About Storeykeeper

I came to Storeykeeper lamenting a missed opportunity.

When my mother died, I realized there was so much I had never asked her. Not as my mother, but as the person, I never got to explore with her . I never sat her down in front of a camera and asked the questions I now wish I had asked: What was she like as a teenager? How did she meet my father? What did she love about him? How did she feel about her marriage, her life, her choices? What was it like to give birth to six children? What were her favorite foods, her private joys, her disappointments, her secrets, the stories she never quite got around to telling? That really haunted me and still does to this day.

Those answers are gone now. Photographs and documents can tell me some things, but they cannot bring back her voice, her expressions, her pauses, or the particular way she might have told the truth of her own life.

That loss has stayed with me. And I know I am not alone.

We live in a time when it is easier than ever to record almost everything, yet families still lose the stories that matter most. People move away. Generations pass. The chain of memory that once moved naturally from person to person can break quietly, without anyone meaning for it to happen.

StoreyKeeper exists to help repair that chain, one storey and one conversation at a time. If this work helps even one family ask the questions they have been putting off, it is worth doing.

Why Storey instead of Story?

In architecture, a “storey” represents a level of a house or a building. When applied to a person’s life, it perfectly illustrates that a lifetime isn’t lived all at once—it is built level by level. The Ground Floor: Childhood, early memories, roots, and where they came from. The Middle Storeys: Twenties, career choices, finding love, building businesses, raising families, and navigating the busy middle of life.The Upper Storeys: True wisdom, the view from the top, perspective, and looking back over the entire structure.

My name is Michael Richard

For more than 25 years, I’ve worked at the meeting point of storytelling, video, and technology, helping people and organizations communicate who they are, what they value, and why their work matters.

I began in the early days of digital media, producing video-based training applications for commercial clients when that kind of work was still new ground. Since then, my path has moved through web design, videography, and documentary filmmaking. To me, those disciplines have always been connected by the same purpose: to notice what is true, meaningful, and human, and make it visible.

Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of working with organizations I deeply respect, including Tufts University, Washington State University, the Frances Perkins Center, the Maine Arts Commission, the Natural Resources Council of Maine, Lincoln Academy, the Kneading Conference, Slow Food, and many private clients whose projects have been just as meaningful. Along the way, I’ve also made three documentaries.