February 10, 2021 Reframing the story

The Saint Louis Story Stitchers collects stories related to trauma such as gun violence, life transitions and mental health. The stories are reframed and retold through art, writing and performance. They utilize the arts of music, spoken word, photography, videography and dialogue.

Saint Louis Story Stitchers is a youth-led artist collective that takes traumatic personal stories and retells them through art, writing and performance

By Charlotte Beard

The Lewis Prize for Music, an initiative which aims to unite youth with opportunities for music programs has awarded $500,000 of its more than $2 million in funding to Saint Louis Story Stitchers, an artist collective. Organizations in Boston, Detroit, and Philadelphia were also among the recipients for this year’s Accelerator Award. The youth-led collective will use the funds to grow its administrative and fundraising capacity to help establish a youth music and technology center.

“Saint Louis Story Stitchers is giving young people the skills and opportunities to humanize the challenges of gun violence in their city,” states Daniel Lewis, Founder and Chairman of The Lewis Prize for Music. “They bring this work to neighborhoods that have experienced shootings and neighborhoods far from these incidents to build bridges and understanding.”

“The young people are living the gun violence,” stated Saint Louis Story Stitchers President and Executive Director, Susan Colangelo. “They are afraid to stand at the bus stop. Michael Brown was shot right after we (were) founded. This has not gone away. St. Louis is now worse. So, they are telling us, ‘This is our main goal – we want to solve this gun violence problem.’ We need to speak out about it.”

Saint Louis Story Stitchers was founded in August 2013 by Denise Ward Brown, Juan William Chavez, Susan Colangelo, Jamie KP Dennis, Marilee Keys, Kiersten Torrez, John A. Wright and Sylvia Wright.

“I served as founding coordinator of Saint Louis Story Stitchers, an artists’ collective based at Northside Workshop, Old North St. Louis,” states Colangelo, “dedicated to documenting Saint Louis, Missouri through art and word to promote understanding, civic pride, intergenerational relationships and literacy.”

The nonprofit consists of professional artists and minority youth ages 16-24 who are supported by scholars. Story Stitchers collects stories related to trauma such as gun violence, life transitions and mental health.

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