Stories that people gather around.
Sip StoryLab is the commissioning practice of The Sip Collective. We turn the stories museums, universities, foundations, and mission-driven organizations hold into experiences people can walk into, share, and return to.
Oral history, film, reporting, exhibits, and live gatherings — rooted in Mississippi, built to last.
Start a conversation
Photo: Melanie Thortis for The 'Sip Magazine, February 2014.
Sip StoryLab is a cultural storytelling studio. We bring people together around stories that need telling.
One partner, one process, from first interview to public moment. We do the work so your team doesn't have to, and the result belongs to you.
Story is the beginning, not the finished product.
Most storytelling stops at the byline. We keep going. A story becomes an oral history. An oral history becomes a film. A film becomes an exhibit. An exhibit becomes a gathering. We call it story-to-experience, and it's how we help institutions build not just an audience, but a community around the work they already do.
Partners across the South.
We collaborate with the institutions keeping Southern culture alive, translating their missions into stories communities can gather around.
Museums & Cultural Institutions
Turn an exhibit, an anniversary, or an archive into a living, shareable experience.
Universities & Archives
Capture the voices and community memory your institution is built to preserve.
Tourism & Destinations
Give heritage travelers a reason to stay another night and come back.
Civic & Economic Development
Tell the story of a place in a way that draws people, investment, and pride.
Foundations & Funders
Turn grantmaking themes into public storytelling that carries beyond a report.
Cultural Bridges
A multi-year, IMLS-funded project connecting Vicksburg and Mound Bayou through shared histories of land, leadership, and Black self-determination.
Built in partnership with Shape Up Mississippi and Catfish Row Museum. Oral histories, documentary production, community listening, and public gatherings.
Explore Cultural Bridges →Stories, made tangible.
Exhibits & experiences
Oral histories, digital maps, and physical exhibits that bring history into shared space.
Reporting, film & multimedia
Long-form features, documentary, photography, and design assets that travel.
Live gatherings & activation
Panels, screenings, chef series, and listening sessions that invite participation.
Shapes a project can take.
Every engagement is scoped to your organization and your funding. We share pricing in the first conversation, once we understand your goals.
Spotlight
One story, fully realized. Built around a single anchor narrative and a public moment.
- →Oral history collection
- →One anchor narrative
- →A public event or gathering
- →Documentation and archive
Series
A multi-story arc across a season. Reporting, media, and public programs that build audience.
- →Multiple oral histories
- →Three to five features
- →Multimedia production
- →Tied public programs
Signature
A year-long cultural project. Exhibits, documentary, guides, and a full activation program.
- →Exhibit or documentary
- →Cultural guide or archive
- →Season-long activation
- →Partner and press coordination
Custom
Multi-partner cultural engagements funded through grants and consortium partnerships.
- →Multi-partner coordination
- →Grant-funded structure
- →Multi-year deliverables
- →Cultural Bridges is the example
Listen, Frame, Tell, Gather.
Every project runs through the same four-step practice, easy to start and built to last.
Listen
We start with your community, your archive, and the people whose story this is.
Frame
We build the cultural and historical context that helps the story land.
Tell
We publish across the formats the story needs. Reporting, film, exhibit, design.
Gather
We design the moments that turn readers into participants and visitors into community.
Before you reach out.
How long does a project take?+
A Spotlight engagement usually takes three to five months from kickoff to public launch. A Series runs six to nine months. Signature and Custom projects run twelve months or longer. We build a schedule with you at the start.
How does pricing work?+
We share pricing in the first conversation, once we understand your goals, your timeline, and the scope that fits your organization. Every engagement is quoted individually. Pricing covers the full scope of a project: research, listening sessions, reporting or oral history, production across the agreed formats, and the public activation. Travel and third-party costs are scoped separately when applicable.
Who owns the work?+
You do. Commissions transfer full ownership and use rights to your organization on completion, with credit to LFVC as the studio of record and to the individual contributors named in the work. We keep a non-exclusive license to reference the project in our portfolio.
How is this different from a freelancer or agency?+
A freelancer produces one deliverable. An agency scales content. StoryLab designs the arc from story to experience: what the work is, who it's for, how it lives in your community, and what happens after the launch. We work with a small, trusted circle of journalists, oral historians, filmmakers, and cultural workers who share the same method.
How does Amplify The Sip fit in?+
Amplify is our publication, where the craft lives publicly. Some commissions produce work that also runs in Amplify, with your partnership, which extends your project's reach. Others stay entirely with your institution. We discuss the fit at the start.
Are you a nonprofit?+
The Sip Collective is fiscally sponsored by Tiny News Collective, a 501(c)(3), which means gifts and grants are tax-deductible. Commissions are contracted engagements between your institution and LF Voices Collective, LLC, doing business as The Sip Collective.
Let's bring it to life in a way that lasts.
Tell us about your organization and the story you're trying to bring into public life. We'll set up a free thirty-minute conversation to talk through fit.
lauchlin@thesipcollective.org