Koreatown Stories
Every year, Koreatown Storytelling Program works with high school journalists and neighborhood elders in Los Angeles’s Koreatown (and its neighboring environment) to celebrate and document our stories. Our curriculum includes in-depth workshops on oral history, journalism and photojournalism, community history, interview skills and technology how-to’ s, and dialogue around cultural traditions, immigration and civil rights.
Each cohort focuses on a different theme in our community. Please read below to find out more about our past and present cohorts.
Traditional Healing Arts (2024-2025) - stories coming soon
In 2024-2025, KSP will explore the traditional healing arts in our Koreatown community. We are interested in learning from the diversity of healing practices and modalities from our largely Latine and API community, like acupuncturists, herbalists, shamans, botanicas, curanderas, and kabarajis. KSP will interview, gather and archive oral history narratives about the traditional healing arts from our primarily limited-income, immigrant community, where the majority of countries of origin (Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Korea, Bangladesh and Mongolia) have strong cultural roots in these modalities. Many residents of our community understand or practice these cultural traditions, rituals and methods, but these voices are rarely explored, documented and archived. We will invite traditional healing artists to lead workshops and demonstrations in their areas of expertise and are excited to learn from and with our Koreatown community.
LGBTQIA+ (2023-2024)
KSP’s 2023-2024 cohort explored the LGBTQIA+ community in Koreatown. We recorded our multiethnic and multilingual LGBTQIA+ older adults on their life experiences–their home countries, cultural traditions, childhood, faith, family, immigration and coming out (and not-coming out) narratives, intersectionality, discrimination, milestones and celebrations. Our curriculum studied the history (and threat to) LGBTQIA+ rights and educated our participants on LGBTQIA+ cultural competencies. We partnered with organizations and artists that reflect the cultural heritages and identities of our community to learn from the rich perspectives of Koreatown!
