is an appropriate solution to celebrate and share traditional stories and songs, reconnecting the generations in a dialogue around self-empowering narratives. See http://www.storybases.org

LCS is incorporated in California with a Board of four uniquely-experienced leaders, founders of previous successful community informatics initiatives and has joined the Community Development Institute’s non-profit incubator in East Palo Alto so has 501c(3) status. First approaches are being made to major world foundations for funding plans for our first engagements with desert nomads in Mali and highland peoples in Peru. LCS is fortunate to be guided by an eminent panel of Advisors, including Unesco’s Intangible Heritage section in Paris, who are enthusiastic about our mission and potential impact.

We are recruiting volunteers in the Bay Area for cultural research, software prototypes, promotional and development activities, linking incubation with teams in the field. The ideal candidates would be passionate about our mission, self-organising, methodical and eager for this unique opportunity to learn from diverse cultures around the world. Specifically we seek:

• Computer Science skills for early architectural designs of private ‘virtual cultural networks’ and the software prototyping of interactive audio-based systems and databases
• Project Communication and Fund Raising skills to help in sponsor diligence and the writing of eloquent, persuasive and accurate grant proposals
• Website Design skills to extend a multilingual website, both for external communications and as a project tool.
• Cultural Research and Impact Evaluation skills both to guide our understanding of minority cultures and to define proxies for evaluating LCS impact on the strength of oral heritage, cultural cohesion and identity
• Business skills to lay the foundations of an economic sustainability plan based on the value of cultural diversity, the human creativity it sparks and respectful trade in intangible or tangible cultural goods, ie cultural return on investment (CROI) as well as SROI.

For further information, please contact coordinator@storybases.org with a CV.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Paul Rankin, President LCS Inc., UK