Amplifying Voice, Building Community

Nourishing creativity, amplifying voices and building community is what Narratio founder Ahmed Badr had in mind when he established the fellowship program with Brice Nordquist, Dean’s Professor of Community Engagement and associate professor of writing and rhetoric. “It’s inspiring witnessing their artistic journeys and seeing them realize their own ability to share their own stories, on their own terms,” says Badr, an Iraqi American poet, author and social entrepreneur. “Storytelling can be daunting, but doing it within a community of supportive peers can make for a truly transformative experience. I find inspiration in the ways the fellows engage with their own creative expression, but also in the ways they support one another throughout the program.”

The 2021-22 program—which welcomed students from Syracuse city and area schools as well as Onondaga Community College and Syracuse University—offered fellows the option of exploring poetry or photography through its summer workshop and featured guidance from artists-in-residence Stefano Castro, a Colombian American photographer and filmmaker, and Khadija Mohamed ’23, a Somali American poet and Syracuse University student who was a 2019 Narratio Fellow.

The photography program was initiated through a partnership with VisionWorkshops, a Maryland-based nonprofit that works with the National Geographic Society to host photo camps in underserved communities around the globe. The program coordinators were photojournalists and filmmakers Matt Moyer ’94 and Amy Toensing, an assistant professor of visual communications at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. They are National Geographic Society Explorers who have each traveled the world on assignments for National Geographic magazine and other publications, and have led numerous photo camps abroad, including one for Syrian children at a refugee camp in Jordan. They encourage workshop participants to think of themselves as photographers, even if they’ve only taken pictures with smartphones, Moyer says. “Just making that mental shift of thinking of yourself as a photographer or a visual storyteller changes the way in which you interact with the creative process.”

The summer workshop also featured an ongoing collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art whose staff, via Zoom, discussed their conservation work and introduced fellows to objects in the museum’s Ancient Near East collection. With the program’s focus on object-based storytelling, these treasures serve as prompts for the fellows—inspiration pieces that may stir a memory or an insight and act as a launch pad for them to build their poems around. The program also included an immersion trip to New York City, where they visited the Met, the Bronx Documentary Center and the International Center for Photography. At the Met, they participated in a workshop making impressions with Sumerian seals, received a behind-the-scenes look at the conservators’ work, performed their poems and exhibited their photos. “There was a sense of pride among the Met staff of having the performance there, and the fellows did a brilliant job,” Nordquist says.

The fellows developed their work around the theme of caregiving, and an installation of their art, Conventions of Care: Photography and Poetry of the 2021 Narratio Fellows, runs through June 30 at the La Casita Cultural Center. Part of the Syracuse Symposium, the installation and a May 5 opening performance were among a series of events at which the fellows showcased their poetry, photography and short films. “The fellowship showed me the intersectionality of storytelling and how you can use different mediums,” says Yasmine Kanaan, a Nottingham High School senior. “There are many perspectives of art, and you need to have people from different perspectives, cultures and races look at your piece, because then your art can have more impact and you can reach more people.”

On a March evening at the North Side Learning Center—a family literacy organization that serves as home base of the fellowship program—Nordquist sits at a table with sisters Yasmine and Ryanne Kanaan ’25 and Rayan Mohamed, a 2020 fellow who’s a Henninger High School senior and an incoming Syracuse University film student. They’re meeting on Zoom with Badr, Castro and Grattan to discuss an upcoming visit to Richmond, Virginia. In collaboration with ReEstablish Richmond, a nonprofit that helps refugees resettle in the community there, Narratio is launching a fellowship program in Richmond this summer and wants to introduce the community to the initiative. “Think of yourselves as facilitators—you are experts in this experience now,” Badr tells the fellows. “What would you want potential fellows to know, and how would you support them throughout these workshop exercises?”

Nordquist encourages them to talk about the importance of storytelling. “You get buy-in around the power of stories and how they can help you realize things about yourself and the world around you, but also move people to action,” he says. “The goal is to get them to think about themselves as artists and their connections to art even if they’re not ready to say, ‘I’m an artist.’”