Stories about Stories
Narratives at the Museum-Planning Intersection
A Professional Story Gatherer
This blog owes its existence in part to a fellow museum professional, Brad Larson, who was taken from us in November 2023. Brad’s business, StoryHabitat, is a story-gathering business. Sparked by simple but evocative prompts and StoryHabitat’s intuitive user interface, people record short videos. As a former colleague of Brad’s noted at the first of two official memorial services, Brad was figuring out the technology and interface to gather user-generated content before YouTube or Facebook existed. StoryHabitats are installed around the world (including my former museum) to gather people’s stories about favorite shoes, dogs, climate change, important institutional anniversaries, refugee experiences, - you name it.
Brad’s work first influenced mine when I noticed that he was working not with planning agencies, but with non-profit organizations doing planning-relevant work. Collecting people’s ideas for the future of downtown Springfield, MA at a mural festival; stories that could inform the programming for public spaces along the Seattle, WA waterfront; or visions for Durham, NC’s Belt Line rail trail project. Aside from the serotonin boost from the videos he showcases (seriously, watch both videos for a smile), Brad’s projects helped me recognize this grassroots path to planning work. (In fact, this is how the Science Museum of Virginia did its heat-mapping project – it partnered with the grassroots environmental justice organization Groundwork Richmond to gather the data. It was only after the museum started publicizing the data that the project caught the attention of the city planning department.)
Very quickly, Brad became one of my most important thinking partners – on this museum-planning stuff, on being independent museum professionals, and a bit on parenting, though our kids are different generations. We swapped business favors, encouraged each other, and tried to find an opportunity to collaborate on a project. Brad was also my “anchor panelist” for conference sessions that helped me expand on an article where I first floated this idea that museums should be working on planning issues. For each conference, I had to assemble a different set of panelists. Most museum people attend one or two museum conferences (if any) a year, based upon their museum type or geographical region. More difficult still, pulling in planners meant finding a different person or two each time – someone who could and would participate in a non-planning conference (on their own dime).
Having Brad as that anchor panelist always made it easier to recruit the rest of the presenters. Brad was the perfect person for this. Aside from showcasing a side-door approach to this museum-planning work, he attended even more museum conferences than I do, and seemingly knew everyone from his time spent in the exhibit halls. More importantly - he was So Darned Agreeable. So agreeable, in fact, that I always felt obliged to press him a few times to be sure he really saw benefit in attending one of the few conferences that wasn’t on his planned schedule. We never did find a paid collaborative project, but he was a critical part of my brain trust for this blog.
Stories and Planning: LA’s Historic Contexts
It’s taken me a while to be ready to write about Brad. What got me off the fence was a recent article by the American Planning Association entitled Elevating Community Stories Through Historic Contexts. The article may be behind a paywall, so here’s the gist. Los Angeles Planning’s Office of Historic Resources has developed a series of “historic context” documents to create a more inclusive narrative to broaden its historic preservation efforts. The ten contexts document African American, Latino, Jewish, Women’s Rights, LGBT, and five Asian-American (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Filipino American) histories and community contributions to the fabric of LA.
Aha! Brad always touted the power of story, and we both knew in our bones that story gathering had a place in planning, and this is a perfect example. Asking people to describe their experiences in their neighborhood is a common community engagement tactic for planners, but this article shows those stories doing a specific “job” – interpreting the landscape and built environment through a specific lens – and achieving a tangible goal – protecting important places from the bulldozer.
The research for each historic context started with existing scholarship and with primary documents, but they were also informed by conversations with community members. Community member’s stories helped identify places of historic cultural significance and add new perspective to places already known. In some cases, community members identified documentation that the researchers hadn’t found. While a major goal of the project is to preserve more of LA’s historic resources, the contexts themselves are great reading (hence all the links to the pdfs above.) Since my background is very Not History, I’ve always found the line between stories, oral history, and history to be blurry. But, for the folks left out of dominant history narratives, collecting the former two seems like a critical corrective step.
Story Gathering into the Future
I will echo a number of museum colleagues who believe that telling, collecting, and sharing stories are excellent ways to honor Brad. But I will also note that I’ve been using the present tense when referring to Brad’s company, StoryHabitat. Brad’s sister recently shared these thoughts in an email to StoryHabitat’s customers as the family creates a plan for the company’s continuation:
“His legacy of innovation, kindness, and dedication to making a positive difference in the world will continue to guide us.
As we navigate this period of transition, we want to assure you that StoryHabitat remains committed to its mission. Brad’s vision and spirit will continue to be at the heart of what we do.” ~ Julie Larson Mudry
In the meantime, we can all use story to help fulfill StoryHabitat’s mission to “make the world a better place through sharing of personal experiences that build community.”
~ Betsy Loring1
The Planning-Curious Museum Person
Sharing stories and ideas for other Planning-Curious Museum People and for Museum-Curious Planning People.
Betsy Loring is founder of expLoring exhibits & engagement. She has over 20 years’ experience in project management and exhibit development in multidisciplinary, indoor and outdoor museum settings. Her services include exhibit master planning, content and interactive development, and writing, with a focus on hands-on STEM. She also offers staff training in exhibition planning, formative evaluation, and prototyping. Special interests include multi-institutional collaborations, peer-to-peer professional development, and of course – collaboration with municipal planning practitioners.