We use our expertise and skills to guide the development of engaging, community-centered narratives that serve as teaching tools for meaningful, cross-cultural understanding and reciprocity in our shared world.
These interactive geographic narratives combine modern mapping technology with deep-rooted storytelling to (re) layer cultural information onto the landscape. By visualizing histories and values in a spatial context, Story Maps achieve a more profound cross-cultural understanding for museum visitors and web audiences alike.
We specialize in high-quality documentary filmmaking to capture and share deeply rooted community histories, traditional ecological knowledge, and contemporary lived experiences. Our services produce compelling video content suitable for online platforms, educational programs, and museum installations, serving as a powerful tool to preserve cultural narratives and promote meaningful cross-cultural understanding.
For millennia, Indigenous people connected and traded across California using countless ancestral pathways. In stark contrast, "El Camino Real" is a 20th-century American construct, created to re-establish missions that had long fallen into ruin. As California built a history around these rebuilt missions after the 1890s, the role of California Indians was minimized to background actors in a narrative of religious and political inevitability. This fantasy of missionaries bringing salvation contrasts sharply with the reality: the Spanish military's arrival in the sixteenth century unleashed devastating impacts. These changes profoundly affected the freedom of movement and diversity of life for Indigenous people, the land, and the environment. This exhibition offers a glimpse into a different reality—one based on truth, not fantasy—by underscoring the Indigenous experience over tourism economics. Each section details the impacts of settlement and the powerful responses from Indigenous communities in their efforts to survive and thrive in the lands they call home.
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Community engagement, narrative development, object selection, coordination for loans, fundraising, design lead, program development, education space design and planning, website narrative, keynotes and other public speaking/teaching.
Live Oak reinterpreted the narrative of the 100-year-old historic Fort Garland in Colorado’s San Luis Valley by assessing materials gathered over time, creating an accessible, searchable archive, and using those resources to develop an interpretive framework for the existing exhibit and identify meaningful points for intervention. Working with local experts and knowledge holders, we developed an interpretive plan and designed sixteen large-scale panels that provide updated, culturally relevant framing for the Fort.
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Historical archive assessment and reorganization, interpretive framework development, community engagement plan, story gatherings, 1:1 expert consultations, narrative development and design for site-wide intervention.
Dr. Dartt collaborated with Tima Link (Chumash) and other Chumash academics, artists, and culture bearers to create a permanent Chumash cultural exhibit and nature walk at the Bacara Resort and Spa in Tecolote Canyon (Hel’apunitse), California. The interactive exhibit invites visitors into the rich history of the Chumash peoples who’s ancestral lands the Bacara Resort is on and brings visitors up through the present day culture and modern living of the Chumash peoples.
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Community engagement, narrative development, story-map and video, kiosk style interactive, in-room video, design, fabrication and installation of interior and exterior interpretive exhibits and signage, all staff Chumash history and culture training and video for staff onboarding.
In the education space for the exhibition, we included practical ways for visitors to put their allyship into action
