A small grants program to fund unique story projects in communities throughout the state.
The projects that make up the California Story Fund provide opportunities for individual Californians to contribute their stories to the evolving story of our state.
The Council received 171 California Story Fund proposals for the June 2009 round of funding and the following 21 projects received awards:
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“Banteay Srei — HOLGA (Hopes, Obstacles, Love, Gratitude, And ... )”
Asian Health Services , Oakland
$10,000
Project Director: Nhuanh Ly
This is an intergenerational story collection and photography project for young Southeast Asian women in Oakland involved in or at risk for sexual exploitation. The young women will have an opportunity to interview and talk to female elders and each other about their refugee and survival experiences. - “Berkeley Fellowship Oral History Project”
Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, Berkeley
$7,000
Project Director: Lena Richardson
This project will document the stories of a church that forms a progressive spiritual community in the heart of Berkeley. It will use intergenerational story circles, with young congregants interviewing church elders to document their activism for social and political causes. An archive of audio interviews, a public forum, and a self-published book and curriculum for use with other congregations will round out the project. - “The Creeks of Salinas: The Gabilan Watershed Experience”
Monterey Bay Women’s Caucus for Art, Aromas
$10,000
Project Director: Jennifer Colby
This project tells the story of the Gabilan Watershed in the Central Coast of California through photographs, prints and poetry. Students at local schools and a team of community artists will create an installation with maps, poetry and collagraph prints. The aim is to make more people aware of the sense of place in a watershed. - “Ecology Emerges”
Counterpulse, San Francisco
$9,000
Project Directors: Chris Carlsson and LisaRuth Elliott
This oral history project will document the ecological activist movement in the San Francisco Bay Area. The subjects will be 12 people who have helped shape the city in the past half-century. - “Exploring Community, Worth and Life on the Slabs”
Center For Religion and Civic Culture/USC , Los Angeles
$9,999
Project Director: Matt Gainer
Using documentary photography and oral histories, this project will look at how community is maintained in Slab City, near the Salton Sea. It is a site that has no official status as place, no state-supported infrastructure and no private property. The project will explore the ontological impulses that lead people to live “off the map,” and the methods they use to create a sense of place, value and community once they settle. - “The Farmers’ Table: Asian Americans and Agriculture in the Golden State”
Asian Culinary Forum, San Francisco
$10,000
Project Director: Thy Tran
The stories of three Asian-American farming families will be aired on listener-sponsored radio station KPFA and featured on a companion website. The project will also sponsor a live cooking demonstration and discussion at a San Francisco farmer’s market. - “From the Quarters to Lincoln Heights”
Weed Revitalization Coalition, Weed
$10,000
Project Director and Filmmaker: Mark Oliver
This project will use oral history and historical documents to tell the story of the Siskiyou County town of Weed’s long-standing African-American community and the different waves of migration of African Americans who have migrated there. - “Gone Through Fire: Modjeska and Silverado Canyons and the 2007 Santiago Fire”
Center For Oral And Public History/CSU Fullerton
$10,000
Project Director: Diane Ambruso
This project will collect the stories of residents who showed resourcefulness and independence in response to the Santiago Fire that in 2007 burned almost 30,000 acres and destroyed 14 homes in Modjeska and Silverado Canyons, two small communities in the Santa Ana Mountains 10 miles east of Irvine. Excerpts from the stories will be used to create an exhibit and will also be featured on the Center for Oral and Public History’s website. - “Hyampom Oral History Project”
Hyampom Community Council, Hyampom
$5,482.10
Project Director: Lisa Brey Randolph
This project will record the stories of several elders of diverse backgrounds in the Siskiyou County community of Hyampom. The stories will be woven into a one-hour audio-photographic program, which will be presented to the Hyampom community, with the goal of increasing communication and connections among residents. - “Karuk Voices”
Karuk Tribe, Happy Camp
$10,000
Project Director: Ruth Rouvier
Conducted in partnership with the tribe's Youth Leadership Council, this project will provide an opportunity for Karuk teens and young adults to work with tribal elders and produce short oral history videos of the elders’ lives and experiences.
- “Kaweah Land and Arts Festival: Celebrating the Stories of the Kaweah Watershed”
Sequoia Riverlands Trust, Visalia
$10,000
Project Director: Niki Woodard
This projectwill celebrate the region of the Kaweah Watershed by telling stories of the land through local art, literature, poetry, storytelling, history and natural science. The goal is to help bring a fragmented community together around a shared goal of better land conservation and stewardship. - “Lao Oral History Archive”
Center For Lao Studies, San Francisco
$10,000
Project Director: Vinya Sysamouth
This project will use audio and video digital media to record interviews with a variety of Lao émigrés about their immigration experiences. An online public archive will feature the interviews along with photos and historical documents, all of which will be exhibited at a multimedia event during San Francisco’s 2010 Asian Heritage Street Celebration. - “Lifestages: Recollections and Reflections”
Playwrights Project, San Diego
$10,000
Project Director: Cecelia Kouma
This multigenerational program aims to transform seniors’ life experiences into theater, with professional actors performing staged readings for schools and the community. - “Marin Mind/Scapes: Stories of Art, Nature and Wellness”
Anne T. Kent California Room/Marin County Free Library, San Rafael
$10,000
Project Director: Marilyn L.Geary
This project will collect and present the stories of Marin County artists, some of whom have been diagnosed with mental illness. The stories will deal with how the creative process has affected the artists’ lives and how the landscape of Marin County has influenced the participants’ art and sense of well-being. - “Memories of the Grove: An Oral History of Folk Music and Cultural Activism in 1960s Los Angeles”
Ash Grove Music, Los Angeles
$8,450
Project Director: Victor Cohen
For 15 years, beginning in 1958, the Ash Grove club in Los Angeles provided a venue where people could play, learn about and listen to traditional folk music. Using oral history, this project will document club goers’ experiences, recording for current generations the significance of the folk music community to the culture of Los Angeles in the 1960s. - “Oral History and Micro Documentary: Bridging Generations of Filipinos in the San Francisco Bay Area”
Center For Filipino Studies/CSU East Bay, Hayward
$10,000
Project Directors: Soledad Rica Llorente and Efren Padilla
This oral history project will involve several generations of San Francisco Bay Area Filipinos in an effort to foster understanding and renew connections for people in the Filipino community. The stories will be turned into micro-documentaries, which will be featured on the Center for Filipino Studies’ website. - “Re-Alisal — the Histories Beneath the Headlines”
Alisal Center for the Fine Arts, Salinas
$10,000
Project Director: Luis “Xago” Juárez
Initiated and carried out by lifelong residents of East Salinas, this project asks the question, how does a community tell its own story? A small team of researchers/performers from the group Baktun 12 will interview Alisal residents, employers and public servants, gathering stories for a theatrical people’s history of the area. - “Sister Aimee: The Musical”
Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles
$10,000
Project Director: Lisa Marr
For this project, youths in a series of after-school workshops and weekend classes will create an experimental narrative film on the life and times of the dynamic evangelist Sister Aimee Semple McPherson. The film will combine politics and social and cultural history to examine McPherson’s role as a leader of national significance in the 1920s and ’30s. - “Two Spirits: Queer Native American Women”
Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project, San Francisco
$10,000
Project Director: Madeleine Lim
This comprehensive project will collect, present and communicate stories by and about Native American two-spirit women in California (lesbians, bisexuals and transgender women) through filmmaking workshops, screenings and discussions, and the creation of a study guide. - “Untold Stories of Japanese-American Dissent”
Tule Lake Committee, Tule Lake
$10,000
Project Director: Barbara Takei
This project will add first-person stories to the website of the Tule Lake Segregation Center National Monument, currently being developed. The stories will tell the little-known story of the 12,000 Japanese Americans who protested their unjust incarceration at Tule Lake, Siskiyou County, during World War II and were stigmatized for their wartime dissent. - “Women, Faith and Action: Asian Pacific Islander Women and their Faith-Based Activism in the 1960s-70s”
Pana Institute, Berkeley
$10,000
Project Director: Kathleen S. Yep
This project will uncover and document through interviews, digital archives and public forums the stories of Asian-American and Pacific-Islander women who, informed by their spirituality and religious traditions, were engaged in the U.S. movement for civil and human rights in the 1960s and ’70s.