Braden Storytelling Grant

Applying for a Braden Storytelling Grant? Here's what our 2024 grantees want you to know.

Each year, the Stanford Storytelling Project awards Braden Grants to support the research, writing, and production of audio documentaries. The aim of the program is to help students learn how to tell powerful, research-driven stories based on testimony they gather through interviews, research, or oral history archives. Grantees receive up to $2,500, along with teaching, training, and mentorship for the duration of the project. Here's what the 2023 Grantees had to say about their experience.

Hillbilly Highway by Viva Donohoe

How Patsy Cline shifted the country music industry--and a whole country's idea of femininity. Interviewees: Ellis Nasser Margaret Jones Sources: Country Music USA by Bill C. Malone Creating Country Music by Richard A. Peterson Selling Tradition: Appalachia and the Construction of an American Folk by Jane E. Song Catchers, Ballad Makers, and New Social Historians: The Historiography of Appalachian Music Music by Patsy Cline & Blue Dot Sessions

New Flowers by Langston Buddenhagen

"New Flowers" explores the history of Addis Ababa's Piassa's neighborhood: its birth, destruction, and what sense of home remains. Includes interviews with Paul Buddenhagen, Sine Berhanu, Messay Gesesse Mikael Shebele, Dany Dereje, and Yalew Berhanu. Music: Mulatu Astatke: "Tezeta," "Tension," "Yekeremo Sew," "Yegelle Tezeta" Daniele Serra

Digital Diagnosis by Priyanka Shrestha

Digital diagnosis explores how telehealth is changing the physician patient relationship. Through interviews with both physicians and patients we uncover where telehealth shines and where it falls short, ultimately getting to the heart of what medicine is and how we can use technology in a way that puts people first.   Interviewees: Sarah Grace LeBaron Lyle Joyce, M.D. Randi Zeller Research: ● https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-024-01152-2 ● https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10210114/ ● https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7690251/ Music: ● Phase Purple by https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/290642 ● Brek PKL by https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/290643 ● Our Fingers Cold by https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/290644 ● The Griffiths by https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/290645

Bolt Wars by Alex Strong

Climbers modify the rock to climb safely, leaving permanent anchors for catching falls. This was not always the practice, and its early implementation lead to a period of conflict in the climbing community when ethics were in flux. Climbing has solved this dilemma, and can show the world how to walk reframe the line between environmental sustainability and land use.    Name and title of interviewees: Dan Earhart, MS, Climbing Coordinator, Stanford University Jane Willenbring, PhD, Professor of Earth and Planetary Systems, Stanford University Hugh Driscol, Principal and founder of Chord Architecture in Santa Fe New Mexico Emma Harrison, PhD, Environmental Scientist, advocate. Rupesh Chhugan TCMP, CHP, Hakomi practitioner.   Music Attribution (In order of appearance) Setting Pace by https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/290191 Road to Petersby by https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/285202 Hanging Rock by https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/290346 Bauxite by https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/290218 KeoKeo by https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/290262 Evol Triumph by https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/290238 Capstone by https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/285163 Set the Tip Jar by https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/285159