2019 Thousand Oaks Remembers Storytelling Project- Preserved
In the year following November 2018, Thousand Oaks Remembers gathered stories, trained facilitators, hosted listening groups across the community, and brought people together for a community storytelling event on the one-year anniversary of the tragedy. This section is a living archive of that work — preserved here as a record of what this community did in the first year, and as the foundation on which everything that has followed was built. The pages below reflect the 2019 project as it existed at that time. Submission forms and sign-up pages have been closed, but the stories, recordings, and documentation of the project remain available to explore.
Our Original Purpose
THE EARLY HOURS
In the early hours of November 8, 2018 The Thousand Oaks Teen Center was established as a crisis response center where families and friends of loved ones who were unaccounted for from the tragic shooting at the Borderline Bar and Grill could gather and await information. Within hours this crisis response center was evacuated along with much of the Thousand Oaks community as the Woolsey and Hill fires ignited and bared down on this already tragedy-stricken town. The days and weeks that followed included sadness, anger, chaos, confusion, and the audacity of the indomitable human spirit to show up within the people of Thousand Oaks.
A THOUSAND STORIES
For every member of the Thousand Oaks community there are a myriad of stories to be told about what was experienced over those days and weeks. While those stories are born out of deep tragedy and loss, there is within them an unparalleled amount of strength and hope. It is the hope of this project to provide a space for people to share these stories that are being carried. Through a variety of opportunities this project will seek to collect stories from those affected by the community tragedies and the hopeful and uplifting responses that followed.
A Community in Turmoil
1 DAY, 2 TRAGEDIES
Though the shooting and the fires were two very separate events, they are and will forever be woven together in the experience and memory of this community. Likewise, the kindness, generosity, and strength of the people of Thousand Oaks is unforgettable as they worked together to build and create unity in the moments, days, weeks, and months that have followed those fateful events.
TELL YOUR STORY
The project set out to collect stories primarily for the healing of individuals and the community as a whole. We did this through providing multiple places for people to share their stories including space for verbal story sharing, written stories, as well as a larger community event on the one-year anniversary.
THE STEERING TEAM
Thousand Oaks Remembers was a community effort in the truest sense. The project's original steering team brought together leaders from across the Conejo Valley — from law enforcement and local government to faith communities, higher education, social services, independent ministry, and local journalism. Voices from the Ventura County Sheriff's Office, Thousand Oaks City Council, the County of Ventura, California Lutheran University, Monte Vista Presbyterian Church, Lifestream Ministries, 211 Ventura County, and the Thousand Oaks Acorn all had a seat at the table. That breadth was itself a statement — that what happened here belonged to all of us, and that the work of remembering and rebuilding would require all of us too.