Next KIND STORIES IN CONCERT
Sunday, May 5th
7:00-8:30 pm Eastern Time
Exploring kindness in its many faces and forms, through folk tales and personal stories, we dive deeply into multiple experiences of kindness.
“Kindness is having the ability to speak with love, listen with patience, and act with compassion.”
–Random Acts of Kindness Foundation
Click here to Donate and help make programs like this possible
Join the Healing Story Alliance for a special gathering to share and explore stories of kindness in its many faces and forms. Through folk tales and personal stories, we will dive deeply into multiple experiences of kindness. What is it? How does it impact us and our relationships to ourselves, to each other, to the world? Come and listen to “kind stories” shared by both professional tellers and community members and see what memories of kindness emerge for you.
Date: May 5th, 2024
Time: 7:00pm-8:30pm EDT – (Open Mic Story Share and Reflection: last half hour)
Format: The story session opens with a concert of seasoned tellers and community tellers sharing stories with themes of kindness. During the second half of the gathering, audience members are invited to share a story, moment, or reflection about kindness that emerged for them as listeners.
Purpose: We all need a little more kindness in our lives. Perhaps a story can take us there.
“WHEN YOU ARE KIND TO OTHERS, IT NOT ONLY CHANGES YOU, IT CHANGES THE WORLD.”
– Harold Kushner
ABOUT THE STORYELLERS
DONALD DAVIS was born in a Southern Appalachian mountain world rich in stories. While he heard many traditional stories about Jack and other heroic characters, he was most attracted to the stories of his own family and places of origin. Davis begin retelling the stories he heard and then adding his own new stories to them until he was repeatedly asked to “tell it again, on purpose.” During his twenty-five-year career as a United Methodist Minister, Davis began to use stories more and more. He was also asked to begin performing at festivals and in other settings until he retired from the church to tell stories full time. The author of eighteen books and more than forty original recordings, Davis is the recipient of both the Circle of Excellence and the Lifetime Achievement Awards from the National Storytelling Network.
JOY KELLY is an actress, storyteller and director. As a storyteller she has performed at Pete Seeger’s Clearwater Festival and at the Hans Christian Anderson statue in Central Park. For almost 20 years, Joy directed for the acclaimed theatre company Theatreworks, USA as well as for various theatre festivals. As an actress, Joy is featured in the documentary, “A Child Shall Lead Them” chronicling the integration of schools in Nashville, Tennessee of which she was a part. She has performed at LaMama Theatre in New York in “The Bacchae” and also portrayed an Aborigine Goddess in “Yanagai! Yanagai” speaking all of her lines in the Aborigine language Yorta-Yorta. She has been featured on “Late Night with David Letterman” including their Emmy award winning Christmas Show and performed in various soap operas including “One Life to Live” and “All My Children.”
LEE-ELLEN MARVIN has explored storytelling as a performer, audio producer, educator, folklorist, and community advocate. She has told and taught storytelling to thousands in colleges and universities, developed and published Story Shifters, a non-competitive game, and holds a PhD in Folklore and Folklife. Lee-Ellen lives in EcoVillage at Ithaca, New York. 607-229-8429
EMCEE
USHA VENKATRAMAN is an award-winning Storyteller, TEDx Speaker, educationist, author, classical vocalist, puppeteer, and radio show host, who inspires and transforms through stories. Recently donned the role of a Social Impact Creator at the UN Women 2024, 68th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women from India.
Usha’s stories are an intersection of Indian Myths, folklore, Feminism and Music. She loves to bring different voices together, weaving threads of untold stories of women heroes stitching together forgotten folklore, fragments of myth, songs, and music. Usha has been storytelling at national and international festivals, events, and conferences in India and abroad. She is the founder of Mumbai Storytellers Society and festival director of Gaatha – Mumbai International Storytelling Festival.
COMMUNITY TELLERS
KEONA LEWIS is assistant provost for academic diversity and inclusion. She oversees the vision, strategy, and community-building programs for academic diversity and inclusion. Lewis helps ensure that the academic core is an environment where faculty and staff feel a strong sense of belonging and respect and where differences are celebrated, partnering closely with the vice president and associate provost for faculty affairs. In addition to her role as assistant provost for academic diversity and inclusion, Keona Lewis holds an appointment as assistant professor of the practice in Notre Dame’s Center for Social Concerns. She joined Notre Dame from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she was associate director of research and evaluation for diversity, equity and inclusion. In this capacity, she played a lead role in developing, supporting and evaluating programs for faculty, staff and students. She also chaired the Diversity Champion Awards Committee and co-chaired the Georgia Tech Police Department Community Council. Lewis previously served as program review and research manager for diversity, equity and inclusion at Georgia Tech. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, she taught in the anthropology and criminology departments at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia.
Lewis has an impressive record of leading training programs on a variety of topics, including assessing conscious and unconscious biases and microaggressions. With research interests that include higher education, the African Diaspora, ethnicity, gender and educational outcomes, she has previously taught courses in anthropology, U.S. cultural diversity and perspectives in criminal justice. Lewis earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in criminology and her doctorate in applied anthropology from the University of South Florida in Tampa.
MARY BROMLEY has been a psychotherapist for almost 40 years. She loves her work. She is spiritually orientated, learning as much from her clients as they do from her. She is a seasoned therapist, having worked at St. Vincent’s Hospital in NYC and in East Hampton, NY. , specializing in the treatment of anxiety and depression. She has extensive experience working with the Police treating sex crimes cases and testifying in high profile cases. In 1987 she co-founded a Domestic Violence Agency called “The Retreat.” Mary is not afraid of tough problems….but believes laughter and humor play a crucial role in therapy.
To listen to past Kind Stories, visit our archive of recordings.