High Schooler Shares Stories
of Senior Citizens with
‘Life Stories of
Santa Barbara’ Video Series
Santa Barbara High Senior Mary Moses’s
New Documentaries Feature Residents of
Wood Glen Senior Living
By Lauren Chiou | August 16, 2024
Read the rest of our 2024 Active Aging cover story here.
Wood Glen Senior Living in Santa Barbara provides a home to multiple senior citizens in the area. It is also the setting of Santa Barbara High School senior Mary Moses’s new documentary series, Life Stories of Santa Barbara. Produced and edited by Moses herself, the series dives into the lives of elderly residents living at Wood Glen, with the hopes of sharing their life stories with a larger audience.
Moses was inspired to start her video series after speaking with her grandmother, Sharon Harrison, who is a resident at Wood Glen, where Moses visits her regularly. In one particular conversation, it dawned on Moses that she was among a small group of people who got to hear her grandmother’s stories.
“[My grandmother] was just telling me all these stories, and I remember thinking that I was one of maybe 10 people who were getting to hear it,” Moses said. “It occurred to me that there were so many people that were her age that just didn’t have an audience.”
From there, inspiration struck. Moses wanted to not only tell her grandmother’s story, but the stories of the elderly community. She wanted to make sure that people had the opportunity to share, providing a platform so others could listen as well.
“There are so many stories that people accumulate over their lives, whether they’re the bigger ones or they seem a little bit more mundane. I really wanted to be able to showcase those stories,” she said.
The videos only feature interviewees in the frame, allowing for the viewer to become fully immersed in the stories they tell. Moses’s voice is heard from the other side of the camera, guiding the conversation along and asking follow-up questions. It’s intimate and personable, making it seem as if the viewer is speaking to the resident.
Moses’s first interview was with Harrison, a continuation of their normal conversations, except this time, with a camera. “It was really nice to be able to get into the flow of things with someone I was a little more comfortable with in the beginning. I could understand the direction I was going to take [the project],” Moses said.
In Episode 1, the pair talk about Harrison’s childhood and schooling in Vancouver, her career in journalism, and her adventures in travel. At the end of the video, Harrison shares life advice: “Reach out and touch someone. And keep on going, keep on learning until the day you die.”
The other episodes of Life Stories of Santa Barbara are full of advice like Harrison’s, messages derived from years of experience and adventures. Each episode tells a unique story, with a different person as the subject.
“In each interview, there’s something different to take away from it. Everyone obviously has a different focus that they brought to [the interview], so each interview stood out for a different reason,” Moses said.
By documenting and sharing these stories, Moses hopes to bring attention to a vital but often overlooked part of the Santa Barbara community.
“I think a lot of times when we look at seniors, we don’t recognize them as being part of the community. We think that they’re in their last parts of life, and so we don’t need to treat them with the same type of respect,” Moses said.
“But they’re really just like us. They always crave connection, and the best way to do that is asking questions,” she continued. “So I hope that people begin to recognize that, and maybe ask a few more questions too.”
Recording the journeys of others has also been a journey for Moses herself, from learning how to use video editing software to becoming familiar with the ins and outs of interviewing. “It’s been very much learning it as I go. How I want to conduct [the interviews], what questions I want to ask, how I set up the camera,” Moses said.
There are currently six episodes of Life Stories of Santa Barbara, with four other interviews awaiting release. The project has been well-received by the residents.
“The residents that I interviewed, they’ve really loved it. I think they love being able to see what my 30 minutes of conversation with them turned into.”
Moses plans to continue her project once the first batch is complete.
“I’d love to either do more residents at Wood Glen, or find a different facility that would want to work with me there, or even just going into Santa Barbara and finding more people randomly and doing it spontaneously,” she shared. “I definitely want to continue it.”
Moses’s biggest takeaway from the project are the connections she has fostered through her interviews.
“It feels like I’m getting to have these people become characters in my story too. So they get to influence the ways I look at certain parts of the world,” Moses said. “It feels like I’m getting to have some wisdom shared with me in a lot of ways.”
“I feel like I have a few more grandmothers,” she smiled.
The first six episodes of Life Stories of Santa Barbara can be found on YouTube (bit.ly/3SRN1BN). For more information and to stay up-to-date on the project, check out @lifestories_of_sb on Instagram.
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