“My Story is an uplifting one.”
-Hana Dubová (my grandmother)
I began my career as a photojournalist and while I don’t often pick up the camera these days, the craft taught me to love collecting stories from multiple perspectives. Over the years, my toolkit has expanded to book writing, exhibitions, podcasting, curriculum development, and community programing. The connecting thread here is always the exploration of memory and the roles stories play as they are passed from one generation to the next.
I work with organizations and individuals to help amplify personal narrative work. I draw on my roots in the journalism field and combine it with my vast experience working with family archives to set clients up to tell meaningful stories about themselves and the communities they serve. Our work always begins as thought partners, and then I can guide you from a project being a seed of an idea through design, production and releasing it to the world.
Workshops
Storytelling workshops are a low-pressure way to get ideas moving and stories flowing. Workshops are designed with prompts, exercises and facilitated conversation that are uniquely curated for the group that is gathering. These can be one-time programs or multi-part classes.
Coaching
Whether you are writing a memoir, navigating what to do with your family archive, or need a listening ear to navigate your relationship with your own story, we can do that together. Sessions can be booked on a continuous or an as-you-need basis.
Speaking
Rachael regularly visits classrooms and communities as a speaker and facilitator. She most often presents her flagship project, We Share The Same Sky. Common topics she covers are: intergenerational storytelling, the Holocaust from a 3G perspective, grief, young widowhood, and the power of family history.
Exhibitions & Program Design
Rachael works with clients to develop and design exhibitions, curriculums and programming that center personal narrative and memory. She believes that storytelling needs to engage teacher and student alike in a shared experience of learning, question asking and remembering. She has curated her own storytelling work for solo shows in Europe and across the United States. The Family History Project
Telling Your Community’s Story
THE FAMILY HISTORY PROJECT is a collaborative project co-created by Rachael Cerrotti. FHP works with communities across the United States to collect and present the unique family histories and immigration journeys of our ancestors. The belief is that by developing a curiosity with where we and those around us come from, we can foster connection that spans cultural, political and generational divides. The Family History Project work with people of all ages, from students at schools and summer camps, to houses of worship, organizations, and governmental leadership.
This initiative is a collaboration of minds between Rachael Cerrotti, visual artist and designer T.J. Kirkpatrick (who is also Rachael’s husband), and lifelong activist Ruth Messinger. Together, they draw on their combined decades in the storytelling and social justice fields to tailor projects that utilize story collection, digitization of family photographs, audio storytelling, exhibitions, books, student engagement, and public events.
Email Rachael to learn more: rachaelcerrotti@gmail.com
Podcasts
Rachael’s first podcast, We Share The Same Sky, was released in 2019 and was the first ever narrative podcast based on a Holocaust survivor’s testimony. The show received numerous accolades, is used as a classroom resource, and has been downloaded more than a quarter million times around the world.
Rachael then developed Along The Seam, a conversational show about the role of the past in our present lives.
She has worked with a number of organizations, independent storytellers and media outlets to help develop their podcast projects. She is always interested in working with folks on their podcast projects and is available as a story editor, writer and for project development.