In 2021, at the beginning of the project, each listener received a personalized slipcase holding ten individual color-coded journals. There is one 50-page journal for every year of the project. The first page of each journal begins with an introduction written by a listening advocate. These introductions, focusing on healthy habits for active and empathetic listening, sets a tone for that year’s listening work.
The listeners are encouraged year on year to contribute to their journals through writing, sketching, and documenting their experiences of listening. These experiences vary between the extraordinary and the everyday moments that catalyze their approach and development of becoming the listener they want to be.
In 2031, all one thousand listening journals will be donated to the Free Library of Philadelphia’s Department of Special Collections as a public testament of what it was like to listen to Philadelphia for the past ten years of this unprecedented time in our country.