As an artist and director at Littleglobe, I have been lucky to be able to take my affinity for multi-arts performance and work with teams of artists and non-artists to bring to the surface stories of the people around me, living in New Mexico. Working with my fellow residents using multiple arts provides two remarkable possibilities: (1) there are many ways for people to access their stories—different people have resonance with different artistic frameworks to explore and find form for their stories, and (2) there are many ways to amplify and share those stories.
¡Presente! is a multi-year project collecting and sharing the stories of Santa Fe’s residents who face the flattening and emptying effects of affordability and gentrification. This is especially agonizing in a place so rich with history, with personal connectivity to the past, and a complex social fabric deeply relevant to the question of how people live and thrive in such a world today.