Free Story Collaborative Workshop May+June 2025
Story Collaborative is a socially engaged workshop series that artists Dewi (day-wee) Sungai and Jason Houston have been developing since 2016. The approach builds on traditional participatory photography programs made popular in the 1990s, but rather than focusing on individuals, we focus on community, helping storytellers to engage in critical conversations about social and environmental issues affecting their community. Through workshop sessions, photography, and exhibitions, Story Collaborative fosters the creation of creative photographic narratives, embraces the role of art as a catalyst for critical community dialogues, and illuminates and explores issues of power, authorship, equity, and representation in visual media.
Native Community in the Greater Denver Area
This session, Our Indigenous Future, brings Jason and Dewi’s global work back home to the Native community we’re part of, honoring our connection and deep commitments to this community and the land we live on. The month-long workshop serves to uplift Native youth (ages 12-25), whose perspectives and stories have an important place in the national conversation right now. Through a community-led open call process, we will identify a small group of Native youth to collaborate with throughout the months of May and June 2025. The initial exhibition will be held Summer 2025 (TBD).
Almost all of Jason and Dewi’s current projects are in collaboration with Native community here. We’ve filmed and photographed with and for Akíčita Luta (Red Warrior Society), áyA Con, the Harvest of All First Nations Corn Festival, Lakota Way Healing Center, People of the Sacred Land, and Rocky Mountain Indigenous Dancers. We volunteer on the Boulder Valley School District’s American Indian Parents Council, and Dewi is also an artist member of Creative Nations, an Indigenous-led artists collective based in Boulder. Jason has worked for over a decade as a photographer focused on issues related to Indigenous land rights and sovereignty.
The Workshop Process
This process is based on our global workshop program, outlined in detail in our Story Collaborative Overview PDF and adapted for working with local collaborators in our home communities. These short behind-the-scenes videos feature 2023 workshops in Namibia, Peru, Madagascar, Mexico, and the Philippines:
In summary, this month-long workshop will include mentorship in creative visual storytelling, photography editing and production support, and coordinated community events and exhibitions. Jason and Dewi’s behind-the-scenes photos and video will celebrate the photographers’ journeys and accomplishments, as a way of sharing their stories, process, and impact more broadly.
Group Meetings throughout May and June 2025 at Create áyA’s Makerspace in Denver’s River North Art District (RiNo)
A group exhibition in July/August 2025 at Creative Nations’s Sacred Space in downtown Boulder
The workshop is funded by the RedLine Contemporary Arts Center’s INSITE Fund and will be free for the selected photographers. Additionally, cameras and all materials will be provided. Photographers will keep the cameras and all of their artwork. The photographers will 100% own all of their work and retain full copyright and agency in how their work is or is not shared beyond Story Collaborative.
Photographers’ & Facilitators’ Expectations
Each photographer will produce a body of work that will be curated into a group exhibition. The work will be three dimensional photo collages based on Jason’s WHAT IS FOUND THERE project, where photographs are mounted on wood blocks and combined to create individualized visual statements. We will also feature each photographer's work and artist statements, video interviews, facilitators’ reflections, and news about exhibitions and events on this website.
Our measures of success will include creating a safe space for each photographer to explore their creative visual storytelling process and find their voice through photography; a well-attended reception representing a broad cross-section of the photographers’ communities; a traveling exhibition that tours various community spaces; and ongoing conversations inspired by the photographers’ work about how we live on this land and with each other.
Apply Now
The application is simple and free. We ask only for basic contact information; confirmation that you will be available for the workshop meetings, able to do the independent photography work, and willing to participate in and attend the exhibition; and one simple question: “Why do you want to participate in this workshop?” (Hint: Speak honestly from your heart, don’t just tell us what you think we might want to hear.)
Application deadline is April 11, 2025. Applicants will be notified of the decisions by April 22, 2025.
Once we have the reviewed all of the applications, we will invite five photographers, ideally diverse in age, gender, and location, to participate.
Click on the button below to fill out the Google Form and apply.
If you have any questions before or after applying, please contact Dewi and Jason at eight16creative@gmail.com.
Dewi filming Thomas Yellow Horse Davis for the short film FOR THE PEOPLE.
About Jason & Dewi
Jason has facilitated similar workshops in communities around the world, including with First Nations youth in Klemtu, Canada; on the Rosebud and Pine Ridge Reservations remotely during the pandemic; as the Colorado State Facilitator for WRKxFAMLY (a national program of Working Assumptions Foundation) in public schools across the Front Range; and addressing the climate crisis in partnership with Colorado Mountain College. Together Dewi and Jason have also run workshops in international locations including Philippines, Peru, Madagascar, Mozambique, Mexico, and Namibia in partnership with USAID, WWF, and others.
Photographer and filmmaker Jason Houston explores how we live on the planet and with each other through community, culture, and the diversity of human experience. Through his work, he is committed to art and action that seeks to deconstruct colonial worldviews and dismantle white supremacy culture. Jason’s work— often including various socially engaged approaches— brings to life authentic narratives that recognize agency, authorship, and sovereignty for those in front of the camera while informing truth toward social and environmental justice. His work has been recognized, published, exhibited, premiered, and presented online, in print, and at venues worldwide. Jason is a Senior Fellow in the International League of Conservation Photographers (iLCP), a Fellow at Wake Forest University’s Sabin Center for Environment and Sustainability, and the 2022 Environmental Peacemaking (EnPAx) Arts Fellow. Jason’s Photography Website
Dewi (day-wee) Sungai Marquis-Houston is a mixed-race Native Bornean mother, wife, and filmmaker who was born in Indonesia, adopted as an infant by white American parents, renamed “Amy" (a name she’s since given up to reclaim her birth name), and raised in white suburbia. Dewi's experiences as a transracial adoptee led her to a filmmaking career that centers Indigenous voices and challenges narratives spun from supremacy mindsets and colonialist worldviews. She and her life+creative partner, Jason, founded eight16 creative, under which they produce independent nonfiction films and photography and champion sovereign storytelling in local and Native communities around the world. Dewi & Jason’s Filmmaking Website
Jason with some of the initial polytychs for his project WHAT IS FOUND THERE.
