Connecting the world Stranger by Stranger

Hi everyone! I’m Brandon from the Strangers Project—and I'm really excited about stories.



For six years now I've been collecting stories from strangers. These stories are collected face to face in public spaces around the country with a stack of blank paper, clipboards, and a lot of pens. During this time I’ve met tens of thousands of strangers, and over 15,000 of them have handwritten stories while sitting across from me— beautiful, candid, and amazing stories.

When I started all of this, I had no idea that it could grow to what it’s become today. With that growth, this project has become a full time job—and I've loved every minute of it. Over the past few years, thousands of hours have been dedicated to collecting, archiving, documenting, and sharing these stories.



When I'm out collecting, I get a lot of questions from strangers. One of the most common is:

”Is this your job?”
“Well, yes!” I tell them, “but it’s complicated.”

I'm passionate about this project and stories in general. That means that I've done whatever it takes to dedicate as much time to this project as possible. Early on, I decided that I never wanted to have ads on the site so that it could remain focused on the stories. With that option off the table, I decided I would work elsewhere in order to make this happen. Sometimes I build websites, sometimes I work for amazing non-profits, and all of it has been so that I can dedicate more time and energy to this project. So when people ask if this is my job—I say it is. And I love my job.
I'm really proud of what I've accomplished so far, but I'm way more excited about what I could do if I was able to focus more fully on these ideas. I see the world and the people that inhabit it in a way that I want to explore more deeply. And I want to turn that into things I can share with you.

I recently discovered Patreon, and I think it’s a wonderful platform that can help us grow the project even more together. It’s a little like Kickstarter, but instead of funding one large product or event all at once, it allow fans to become patrons for the content creators they follow with small contributions. You can think of it like an online tipjar for the content you love.

What’s amazing about a community like the one surrounding the Strangers Project is that with a lot of small acts of support, we can do huge things. Now, I want to clarify—the project is going to continue to grow no matter what, and it will always be free. But your support of any amount—whether it’s a dollar, a few dollars, or more—can be the catalyst this project needs to explore even more ways to share and experience stories. Your support means that I can focus all of my energy creating a better experience for you and for the strangers that share their lives with us.

With your support, this is just a few of the things I’ll be able to do:

• Dedicate more time gathering stories. This means I can explore more communities, find more stories, and connect with more strangers.
• Share more stories with you. It takes a lot of time to read (I read every story!), organize, document, and eventually share the stories with you. Right now I try to share two new stories every day, but even that can be difficult to manage. This would allow me to guarantee that you're getting new content every single day.
• Explore new ways to collect and share. This means more exhibits, more events, more videos, audio, and really just more stories. I have notebooks full of ideas that I want to explore.
• Start new projects! If you love the Strangers Project, you’ll love some of the ideas I want to launch this year.
• Collaborate with other communities. If you've been following my work, you know that I've been deeply involved in mental health advocacy. I'd love to explore ways to connect branches of these projects to ways that can help people.
• Share my experience! Collecting stories is an experience unlike any other. The more I do it, the more my passion for this project grows. I want to explore more ways to share this experience with you. Live video streaming, writeups, interviews… there’s so many ways we can grow here.
• Take the Project on the road. I've collected all over the country, but mostly here in NYC. I'd love to be able to do some fun tours where I meet strangers all over and gather their stories.

And this is just the start of it. If you decide to be a patron, there are a lot of fun benefits that come with that. You will receive access to a patron-only feed where we can talk, discuss, and find previews of upcoming projects, ideas, etc. Basically, it’s a way to be a part of this project and help shape its future. Beyond that, you'll find a bunch of other perks for different levels of patronage below.



I started all of this because I believe in stories. I hope that you'll believe in what have to offer moving forward by becoming a patron. If you’re not able to support, that’s ok! The most important part is reading and sharing stories—and that will never change. But if you can afford it, you can make a huge difference with a small gesture. For the cost of one cup of coffee or a beer at a NYC bar once a month, you can keep this project growing, and help us all share more stories. Together.

In case you don't really know about the Strangers Project and you were still nice enough to read all of this, here's a story to get you caught up.