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Sierra Valley farmer Dave Goss is shown here recording his story “Ranch Days” with Jesikah Maria Ross |
Comments (3)The Sierra Valley Digital Storytelling Project Breaks New Ground
By Beth IngallsPublished: April 11, 2009
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When we think of advocacy and activism on land use and conservation issues we tend to picture well-dressed men and women at podiums pleading their cases to elected officials. jesikah maria ross thinks of things a bit differently. That’s apparent not only when she enthusiastically begins describing the Sierra Valley Digital Storytelling Project, but even in the way she spells her name in all lower case letters. The simple explanation she gives for that, while letting out a hardy laugh, is “I’m not a ‘capitalist.’” We’ll leave it at that for now.
ross, Director of the Art of Regional Change (ARC) at UC Davis, is a facilitator with 10 years of experience developing and managing media projects that help create change in communities. The Sierra Valley project, tentatively titled “Passion for the Land,” is a collaboration between ARC and UC Davis Cooperative Extension in Plumas and Sierra Counties. ross brings together farmers, ranchers, extension agents, artists, UC students and faculty to create what she calls “collaborative, place-based storytelling.”
The project’s goal is to help Sierra Valley residents, challenged with sustaining their agricultural way of life, find their voices and share their personal stories of struggle and reward in a dynamic and untraditional way. Recorded messages written in their own words accompany a feast of visual images and handpicked background music to create an engaging two- to three-minute digital presentation. Once complete, their digital stories can be shared with elected officials and community leaders, used for presentations at schools and community centers and even go all the way to the state capitol and beyond. With digital stories, people have powerful and personal communication tools that can aid them in becoming much more actively involved in shaping their own destiny.
For Gary Romano, owner of Sierra Valley Farms, a 65-acre working organic farm in the valley, being a participant was a great experience. “It took a while to figure out the message we wanted to get across, but it was not burdensome at all, it was fun!” Romano is one of 14 Sierra Valley farmers and ranchers whose story will be told, and he was happy to have the help. “It wouldn’t have been easy to do it on our own,” Romano admits.
Romano explains that the participants got together for workshops and brainstorming sessions and had help getting their stories down on paper and fine-tuning them before settling in for the community recording day. As a small, organic farmer in the valley, his challenges are quite different from residents owning and operating large cattle ranches, but that only adds to the diversity of voices represented in the project. The message Romano hopes to communicate is the difficulty of making small-scale, rural farms work without financial backing. “It’s not easy to do it on our own, we don’t have retirement money coming in or any real backing or subsidies to count on,” he says. But he also focused on family history, discussing how and why he decided to purchase the last 65 acres of his grandfather’s once expansive spread, before it was lost to development.
He added lots of old family photos and chose a nice instrumental guitar piece by John Williams to play in the background. He’s looking forward to being able to share the digital story on the Sierra Valley Farm’s website and even taking it on the road to organic farming conferences. He wants to remind his audiences, “If you leave the land as open space, you can always go back to agriculture. But once you develop it and pave it and build on it, you can never go back.”
While each “Passion for the Land” story is entirely unique, there are many similar threads, according to Holly George, Livestock & Natural Resource Advisor for Plumas-Sierra Counties, who worked hand-in-hand with ross producing the project. “A common message among the participants is that they value the rural character of the Sierra Valley and that they really care about the land and want it to be here for future generations,” George says. She firmly believes that “people are the link to the land and we need to involve the people to make sure the land, and the people associated with it, are saved.” She thinks the project is a fantastic way to bring people together and get them working together.
ross, who lives in Davis, had spent time in Sierra Valley in 2006 producing a radio documentary for Saving the Sierra which aired on National Public Radio. It was during that time she became truly inspired by the residents’ strong connection to place and also became aware of many of the issues and pressures valley farmers and ranchers were facing to preserve and maintain working landscapes. She was also inspired by Resource Advisor Holly George. ross knows that an outsider can’t just walk into a tight-knit community and get people to open up and share their life stories. “They (the farmers and ranchers) came to the table because Holly asked them to. I give props to Holly George!” ross exclaimed. ross is a strong believer in the power that comes from people sharing their experiences in their own words. The impact of the stories is very often lost or not captured at all by people reporting on issues from the outside.
What’s next for the Digital Storytelling Project? According to ross, even though the recording and rough editing is done, there are at least three more phases to complete. First, all the project partners will come together to view the edits and agree on necessary changes and how they would like to present their stories. Once approved, they will begin to strategize about the best ways to get the stories out to wider audiences at which point ARC will begin a year-long outreach campaign. In the end, ross believes the best outcome from “Passion for the Land” will be, in her words, Realistic and Authentic Change. (Forgive the author’s artistic license here, but I think such a magnificent outcome deserves to be spelled in all capitals!)
~ Additional info: Passion for the Land is collaboration between the University of California Cooperative Extension Plumas Sierra Counties (http://ucce-plumas-sierra.ucdavis.edu/) and the Art of Regional Change (http://artofregionalchange.ucdavis.edu/). Project Co-directors: jesikah maria ross, 530-754-6491 or jmross@ucdavis.edu; and Holly George, 530-283-627 or hageorge@ucdavis.edu.
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