About Round Narrative

Round Narrative is a non-profit organization founded in 2010 in NYC by a group of artists, musicians, writers, technologists and media experts. Round Narrative has three main goals: to empower and inspire a community of artists across the boundaries of location and medium, to challenge assumptions about media and art, and to explore and expand the boundaries of narrative story telling using Round Narrative as a driving concept.

Round Narrative is a New Horizon for Culture, Media, and Art

Round Narrative is the simultaneous retelling of a single narrative across mediums and time. This is a new term for a new concept, one we invented as vehicle for exploring the intersections of various trends in art, media, culture and technology, and as a way to bring underserved and aspiring artists from various mediums together to participate in and collaborate on large community projects that exist over time and across the fabric of urban spaces. Round Narrative is founded upon the idea that narrative is essential to humanity's experience of the world and essential to art. It is built upon the assumption that as culture and technology changes rapidly around us, so should the vehicles we have tell the stories of our experiences.

How Does it Work?

Imagine a single story rooted in a specific place and time. Imagine, for example, the gritty burned-out East Village of New York City in 1977. The year of the great blizzard, the year of epic heat-wave induced riots and looting, the year of the killing spree of David Berkowitz, the notorious serial killer known as "Son of Sam." It's also an extraordinary period of time in the art world, when young artists flocked to the East Village to be part of the explosive and experimental art community that blossomed in the low-rent vacuum of struggling inner city ravaged by urban renewal and white flight. Now instead of telling this story through the voice of a single author or a single filmaker, what if you invited a community of artists to tell the story in a series of complimentary installments over a single year. What if each month brought new short stories, poems, paintings, photography, song, one act plays and more each telling and retelling a portion of the story, so that the full plot developed over the course of the year. How would the story grow and change in the telling and over time? What kind of community could be built around artists sharing a project in this way? What kind of genre-bending collaborations could be developed? What insights would a group of contemporary artists have about themselves and the city around them by telling a story about a different group of artists in the same place at a different time?

What Happens Next?

The first Round Narrative story will begin to unfold in January 2011. Stay tuned to this page or send us an email below and we'll keep you updated on news and events surrounding the first Round Narrative project.

Get in Touch

If you are interested in learning more about Round Narrative or would like to volunteer to get involved please send us an email at info@roundnarrative.org 		Round Narrative Project Logo

Related Links

  • Founders of the Round Narrative Project include members of the NYC indie rock band Ghost Ghost. Check out their most recent narrative project No Clothes on Ragged Island, a concept album about the life of Edna St. Vincent Millay.
  • Project sponsors include GlobalWorks, a NYC based advertising and branding firm offering multicultural expertise.
  • We have applied for a grant from Creative Commons to support our collaborative technology platform for artists, read about out our proposal here: Eleversion.
  • Check out our Facebook page here.