History Colorado: Italians of Denver and Imagine a Great City Exhibitions

History Colorado is the name of the Colorado State Museum, an organization rich in the stories of native peoples, early miners, fur traders, Western pioneers, and cattle barons. In 2007 and again in 2008, History Colorado showcased two special exhibitions, one on the history of Italians in Denver, and one on the history of Denver itself. Story Center was invited to participate in both initiatives by helping integrate the voices of Colorado citizens into the stories being told.

The two workshops helped turn the tables on history museum interpretation, inviting members of the community to tell their own stories in their own words, and with their own photographs. Paired one on one with individuals who had previously taken a digital storytelling workshop at StoryCenter, the participants spent three days writing and crafting their stories with the assistance of their partners. They were the experts, and in their digital stories they invited the audience into small, but moving moments in their lives.

Storytellers in the Italians in Denver exhibit articulated stories such as what it was like to grow up in a house with two kitchens—one upstairs for show, and one in the basement for making the family meals. The stories told in the following workshop called Imagine a Great City included Bill Tall Bull telling about arriving in Denver from the reservation in Montana to spend summers with his grandparents in a small house near the old Mile High Stadium, hearing the cheers from the crowd, and smelling the pollution from automobiles.

Each of the workshops produced ten stories that were screened continuously in the exhibition galleries for the course of the exhibits. When the exhibits were struck, the stories found a home in the collections of History Colorado, and will be available for generations to come.

What if we had digital stories from every time period and major event in our history? Stories made by the wife of a Civil War soldier who didn’t come home? A fur trapper who survived a bear attack in 1820? A Ute woman and her family forced by U.S. soldiers from their homeland? A Hispanic woman weaving a rug or teaching her daughter how to embroider a colcha?

That would be gold. And current stories, current voices, those are gold, too. They are what history should be about.