The American Wildfire Experience (AWE) is a small non-profit rooted in understanding, examining, and telling the story of wildland fire. Through multimedia storytelling, oral histories, and other projects and initiatives, AWE works to facilitate dialogue, communication, and education around the challenges and opportunities of our current wildland fire situation in the United States and abroad. We believe that sharing scientific data and knowledge tied together with human experience is the best way to tell the story of wildland fire and to have an impact on the way in which wildland fire burns across both our social and ecological landscapes.
Areas of focus/interest:
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Innovative community engagement
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Digital storytelling (including our micro-grant initiative)
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Wildland fire oral history collection, sharing, and preservation
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Outreach and communications (including managing safety and risk perceptions)
Our Projects and Programs
Nobody speaks for fire. There are people who speak for logging, people who speak for endangered species, and people who speak for action on climate change, but there’s not a [voice] for fire. Fire is only used to animate other messages, so it gets caught in existing political stalemates.