Hello all - proposal from Kathryn alone since I wanted to force myself to come up with an idea myself!

I'm doing a lot of gallery activities in Ray Williams' class right now, and we have been talking quite a bit about he power of storytelling in the galleries. My gallery interpretation plans focus particularly on how people create their identities as American's through objects. So, my proposal unites these two ideas. I had two ideas about how it could work.

The first idea was a Live Bait style storytelling event. In this case, we would allow people to come in and tell their stories on the spot about objects, places, images that define or say something about their identities as Americans. I think the personal stories could be a powerful way for audiences to connect with that particular curatorial thesis, it's entertaining, unpredictable, participatory.

But... we have a week. Live Bait works because it happens every couple of months. People go religiously. They work on their stories for weeks. So getting the word out enough would be a challenge, we could find ourselves in a position where nobody volunteers, and we would have basically no control over the themes and content of the stories told. And it would probably be low on visuals. But I still loved the idea of storytelling so....

A few, or all of us, could tell our own. They could be about objects in Pendleton House, objects we brought in, or whatever. They could be short - just 3 to 5 minutes even, about our own collections or an object in the museum that speaks to us, or is problematic to us, about American identity. We could go all over the gallery - have set times where we will be, or just start talking, guerrilla style. Who knows? We could even let people tell thier own stories as well, with the assurance that we'll have preprepared content.

So, there you go. Hope you like it!