After several months of behind the scenes work, *The Voices of Joplin™:Oral History and Archive Project* was launched in January 2012 by Jeff and Kathryn Piotrowski, Emmy award winning storm videographers and Carole Liston, and award winning writer and resident of Joplin, Missouri. This project seeks to gather all the thousands of stories of the Joplin tornado and their associated digital media i
n a manner that will preserve them, in their original voices, and allow them to continue to speak for generations to come. To do this, the stories of will be videotaped and the digital media will be gathered and preserved. Voices of Joplin also seeks to index, gather and promote all the creative works that have been produced by those who have experienced the tornado and make these works available to the public whenever possible. The creation of this Oral History project has been done in consultation with the Smithsonian Institute Archivists, the Library of Congress, the Missouri Council of Arts and folklorist Lisa Higgins, the National Association of Archivists, and local Joplin leadership. The Voices of Joplin™ will operate as a non profit educational entity to create an Oral History of the Joplin tornado via video archiving of people's stories and their digital images. This comprehensive project has been approved by Brad Belk, the Director of the Joplin Museum Complex, and will have an office at the Joplin Museum Complex .
