Indigenous Story Incubator Program

The Indigenous Story Incubator Program is a program designed to change the conversation about Indigeneity in the Salish Sea and Beyond. The program contains three components: live performance productions, media arts program and education and outreach.

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LIVE PERFORMANCE

In partnership with the Washington Center for the Performing Arts (Olympia) and The Mt Baker Theater (Bellingham) work to create new live performing arts productions. Each production is created through an Indigenous lens that makes them sustainable touring productions for our artists. Now in its fourth year of operation, we have launched fie productions-In The Spirit: a two-spirt/queer Indigenous festival, Welcome To Indian Country-a celebration of the joy of being Native through music and storytelling featuring a cast of six, Some Stars of Native American Comedy which confronts the notion that Native Americans are not funny and The Aunties-a production that honors Indigenous matriarchs and their crucial role in the survival of Native culture.  ISIP was designed to create a robust regional network of venues dedicated to Indigenous series, changing the conversation around Indigeneity in the Salish Sea area.

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MEDIA ARTS PROGRAM

In mid 2022, ISIP evolved into a hybrid program including documentary filmmaking and the development of archives. ISIP hybrid projects currently include “The Aunties” and an upcoming ISIP project in pre-production, “Stories from the Warrior Society,” sharing stories by Native Veterens. As we build capacity, we aim for every ISIP story to be a hybrid live performance/media arts series. ISIP Media Arts creates narrative driven documentary style feature length collections that combine interview footage, live stage footage, archival photographs, and works of legacy including visual art, music, and spoken word. The focus of the projects and the driver of the stories are the storytellers from each live performance. The short stories, (approximately ten minutes of content from each storyteller) are interwoven with B reel and assets to create one or more unified documentary style films with cultural, emotional and visual integrity. The addition of documentary filmmaking to ISIP amplifies the reach and accessibility of ISIP stories and strengthens community through the creation of a cultural resource.

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EDUCATION AND OUTREACH

As part of each ISIP live performance, IPP partners with after-school programs, tribal schools, intercultural schools, community centers, universities and libraries to connect culture bearers from each ISIP live productions with the local youth at each site with special focus on Native youth. We believe it is essential that Native youth see people that share their experience honored for their contributions and accomplishments. In the past, IPP artists have offered engagement activities in the form of master classes, workshops, talks, and engagmenet acitivites.

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Through the ISIP Media Arts documentary team, we are partnering with high schools specifically about the work of a filmmaker and hold a second round of storytelling workshops with planned social media components for Indigenous, POC and at-risk youth.

To deepen this impact IPP will commission a study guide appropriate to high school audiences for each project year of both “The Aunties” and “Stories from the Warrior Society”.