Events › Stories That Build US: Community Healing and Hope through The Griot Tradition

This interactive community learning experience, hosted in celebration of Black History Month, invites participants to explore the Griot tradition — the sacred art of storytelling that preserves culture, wisdom, and resilience across generations. Drawing from the roots of West African oral history and connecting them to modern frameworks, this session will help participants uncover and shape their own personal stories of growth, healing, and triumph.

Participants will reflect on how stories shape identity, community, and shared history — including the story of the Dayton Metro Library West Branch and its own journey from vision to vital community space. Through guided reflection and creative exercises, attendees will learn how storytelling can serve as both a mirror and a map: a way to understand where we’ve been, where we are, and where we are going.

By the end of the session, each participant will leave with their own personal storyboard — a visual and written reflection capturing the intersections of heritage, hope, and human experience.

This event blends history, psychology, and artistry, reminding us that storytelling is not just an act of remembrance — it is an act of renewal.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this experience, participants will be able to:

1. Explore the Griot tradition as a cultural framework for preserving identity, wisdom, and community history.
2. Apply at least one storytelling structure to craft a personal story of resilience and transformation.
3. Create an individual storyboard that captures their personal or ancestral narrative, integrating lessons of healing, hope, and legacy.
4. Reflect on how the story of the Dayton Metro Library West Branch embodies the spirit of community storytelling and cultural continuity.

Lamarr Lewis Bio

Lamarr Lewis’ lifelong mission is to leave the world better than how he found it. He is a dedicated advocate, author, and agent of change. With a focus on community-based mental and public health, he works with diverse groups including individuals living with psychiatric disabilities, people in recovery from substance abuse, and at-hope youth (He does not use the term at-risk).

His career spans over twenty years with experience as a therapist, consultant, public speaker, facilitator, trainer, and human service professional. Lamarr integrates “A therapist’s lens to organizational problems,” fostering accountability, healing, and equity in the communities he serves.

He is an alumnus of Wittenberg University graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology with minors in Africana Studies and Religion. He later received his master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling from Argosy University.

He has been a featured expert for such organizations as; Boeing, Region IV Public Health Training Center, the Georgia Mental Health Consumer Network, Fulton County Probate Court, Mississippi Department of Health, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, ASTHO, NNPHI, and many more.