Community Digital Storytelling Workshop
What are Digital Stories?
Digital Stories are multimedia movies that combine photographs, video, animation, sound, text, and a narrative voice. Digital storytelling can be a powerful, multi-dimensional tool for community-based public health program enrichment, strategic communication, and advocacy.
Our Workshop
Through this hands-on community workshop, participants move from story to screen: they begin in story circles to surface the public health experience they most want to tell, then write and record a short narrative voiceover to anchor the piece.
From there, facilitators guide them in gathering personal photographs, video, and sound and learning the fundamentals of digital editing—sequencing images to the voiceover, layering in music, text, and animation, and pacing the story for emotional impact—before a closing screening where finished stories are shared and celebrated.
By the end, community members leave with both a completed digital story ready to inform and mobilize audiences and the practical media skills to keep telling the public health stories that matter most to them.
Materials for Learning
Everything you need to bring your story to the screen is here: two guided presentations, a participant handbook, and on-demand recorded lectures. Learn at your own pace, in the sessions, or on your own time.
Guided Presentations
The heart of the curriculum lives in two PowerPoint presentations, each walking participants through a distinct phase of the digital storytelling process. The first introduces digital storytelling as a public health tool and guides participants through crafting and refining a personal narrative. The second covers scriptwriting, recording a compelling voiceover and the technical fundamentals of assembling and editing the final story.
A Comprehensive Handbook
Every participant receives a handbook that consolidates the key concepts, step-by-step instructions, and prompts and worksheets from across the workshop. It's designed as a self-paced guide participants can return to again and again as they develop their own digital stories.
Digital Storytelling Workshop Workbook
Recorded Lectures, Available On Demand
The full curriculum is also available as recorded lectures, so participants can learn at their own pace. Whether revisiting a tricky editing step, catching up on a missed session, or reinforcing a new skill, community members have the complete workshop at their fingertips long after the live sessions wrap.
Lerner Center- Community Digital Storytelling Workshop Part 1
Lerner Center- Community Digital Storytelling Workshop Part 2
Supporting Our Communities
Public health knowledge shouldn't be locked in a classroom.
What began as a graduate course at Columbia's Mailman School has been reimagined as a free, short-form workshop offered directly to our neighbors in Washington Heights and beyond—because the skills to tell a powerful health story belong to the community, not just to those enrolled in a degree program.
By trading a semester-long syllabus for an accessible, hands-on series, we lower the barriers of cost, time, and prerequisite experience.
This shift reflects a simple conviction: the people closest to a public health issue are its most credible and compelling storytellers, and they deserve both the tools and the platform to be heard. In opening these sessions to the community, we aim to move beyond the traditional one-way relationship between a medical center and its surrounding neighborhoods—building instead a genuine, reciprocal connection between CUIMC and the community it serves, where local voices help shape the public health conversation rather than simply receive it.
Participant Experience Summary
Our Digital Storytelling Workshops are proof of what happens when the tools to tell a public health story are placed directly in the hands of the community.
In just a short time, these free, hands-on sessions have reached dozens of participants, sparked new skills and confidence, and produced stories powerful enough to reach the film festival stage. Here's a look at the impact so far.
80+ Community Members Reached
Since launching, our Digital Storytelling Workshops have brought more than 80 participants together to learn media skills and tell public health stories that matter to them..
From Workshop to Film Festival
The work speaks for itself: one of the digital stories created through our workshops was selected for the NYC Voices Film Festival—a testament to the power and quality of the stories our community members are telling.
Participants Loved the Experience
100% of participants strongly agreed that they enjoyed the workshop
100% of participnats agreed or strongly agreed that they would attend another Lerner Center workshop.
One Goal, Many Backgrounds
Participants came to the workshop from a mix of backgrounds—professional, academic, and personal—but shared a common goal: to learn the practical skills to tell a story that mattered to them, and to leave with the motivation to actually create it.
When participants were asked what the most valuable part of this workshop was, this is what they had to say:
Learning the different ways, you can tell a story without changing the original narrative and not being afraid to try new unconventional ways of storytelling maintaining the integrity of the original story.
Digital Storytelling Projects
Will the Trees be Here Tomorrow: Letizia E. Colón
About the Film
I had dreamed for years of traveling to the Amazon, and after my mother passed, I finally made that journey to Ecuador, her homeland and the land of my ancestors. This short film is about seeing the effects of deforestation and petroleum extraction firsthand transformed concepts I had studied at Mailman into something deeply personal and real—connecting grief, environmental health, community wellbeing, and the responsibility to protect the natural systems that sustain us.
This Digital Storytelling Workshop made filmmaking feel real and possible for me. After being away from public health for many years, seeing the opportunity shared through Sisters in Public Health helped me reconnect with a part of myself—and with what I have always felt is a true calling. Most importantly, the experience reminded me that there are many ways to practice public health, share a message, and make an impact. It gave me the confidence to say, “I can do this too,” and actually submit my first film. I am especially grateful that Mailman created this opportunity for community members, including alumni (HPDP) like me, to share our voices through filmmaking and to explore public health in such a personal and creative way.
About the Creator
Letizia E. Colón, MPH, CHES, CPH, is a lifelong New Yorker, eco-traveler, and first-time filmmaker who believes that our health is inseparable from the natural world around us. Raised in the East Village, she sees public health everywhere—from city streets and community spaces to forests, animals, air, water, and the places where people find connection and hope. Filmmaking had lived on her bucket list for years; with this story, one more dream became real.
Stardust: Courtney Knights
Needle and Thread: Brianna Ballew
About the Film
The Needle and Thread is a poetic short film created through a collection of personal photographs and original photography by Brianna Ballew. Through intimate images drawn from her life and experiences, the film transforms poetry into a visual journey through memory, identity, childhood, and growth.
The film explores Brianna’s upbringing—from childhood into adulthood—and reflects on the moments, women , hardships, and love that shaped who she has become. Like a needle pulling thread through fabric, each experience leaves behind a mark, connecting the pieces of a life that may not have always been easy to understand.
Through both the painful and beautiful memories of her past, The Needle and Thread is ultimately an expression of gratitude. It honors the women who helped hold her together, supported her, and contributed to the person she is today.
This film is a reflection on resilience, family, memory, and the complicated beauty of becoming whole from the pieces of our past.
About the Creator
Growing up in different states and around different people has given me such a different aspect of life . I have had the chance to move from New York City to Virginia , North Carolina , Tennessee , growing up and being so versatile, my poetry and love for music and living has always been my muse for creating things I think this short film really speaks to some part of who I am and just the many things I have I have to share to the world.