Follow these easy steps, and you’ll be on your way to hosting a gathering that brings meaning to the holiday season!
STEP 1: Get Started
STEP 2: Plan Your Event
STEP 3: Develop Guest List
STEP 4: Invite People
STEP 5: Plan Your Evening
STEP 6: Getting Ready the Day of the Soirée
STEP 7: Party!
STEP 8: Tell Us All About It
STEP 1: Get Started
Order a copy of Listening Is an Act of Love and the audio CD companion
Listening Is an Act of Love and an audio CD companion are available at bookstores nationwide, and from on-line retailers such as Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and Powell’s Books. An exclusive book and CD set is also on sale at Starbucks nationwide.
Dive into the book and CD
The book is a fast and engaging read. Listen to the CD and determine which tracks you might like to play for your guests.
Fill out this Form for your free Discussion Guide.
STEP 2: Plan Your Event
Once you have the book, CD, and free discussion guide, the next step is to plan the core elements of the party. Here are a few helpful pointers:
Decide whether you’d like people to read Listening Is an Act of Love in advance
You can have a Listening party with or without your guests having read the book in advance. If there’s time, we believe that having everyone read the book—just like a book club—yields some of the deepest discussion.
But if your guests don’t have time, it’s fine to come to the party anyhow to listen to the selections you will play on the Listening audio CD.
Date & Time
We recommend you allow up to two weeks to plan your party. Give your guests time to put your party on their calendar (but feel free to throw a last minute soirée if that works better for you and your guests!).
You can decide how long the gathering will last; our Sample Agenda takes less than two hours. And don’t forget to plan in eating time. You can talk and eat, or take a break to just sit back and enjoy the desserts.
Location
We recommend you use your own house for the party, as gatherings in homes have a warm, inviting feel. You may also wish to ask your house of worship, community center, local school, library or book store to co-host the party with you or to donate their space.
Food
Potluck dinners or desserts make party planning easy. Pizza or other low-cost options can work well also. Of course, if cooking is your specialty go ahead and cook a more elaborate meal!
Be sure to have a CD player ready
Test it ahead of time to make certain everyone will be able to hear the Listening Is an Act of Love stories that you have chosen.
Here’s a short checklist of materials and equipment you should consider having for your party:
- Listening Is an Act of Love book and CD
- CD Player
- Index cards and pencil/pen for each person if they want to take notes
- Paper and pen for guests to give their email address if they would like to get StoryCorps updates in the future
- Feel free to ask friends for party help
It’s always fun to plan parties with others! So you may want to consider recruiting people to help throughout the planning process and the party hosting, or even find a co-host. Some tasks you may be able to share include: inviting people; setting up equipment; preparing your home; facilitating the group discussions during the party; or making food.
STEP 3: Develop Guest List
Set your goals
Your house party can be whatever size you’d like—our suggested agenda and format will accommodate groups of eight and more. Smaller groups are fine too.
It’s often good to invite more people than you expect to attend—everyone’s busy these days, and some of your invitees are bound to already have plans for the time of your party. One rule of thumb is to invite twice as many people as you’d like to attend.
Make your guest list & pick your party style
Here are several party variations you should consider before you make up your guest list and send invitations. Remember, you can have more than one party if you want!
- Hold a party with Friends & Family
If you throw a “Friends & Family” house party, invite people who you know personally. Guests may include:
- Friends
- Family
- Co-workers
- Neighbors
- Parents from your children’s play group, school, and sports teams
- Members of your church, temple, or other religious organization
- Members of your book group
- Members of your labor union, PTA, or political club
- People you play sports with, or with whom you have regular interactions
In short, invite whatever group you feel comfortable pulling together for a fun party and conversation. Active dialogue makes parties (and life) interesting!
- Hold a party that is open to all
If you feel comfortable, you could also open up the party to others in your community who you might not know personally.
Some options for making the party available to a wider audience include:
- Posting an invitation to local listservs
- Sending an email to invitees asking them to share with their communities
- Submitting an announcement to community papers for listing in their "Events Calendar"
- Including an announcement in your church/synagogue bulletin
- Delivering invites to your neighbors
- Inviting local elected officials and candidates
This would be a great way to expand the size of the party, meet new people, and expand the range of perspectives in the room.
STEP 4: Invite People
At last, you’re ready to get to the fun part—inviting people!
Send Invitations
Invite people by email, hand-written invitation, flyer, phone call, listservs—whatever you feel most comfortable with. Suggest people read Listening Is an Act of Love in advance. But remember, reading the book beforehand is not necessary for attending the party, as you will be playing selections from the CD.
Follow-Up Personally
No matter how you send your invitation, be sure to follow—up by phone or in person. People appreciate the personal touch and it will dramatically increase your chances of getting people there. If you have a co-host, divide up the calls or visits so it’s manageable.
Send Reminders
Don’t forget to call or send an email reminder several days before your party.
STEP 5: Plan Your Evening
Review the Agenda for Hosts
We recommend that you dedicate a total of about 2 hours for the gathering. We’ve developed a sample agenda as a starting point for you to consider (scroll down this page to see that sample agenda for hosts).
Of course, you can always shift the agenda as needed before or during the meeting to accommodate your group’s interest or timing realities. And, you can modify it to fit your needs as well. It’s all up to you!
Pick What You’re Going to Listen To!
You need to pick what you’ll be screening at your party. Here’s what the Listening CD includes:
- Introduction
- William Jacobs to his grandson, Seth Fleischauer
- Hee-Sook Lee to her daughter, Joyce Lee
- Mary Lou Maher to her son Brada Skow
- Cherie Johnson and her cousin James Ransom
- Monica Mayer to her cousin Spencer Wilkinson, Jr.
- Ken Kobus to his friend Ron Baraff
- Joyce Butler to her daughter, Stephanie Butler
- Rick Kincaid to his friend Danny Terry
- Blanca Alvarez to her daughter, Connie Alvarez
- Paul Mortimer and his friend Shawn Fox
- Shasti O’Leary Soudant to her husband, Jethro Soudant
- Kim Schumer and her sister, Amy Schumer
- Joseph Robertson to his son-in-law, John Fish Jr.
- Sam Harmon to his grandson, Ezra Awumey
- Theresa Burroughs to her daughter, Toni Love
- Mary Caplan to her friend Emily Collazo
- Richard Pecorella
- Rufus Burkhalter with his friend Bobby Brown
- Jo Ann Chew with her husband, Bob Chew
Feel free to listen and see what you like best. Each issue segment is around three minutes long.
Review the Free Discussion Guide
Check out our free Discussion Guide for pointers about how to keep discussions lively.
STEP 6: Getting Ready the Day of the Soirée
In addition to the regular party organizing, we recommend you include the following items in your set up:
Sign-In
It’s helpful to get the names and email addresses of your attendees. That way, if they’d like to receive e-mail updates from StoryCorps, we can easily add them to our list.
Gimme an E for Equipment!
Well before your attendees arrive, set up your CD equipment to play the Listening audio version for your guests. Be sure to briefly test the entire system by playing a clip of the CD and checking the audio quality.
STEP 7: Party!
Take Pictures
Capture the occasion by taking group pictures—some candid shots of people in conversation, and of course the food! We’ll have a place on the StoryCorps website for you to upload digital photos pictures from your party.
Have Fun!
Don’t forget to have fun yourself! If the host is having fun, the guests are usually enjoying themselves too. Try to finish all of your party set-up well before hand so you can focus on people, not tasks, once the party has started. Enjoy!
STEP 8: Tell Us All About It
We are eager to know everything about your party!
Please send us an email to let us know how it went.
We’ll use your feedback to revise our guidelines and prepare new materials. We’d also love to post parts of your comments on the StoryCorps website to encourage others!
Send Pictures
Show us your party! Email a few pictures of your party and your party details (date, location, host name) to us and we’ll post them on the StoryCorps site.
Send Contact Info
If you’ve collected email addresses of guests who would like to be signed up for the StoryCorps electronic newsletter, please send them to us and they will be added promptly.
Check out a Sample Party Agenda
StoryCorps would like to thank MomsRising for pointers and guidance on the Listening Party How-To Kit.
