One governed project boundary
Each family commission has its own membership, permissions, source collection, consent records, and working locations. A person may join more than one project without joining or merging the projects themselves.
Stewardship
Beautifully told.
Carefully accountable.
Family history asks for more than good writing. It asks for respectful participation, visible provenance, honest technology practices, clear ownership boundaries, and a private project that can be returned and closed.
Our working principles
The record should outlast the tools used to make it.
These principles guide the studio. Project-specific rights, access, processors, retention, printing, delivery, and closeout terms are governed by the written commission agreement.
Consent is part of the design
Contributors, recording expectations, intended readers, reviewers, public uses, and known sensitivities are addressed before collection—not inferred from family relationships.
Provenance travels with the story
Documents, interviews, photographs, published records, family recollections, historical reconstruction, and creative invention are not treated as interchangeable.
People remain responsible
AI-assisted technology may help transcribe, organize, compare, search, identify gaps, propose follow-up questions, and assist production. It does not decide what is true or invent missing facts. Douglas directs editorial decisions, and the family reviews the Chronicle.
Correction is part of honest history
Memories differ and records can be incomplete. We preserve important uncertainty, track corrections, and establish family review points before physical production.
Data is minimized
We ask only for material necessary to the agreed story and discourage unnecessary high-risk identifiers, credentials, full financial records, and unrelated medical information.
Record, recollection, uncertainty, creation
A moving family story can still be historically careful.
We do not flatten every recollection into a claim of fact. We identify whose memory is speaking, look for supporting or conflicting material, and use editorial framing when certainty is not available.
A model suggestion is never a source. Factual passages must trace to family-supplied material or an identified external source—or be clearly presented as recollection, uncertainty, or disagreement.
If a later creative work reconstructs, compresses, dramatizes, or invents, that work is clearly disclosed. Its creative choices do not silently rewrite the Chronicle.
Technology stated plainly
Private does not mean pretending there are no processors.
Selected hosting, communications, transcription, research, design, production, and technology providers may process the minimum material needed for their role. The commission documents the applicable project locations and controls.
Only the necessary project material is sent to an approved provider.
Project data locations and meaningful retention limits are recorded.
Provider output remains working material until Douglas reviews it and the required family review occurs.
Retention the studio cannot independently eliminate is disclosed for the commission.
Temporary custody
We build the archive for your family. We do not build a permanent business around keeping it.
The exact grace period is defined in the commission agreement. Closeout begins only after the family has received the complete export and confirmed that it can be read.
- 01Final family approval
- 02Complete archive export and manifest
- 03Family review of the delivered archive and manifest
- 04Family confirmation of receipt
- 05Agreement-defined grace period
- 06Agreement-defined deletion and retention actions
- 07Documented actions and disclosed exceptions
What closeout means
Different copies carry different responsibilities.
We do not promise instantaneous deletion from every transient system everywhere. We state what the studio controls, what processors control, and what must lawfully remain.
Private project material is handled under the deletion, retention, and documentation terms defined in the agreement and project data-location manifest.
Available deletion and retention controls are used, and any retention Kin & Chronicle cannot independently eliminate is disclosed for the commission.
Retained only as its own permissioned dataset.
Retained only as required and without unnecessary private family content.
Family control and underlying rights
The family keeps its originals and commissioned outputs. Other rights still matter.
Newspapers, repositories, photographers, publishers, institutions, and other third parties may retain rights or usage limits in materials included for research or private family use. Those restrictions travel with the material; “family-owned archive” does not erase them.
Your first step is about fit, not a commitment
Ask the stewardship questions early.
The first conversation can surface participation, sensitivity, ownership, privacy, and closeout needs before private family material enters a project.
Request a fit conversation