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The SFAI Story Maps Fellowship is a multi-disciplinary collaborative residency program supporting local artists who identify as Indigenous, Black or people of color to work in partnership with the City of Santa Fe and other non-arts organizations on the mutual goals of fostering greater inclusion and equity in civic engagement and sustained positive social change.
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About Story Maps Fellowship

Launched in 2018 with support from the Ford Foundation, the SFAI Story Maps Fellowship (SMF) provides a forum for dialogue, skill sharing, research, critical thinking, and creative problem solving between local BIPOC artists and peers in the social services, advocacy, and city government fields.

Fellows and selected non-arts and civic partners learn from one another’s professional practices and methods of engagement, and collaborate on issues integral to Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico by: identifying community needs, gathering stories, and mapping cultural and community assets; exploring policies and systems alongside non-governmental and grassroots initiatives for addressing pertinent local issues; and building inclusive relationships and networks with the potential to open pathways to a more equitable community.

These partnerships allow for unexpected synergies and emerging possibilities to develop, with a long-term goal to invest in transformational, equitable, and collaborative civic processes that break down barriers, build bridges, and create a shared sense of place and belonging.

2020/2021 Story Maps Fellowship

In 2020 and 2021, two selected Fellows, Christian Gering and Diego Medina, served as project artists to the SFAI team and our partners working on the Midtown project, through the NEA Our Town grant and the communities surrounding the Midtown Site. The Fellows worked to deepen and amplify the stories of these neighborhoods, residents, histories, and place through creative community engagements and site activations such as Re-Centering Santa Fe: At the Heart of Oga Po’geh. They also developed and produced the latest Tilt Podcast Ep. 5 Unsettled Series alongside Dr. Alicia Inez Guzmán.

2019 Story Maps Fellowship

The following individuals were awarded a Story Maps Fellowship based on their experiences with social and community engagement, their interest and passion for social change in Northern New Mexico, and their strong and committed creative practices.

2019 Story Maps Fellows

Hazel Batrezchavez
Dolores “Scarlett” Cortez
Ehren Kee Natay
Sara Daniele Rivera


2019 Story Maps Fellows Hosts

Story Maps gives participating City of Santa Fe departments opportunities to expand their impact by telling their stories and deepening their direct engagement with citizens and neighborhoods.

Devin Baldwin, Workforce and Personnel Engagement Director, YouthWorks!
Jacqueline Beam, Planner, Office of Affordable Housing
Sylvia Johnson, Creative Director, Santa Fe Dreamers Project
Richard de Mella, Division Director, Youth and Family Services Division


2019 Story Maps Fellows Mentors

Jamie Figueroa (Afro-Taíno) is Boricua by way of Ohio and long time resident of northern New Mexico. She explores identity, familial relationships, place, culture, and ancestry. A two-time graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts, (BFA and MFA in Creative Writing), she publishes across genres including fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Her writing has appeared in Epoch, Catapult, McSweeney’s among other other journals and is forthcoming in American Short Fiction. Jamie’s collaborative community work facilitates an engagement with underrepresented voices and highlights intergenerational, multi-racial & multi-ethnic, gender & sexuality difference, and equity. Currently, in addition to serving as faculty in the MFA-Interdisciplinary Arts program at Goddard College, within the Indigenous/Decolonial Art focus, Jamie facilitates modern myth making for personal and collective restoration and healing.

Eliza Naranjo Morse grew up in Northern New Mexico.  Her work is often influenced by the people and histories around her, the personal, social and environmental happenings that she is aware of, and the cartoons and ways of playing she grew up with. Eliza holds two forms of art education; the information passed along to her through her Elders life experiences and creative intentions and an art degree from Skidmore College.

Eliza Naranjo Morse is thankful for her recent collaborators—Fung Collaboratives, the School for Advanced Research, the Coe Foundation for the Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Native Art, the Poeh Cultural Center, the Kha’ Po’ Community School, and for her ongoing teammates of Always Becoming. Eliza is filled with deep appreciation for the creative expressions and simple practical tasks she participates in with her immediate and extended family.  These efforts may not be published but are highly nourishing and important aspects of her work as an artist.

Chrissie Orr was born in Scotland, a descendant of the Picts (the painted ones) She is an artist, animateur and creative investigator/troublemaker focused on developing “a relational aesthetic around community and site with issues relevant to both.” Orr has created innovative, challenging community based art projects in diverse areas of the world and is recognized internationally for her pioneering work. She is the recipient of the Santa Fe Mayors Award for Excellence in the Arts and she is a founder of the SeedBroadcast Collective. She is the cofounder of the Academy for the Love of Learning’s EL Otro Lado Project and the Institute for Living Story. She has kept a journal for more years than she can remember, their broken worn spines line her bookshelves and contain her secret memory lines. One day she might share these.

Edie Tsong is an artist/writer whose projects explore intimacy — how do “I” literally and metaphorically connect with “you”? How does this essential relationship build community? Her projects range from city-wide installation and programming (Snow Poems Project with Cut+Paste Society) to performances, drawing, sculpture, and facilitated conversations.

2018 Story Maps Fellowship

The following individuals were awarded a Story Maps Fellowship based on their experiences with social and community engagement, their interest and passion for social change in Northern New Mexico, and their strong and committed creative practices.

2018 Story Maps Fellows

Heidi K. Brandow
Mya Green
Terran Last Gun
Yvette Serrano


2018 Story Maps Fellows Hosts

Story Maps gives participating City of Santa Fe departments opportunities to expand their impact by telling their stories and deepening their direct engagement with citizens and neighborhoods.

Matt Brown, Director, Office of Economic Development
Andrés Mercado, Officer, Mobile Integrated Health Office (MIHO), Fire Department
Jacqueline Beam, Planner, Office of Affordable Housing
Richard Thompson, Director, Parks Division


2018 Story Maps Fellows Mentors

Cannupa Hanska Luger is a multi-disciplinary artist of Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara/Lakota descent. His work communicates stories of complex Indigenous identities coming up against 21st century challenges, including violence, capitalism and misconceptions. Using social collaboration, monumental sculpture, land response, ceramic, video, sound, fiber, steel, paper, and performance, Luger provokes diverse publics to engage with Indigenous peoples and values apart from the lens of colonial social structuring. He combines critical cultural analysis with dedication and respect for the diverse materials, environments, and communities he engages.

Nuttaphol Ma creates narratives about migration and survival. Moving with sound awareness, and taking notes of the mundane, he connects seemingly disconnected patterns and sequences of unfolding everyday moments and dreams, consciousness and memories, to compose stories about the dreams of leaving and dreams of roots, to re-tell empowering stories of becoming. has participated in exhibition spaces including: Canadian Museum of Immigration, The LA Municipal Art Gallery, Human Resources, High Desert Test Sites, Lokkus Arte Contemporaneo and The Santa Fe Art Institute. Ma is a recipient of the following fellowships and residencies: UCLA Confucius Institute and UCLA Boethius Institute Dunhuang Projected Fellowship, Santa Fe Art Institute Alumni Fellowship, California Community Foundation Fellowship, The Feitelson Art Fellowship, Pitzer College Emerging Artist Fellow, 18th Street Art Center Artist Fellow and The Mountain School Art Residency.

Chrissie Orr was born in Scotland, a descendant of the Picts, (the painted ones) She is an artist, animateur and a beautiful trouble-maker who focuses on developing “an aesthetic around community and site with issues relevant to both.” Orr has created innovative community based generative art projects in Australia, Iran, Turkey, Europe, Mexico and the U.S. She was the founder of the nationally acclaimed Teen Project in Santa Fe, New Mexico, receiving recognition from Congress and the National Endowment for the Arts and is recognized for her innovative work on the Mexican/American border. In the year 2000 Orr completed a nine-month residency in Georgia as part of the Artists and Communities for the Millennium Project. In 2006 she was the artist in residence at Grand Central Arts Center in Santa Ana, California. Her work has been exhibited internationally. She is a recipient of the Santa Fe, 2009 Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. She was instrumental in the development of the Earth Based Vocational Course at Ecoversity and is presently the director of the El Otro Lado: the Other side project, a faculty member of the Academy for the Love of Learning in New Mexico, cofounder of SeedBroadcast and is completing the installation of artwork in the St Francis Drive Underpass in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Edie Tsong is an artist and a writer. Her work is an exploration of intimacy. In it, her questioning—what and how are the ways in which we connect and permeate boundaries with each other and with place—is made visible. These projects take the form of drawing, sculpture, radical bookmaking, installation, performance, and socially-engaged projects. From the experience of growing up Taiwanese-American in Central Pennsylvania, she cultivates identity from a place of interaction and introspection. Tsong’s collaborative projects include forget your perfect offering, CCA (Sydney Cooper and others), and Love Letter to the World, Paseo Festival (Michael Lorenzo Lopez and others). She was the founding director of the Cut+Paste Society (2010-2015) and Santa Fe’s city-wide project, Snow Poems.