Ulster County Executive's Arts Awards 2023

TMI Project, founded by Eva Tenuto and Julie Novak in 2010, runs ‘true storytelling’ workshops where they help unsung heroes—people who don’t often have the chance to be heard—craft and share their stories. These stories intentionally include the “too much information” parts people usually keep to themselves. The goal is that in speaking ‘the unspeakable’, isolation and shame will be replaced with connection and freedom.

TMI Project, based in Kingston, has led more than 100 true storytelling workshops and staged live storytelling performances by more than 2,000 storytellers, which have been presented to audiences of over 250,000 people in schools, colleges, detention centers, mental health clinics, theaters, the United Nations and online on both Youtube and The TMI Project Podcast. The TMI Project Podcast is currently in the top 1% of global ranking and has nearly 150k unique downloads. Projects include ‘Black Stories Matter’ and ‘Black Trans Stories Matter.’

For their efforts in supporting marginalized populations, the TMI Project has been awarded the Ulster County Executive’s Arts Award for ‘Artivist’.

“This is a very nice recognition,” says Eva.  “It is not easy to be an artist or an activist. But combining the two is even more challenging, particularly when it comes to getting funding because people don’t know which bucket you fall into.”

Eva thinks TMI is currently in an interesting spot. “Because of the pandemic, we expanded digitally and now we’re trying to see how we navigate doing both in-person and digital work. We have two new documentaries we are working on and the podcast continues to have a lot of potential,” she says. “We will continue to do work that has the power to really shift things in the world for the better and to let people know that everybody has the ability to reach for it and do anything.”