Awesome! Barbara’s “Our Own Stories” workshops following “The Happy Memories Club” were just awesome!  Victoria Young, director, Community Connections, Haywood County NC  

Your “Happy Memories Club” performance last night and your “Our Own Stories” workshop today were both excellent and powerful.   ---Larry Davis, Greenbrier Valley Theatre, W.Va.

Watching you pull your participants into Ivy’s story and then seeing how they created their own stories was wonderful. You definitely reached our members, and all 55 expressed themselves as perhaps they never could before. You brought close interaction with a diverse group. 
                                                        Velma Thomas, President, Florida Women’s Alliance

Smith led exercises to help them find their way. She showed them how to jog the memory and spark ideas.
                                                           Joan S. Rodgers, Winston-Salem Journal

They told details about their lives to perfect strangers. Thirty people sat in three circles and took turns talking.
Barbara Bates Smith kept things moving. When she asked them to write, they wrote.

                                                           Joan S. Rodgers, WINSTON-SALEM JOURNAl

Your workshop was rewarding not only from a theatrical point of view, but was also a tremendous sharing experience. Students who in the past have demonstrated little willingness to open up did so with enthusiasm; they were thrilled with the work and with themselves.... You have an ability to bring out the best from each student.

                                                            Paul Hughes, instructor, Harrison Performing Arts High School, Lakeland, FL

Smith’s workshops are an individual experience for each participant; stepping into one is like spending a day searching through the dusty attic of your life, which is likely to contain treasures unlike those in any other.

                                                               Shell Noble, THE WINCHESTER STAR, Winchester, VA

Thank you for making our Young People’s Festival of the Arts a huge success!
Many raves and accolades to you for both your performance and your workshops...
                                                              Norman Small, Theatre Winter Haven Director, and Bill Seigel, Festival Chair

I can’t thank you enough for your unique and marvelous workshop. Everyone just sat there, spellbound, after you left, clamoring for more.                    Helene Schulz, instructor, Polk Community College, Winter Haven FL

I hope you will remember me. I attended your autobiographic workshop in Taylors Falls, MN. I want to share my good news: My memoir, Dancing the Cows Home, is being published.  I hope you are continuing to inspire writers and storytellers all across the country.”

                                                                    Sara De Luca, Writers’ Guild, St.Croix Valley MN