StoryToGo first came to fruition in 2013, when 3 media makers and educators – Kevin Ribble, Lori Yearwood, and Erica Hargreave – were brainstorming ways to connect current and past students in our media courses with the broader community of storytellers, technologists, and marketers, around conversations of contemporary storytelling and media in this digital age. At the beginning, the community was very focused around the Part Time Studies Media and Communication community at BCIT, but has broadened over the years to include other storytellers, technologists and educators, and to be more inclusive of global community in which we work.
Erica Hargreave
Erica Hargreave, the Founder and Creative Head of Ahimsa Media and Roamancing, specializes in creating cross-platform media and immersive storyworlds. In fact, she’s been doing this before there were terms for this form of storytelling, which led her to create of one of the earlier digital / transmedia storytelling companies.
Over the years, Erica has written for TV, magazines, books, the web, and the education sector. She’s worked as a creative producer for TV and theatre, directed, and starred in her own TV Show. Ultimately the adventures she’s had telling stories and speaking around the world, lead her to create the digital travel and culture magazine, Roamancing. Her goal with Roamancing is to uncover the beauty around this world of ours, and increase cultural understanding. In this bent, Erica and her team are currently developing cross platform storytelling campaigns and award-winning documentaries and web series to do just that.
Erica also loves helping others to craft their storyworlds, and build and engage niche communities around their stories. This is something she teaches in her online courses at BCIT, has taught and built courses around at other post-secondary and grade schools across Canada, speaks on around the world, and is building courses around here on StoryToGo.
Kevin Ribble
Kevin Ribble passionately coaches others to expose authenticity in voice, in work, in life. He has been on this mission as a faculty member at BCIT’s Broadcast and Media department since 1991. Kevin toils with unanswerable questions more frequently than he’d ever admit. To fertilize potential answers, he studied adult education at the University of Alberta, then complicated matters with graduate studies at Simon Fraser University in the Communication department. This pursuit of academic life followed a dozen years in the media, including personality performance at LG73 Vancouver (in the embarrassing 80’s). He also dabbled on the journalism front, the music side of the business, as well as management and consulting; Kevin is still not clear what he wants to do when he grows up. His ability to ‘chameleon’ between critical-thinking academic circles and the hands-on experiential world of media performance informs his diverse approach to business and culture. At heart, Kevin is a storyteller who recognizes the nourishing power of truly connecting with others.
Kevin loves the art of teaching. He finds it somewhat contradictory – engaging, intimidating, rewarding, sleep-reducing, inspiring, challenging – but never dull. He joined BCIT as a professional with a particular expertise but zero knowledge of educational practice. After stumbling through those initial years, he recognized the value of learning about learning. After much education and practice, he feels like he is beginning to acquire a reasonable balance between field experience, hands-on teaching, and educational pedagogy. One of his goals with StoryToGo is to share that hard-earned balance with others heading down a similar path.
Lori Yearwood
Hailing from Toronto, LA, Vancouver, and now Phoenix, Lori Yearwood is an exemplary teacher of academics, dance and yoga, as well as a talented character writer for various media platforms. Lori is as comfortable in the classroom as within the busy rustle of the broadcast world. She is a diversely talented lady who holds a teaching certificate, has choreographed for the big stage, helped build concepts for TV and transmedia, and has been involved in published children’s books. She brings an eclectic background with her for StoryToGo and you will see all of her passions come through in what she offers within this space.
On the Education Side of things, both parents of past students and the students themselves rave about Lori as a teacher. She is the kind of teacher that students think fondly back on later in life, as one of those teachers that has had a positive impact on who they’ve become. Having created Ministry Approved Curriculum, Lori aids Ahimsa Media in creating Educational Packages for films and TV Shows that are creative, fun, and classroom friendly. Lori is also instrumental in the development of Ahimsa Media’s College and University Digital Media Courses for delivery in an online classroom. One of her latest endeavours has been obtaining a yoga teacher certification, which now has her teaching health and wellness within the workplace as well.
On the Storytelling side of things, Lori grew up in a creative world, and has long acted as a creative consultant and pitch writer for various theatrical arts productions, both live and media related. She brings that creativity and understanding of story to her role as one of Ahimsa Media’s character writers, and can’t help but make her co-workers smirk at her uncanny ability to be a chameleon in her writing of voice.
