Giving a north Tulsa community the microphone, story by story

Northside Neighbors wanted their neighborhoods heard in their own words. Together we built an ongoing series of resident stories from the Walt Whitman and Hawthorne neighborhoods, produced month after month on a retainer that kept the work moving.

• Client Northside Neighbors
• Format Monthly retainer
• Deliverables Resident story series, campaign films
• Standout work Mental health campaign

The challenge

Community work lives or dies on trust. Northside Neighbors needed more than a camera crew; they needed a team residents would open up to, and a production rhythm steady enough to sustain a months-long storytelling effort alongside a mental health awareness campaign with community partners.

What we did

We structured the engagement as a retainer, so Northside Neighbors got a predictable monthly production capacity instead of one-off quotes for every video. Working with their team and community interviewers, we filmed resident interviews on location in the neighborhoods, delivered drafts through a structured review process, and kept a library of stories growing over six months.

The results

Two things stand out. The resident story series gave neighbors in Walt Whitman and Hawthorne a platform to tell their own stories, in their own words, and the series keeps growing. And the mental health awareness campaign, built alongside community partners across Tulsa, put that same production rhythm behind a message the community needed amplified. Along the way: GED program films on their website, event recaps, and social content, all from one team that already knew the neighborhood.

What this means for you

If you lead a nonprofit, the lesson is about rhythm. One-off videos create one-off attention. A retainer gives you steady production capacity every month, a team your community already recognizes, and a library of stories ready whenever a funder, event, or campaign needs proof of your impact. You stop asking “can we afford a video for this?” and start asking “which story do we tell next?”