About American Storyteller
American Storyteller is a public humanities archive preserving first-person narratives, portraits, transcripts, and handmade objects created by people across all fifty states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. territories.
Collected during the years surrounding the nation's 250th anniversary, the archive documents how participants describe identity, memory, family, place, community, work, cultural traditions, and hope in their own words. Together, these stories form a geographically distributed cultural record of contemporary American life during a significant moment in the nation's history.
American Storyteller was created through National Scrollathon, a nationwide participatory initiative founded by artists and brothers Steven and William Ladd. Within this archive, Scrollathon functions as the methodology through which stories were gathered. The resulting archive serves as a public resource for learning, teaching, interpretation, and future research.
The archive does not attempt to represent every American experience. Rather, it preserves the voices of those who chose to participate and makes their stories available so that future generations may better understand this moment in the nation's history.
Methodology
Every American Storyteller record begins with a handmade object.
Participants first create a small scroll using color, pattern, texture, and personal symbolism. They title the scroll and reflect on the decisions they made while creating it. Rather than relying solely on a conventional interview format, each participant uses this handmade object as a point of departure for telling a personal story.
The scroll functions as both a mnemonic and interpretive device. It helps participants organize memories, communicate ideas, and connect lived experience with material expression. As a result, every archive record preserves multiple forms of cultural evidence: a first-person narrative, a portrait, a handmade object, and the geographic and community context in which the story was recorded.
This object-based approach distinguishes American Storyteller from traditional interview collections. The archive preserves not only what people said, but also how they chose to represent themselves through language, material objects, and personal interpretation.
National Scrollathon is the participatory, object-based methodology through which the American Storyteller archive was created.
Research & Education
American Storyteller was created for the public and is intended to serve educators, students, researchers, museums, cultural organizations, and future generations.
The archive supports teaching, public engagement, and the study of American identity, memory, material culture, public history, oral history, folklore, geography, museum studies, American studies, and digital humanities. By preserving first-person narratives alongside handmade objects and portraits, the archive provides opportunities to examine how individuals understand themselves, their communities, and the places they call home.
The collection is geographically expansive, encompassing all fifty states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. territories. It is not a statistically representative sample of the United States, nor does it claim to speak for every American. Instead, it offers a carefully preserved collection of voluntary first-person narratives gathered through National Scrollathon host institutions using a consistent participatory methodology.
American Storyteller is designed to grow over time through continued preservation, interpretation, and educational use. As the archive develops, additional thematic essays, educational resources, and research tools will expand public access to this evolving cultural record.