Allied Arts of Yakima Blog

A Story-Generating Center - August 31, 2010 -

We were listening to a piece on National Public Radio called "Our Storied Lives." The two-part series talked about the stories we tell about our lives, whether we share them, and how we share them. As the piece says, stories are "a kind of tool for us, as powerful as an ax or an arrow."

This is something all of us have known, probably for the length of our own lives. We have all been moved to tears or laughter by someone else's story, even our own stories. When we get together with family and friends, we share stories and one story prompts another. Thus, conversation -- and relationships -- unfold.

An interesting thing is that these stories, this glue of social interaction, are often small, almost inconsequential. Rather than tales of adventure and drama, triumph and failure, they are very small stories: the first time you had to stay after school; the time you left your shin guards at the kid's house you weren't supposed be at; the way your dad always said, "Beats the tar outta me;" the day you lost the car keys and found a baby bird…

Our lives are woven of the fine threads of such small moments. When we share some of our moments with others, they remember their small moments, too. Wonderful exchanges are built on these tender foundations.

Looking over the past several months at Allied Arts, we see hundreds of small moments floating like tiny seeds in the wind. Hundred of children added to their story-bank-account while exploring at the ArtsVan or in a painting class or Orchestra Camp or Shakespeare Camp. Families built stories while watching Outdoor Summer Cinema or creating at ArtsVan Family Nights. Grown-ups collected their own stories while laughing over voodoo dolls at BYOB Art Night, expanding their confidence in a watercolor workshop, reading at Poetry Open Mic, exclaiming over the art in the Peggy Lewis Gallery. Think of all the "small moments" Allied Arts has been part of in the nearly 50 years of its existence: tiny, powerful moments with which to paint our stories.

All of this makes us realize that Allied Arts is not "just" an Arts Center. It is a story-generating center, an integral part of weaving together the on-going memoir that is our community.