Four Tucson storytellers with intellectual and developmental disabilities will share Saturday what it means to be brave, part of a new public storytelling event aimed at correcting a longstanding blind spot in news coverage.

"In Our Words: Brave" is set for Aug. 29, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at the Baker Center for Public Media. The event is a partnership between Tucson Spotlight and Arizona Public Media, made possible through support from the Reynolds Journalism Institute and Wordslaw.

Founded by journalist Amy Silverman in 2021, Wordslaw is a Phoenix-based storytelling initiative that works to put the stories of people with intellectual disabilities and other communities not often heard from front and center in journalism.

Doors open at 2 p.m. with an art exhibit in the lobby and light refreshments. At 2:30 p.m., the program kicks off with a video presentation, professionally recorded ahead of time and screened live for the audience, featuring Kristi Ambrosini, Stephanie Lopez, Tyler Martin and Iris Lobel sharing personal stories about moments in their lives that took courage.

The stories run the gamut of life's milestones and hardships: a nerve-wracking job interview, preparing for surgery, moving across the country, and grieving the death of a father.

All storytellers are participants in Taglit B’yachad, the Tucson Jewish Community Center's day program.

A Q&A with some of the storytellers and featured visual artists Abby Love and Cody Kelly, who designed the event's logo, follows.

Why this project exists

The intellectual and developmental disabilities community is chronically under-represented in news media. When reporters do cover it, the stories tend to fall into one of two camps: accounts of poor living conditions, or feel-good "inspirational" narratives. Neither tends to say much about what everyday life actually looks like for people with IDD.

Part of the problem is access. The nature of these disabilities can make communication difficult, so reporters often end up interviewing the people around someone with a disability — family members, caregivers, doctors, teachers, government staff — rather than that person directly.

Those perspectives matter, but so does the story of the person at the center of it, who often has plenty to say for themselves.

"To tell one's own story in one's own words is to be empowered and recognized," said Tucson JCC Art Instructor Matt Katz. "Adults with IDD all too often have their stories and needs and values explained by others, over and over again throughout life. We want to minimize this as much as possible. "

That's exactly the point Charlie Paige, the Tucson J's senior director of disability program services, wants to drive home.

"Participants in Taglit B’Yachad are part of the Tucson J community. Just like everyone else, they bring their unique personalities, experiences, and perspectives to our campus each day," Paige said. "It's exciting to be able to share who they are — in their own words — with the broader public."

"In Our Words: Brave" was built on that same idea, giving storytellers direct control over how their experiences are shared, in a public, community setting.

Tucson Spotlight founder and editor Caitlin Schmidt, who is co-leading the project, said the goal goes beyond a single event.

"The IDD community in Tucson has stories worth telling, and local media has consistently overlooked them," Schmidt said. "We want to create a genuine, joyful space for those stories to be heard, and we want this to be the start of an ongoing relationship with this community, not something we parachute into once and walk away from."

The visual art featured at the event grew out of a structured creative process developed by ArtWorks: Studio and Gallery, an outreach program housed in the University of Arizona's Sonoran Center for Excellence in Disabilities, within the Department of Family & Community Medicine.

ArtWorks pairs adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities with UA students for collaborative creative work.

Director Yumi Shirai said the collaboration with Tucson Spotlight and AZPM was a natural extension of that mission.

"At ArtWorks: Studio and Gallery, we bring our members and collaborative partners' voices together through creative dialogue, so this collaboration is a perfect fit," Shirai said.

The organization used the Creative Café Story Gathering Model, a three-step process of foundation building, idea exploration and creative synthesis informed by Inclusive Arts Practice and Universal Design for Learning. The model was named runner-up for the 2024 John Hartford Foundation Business Innovation Award and will soon be featured in USAging's "Innovations Hub — Engaged."

For this project, the theme "Brave" set the process in motion.

Building the stories

During a July workshop with Spotlight and AZPM team members, Taglit B'yachad's participants talked about bravery as a group, then worked on their own to decide what story they wanted to share. They brainstormed and wrote out their stories, practicing them in pairs and small groups before reading them out loud.

"It was long," Lobel said with a laugh, recalling the workshop.

A few weeks later, storytellers worked with a team of reporters and videographers to record their stories for the event.

Many of the storytellers will also participate in the post-screening panel, with Lobel and others excited to connect with the community.

"A public audience for our members' stories means visibility and concreteness," Katz said. "Day programs and resources for adults with IDD, like ArtWorks or Taglit B'Yachad, are generally invisible to the wider community."

People outside this community may have little firsthand contact with someone who has a developmental disability and as a result, may carry assumptions, or even misconceptions, about what disability looks or sounds like.

"An opportunity like this goes beyond misconceptions and notions, because it allows the public to meet real people who live with disabilities," Katz said.

ArtWorks artists worked through a similar process. In group sessions, they brainstormed together around the theme of bravery before turning those ideas into something tangible on paper.

"We explored the theme with a few prompting questions, created poems, which we have been studying with the UA Poetry Center each summer, and created visual art pieces," Shirai said.

That comfort with the process built up over time, through other creative projects along the way.

"As they practiced this process through other artistic engagements, they enjoyed it and you can see the outputs of their thoughts," Shirai said.

Art from ArtWorks artists, including Kelly, will be on view in the Baker Center lobby throughout the event.

Beyond the screening itself, organizers hope the event leaves a lasting impression.

"We hope (people) will walk away with greater awareness, understanding, and acceptance of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, the challenges they may face, and the ways they meet those challenges with courage," Paige said.

Katz shares that hope for lasting impact.

"I would hope the audience takes away from this event a wider sense for the possibility of continued dialogue, that this the beginning of a process that can grow," he said. "I would be happy to see what we're doing here leading to further connections."

Tucson Spotlight is a community-based newsroom that provides paid opportunities for students and rising journalists in Southern Arizona. Please consider supporting our work with a tax-deductible donation.