Summer Institute 2025

ORAL HISTORY SUMMER INSTITUTE

For the classroom and community

Friday and Saturday, August 15 & 16, 2025

9:30 AM - 12:30 PM

Arbutus Folk School 

705 4th Ave E, Olympia, WA 98501

Learn to ethically document and share community voices. Perfect for educators, librarians, arts and culture professionals, and others interested in project-based community oral history research.

6 educator clock hours provided 

Sliding Scale Cost

Full Rate $180 / Supporting Rate $225 / Needing Support Rate $135*

*Educators may be eligible for funding for this offering through a WEA Community Outreach Grant. Learn more here.

Key Instructor

Elaine Vradenburgh (she/her) is an oral historian, multimedia storyteller, and educator and the Co-Director and “Memory Activist” at Window Seat Media. Before founding Window Seat in 2016, she carried out her vocation through a variety of roles — as a development director at nonprofit organizations in the South Sound; as a community-based learning coordinator at high schools in Albuquerque, NM and Portland, OR; and as a freelance videographer and editor. Elaine has also served as an adjunct faculty member in The Evergreen State College's MPA and Evening and Weekend Studies programs since 2017. She holds a BA in Cultural and Community Studies from The Evergreen State College (1998) and a MA in Interdisciplinary Studies: Folklore, Anthropology, and Journalism from the University of Oregon (2008). Elaine’s roots and extended family are in New England, and she has called Olympia home since 2008.

Back to Window Seat website.